While there is no way you would ever find me quoting scripture (I’m wholly unqualified), I did grow up with some of the vernacular of the church-goer. So forgive me these post titles.

Came across an interesting note in the New Yorker on the style of reporting/storytelling used in chronicling the Great Migration: that massive movement of rural ‘folks’ from the rural world of the South to the urban world of big Northern cities like Chicago and New York. The piece, a book review by Jill Lepore, entitled “The Uprooted” appears in the September 6, 2010 issue. (I’m blogging from my phone or I’d provide the links). It’s worth a read; my familiarity with the topic comes mainly from my study of the history of jazz, while in college. The form of jazz morphed as it migrated, taking on local flavor via exposure to other musical forms, ethnicities, and tempos. I am left also with a memory of finding ‘Invisible Man’ nearly impenetrable as a 16 or 17 year old, but knowing that loss, separation, disenfranchisement were central (I often find the emotion of a story comes through even when I have no idea what a story is about).

So, definitely worth a read, if only to direct my attention to books that deal with the Great Migration in depth.

But a passage stood out:

Wright expressed, in vernacular, an argument of the Chicago School of sociologists, who, beginning in the nineteen-twenties, had been studying the Great Migration, crunching the numbers, calculating averages, compiling reports… about black life in the Urban North. “Perhaps never in history has a more utterly unprepared folk wanted to go to the city,” Wright wrote. In the Chicago School argument, the folk, in the city, crash into modernity; uprooting means loss, especially loss of community, an argument that has long been debated, and that Wilkerson doesn’t so much take on as steer clear of. Her folk don’t crash; they struggle, they study, they strive and even thrive. More to the point, she doesn’t call them folk, and for all that her work shares with Wright’s, her project has less in common with the documentary populism of the nineteen-thirties, which, like Chicago School sociology, was always about the collective (if you could just talk to enough people, take enough photographs, conduct enough surveys, you could, finally, record what it meant to be human), than with the new narrative journalism of the nineteen-sixties, which was always about the individual (if you could just find the right person to talk to, and it had to be an ordinary person, you could write the story of everyone). Wilkerson’s work, in other words, is more novelistic than documentary…

It seems that as brands struggle with observation, understanding, listening, and insight mining, it is struggling less with market research trends and more with journalistic ones. Brands must chronicle the lives of consumers, one assumes, as a means by which they will understand those lives. But there is a constant tension of method. We must talk to many people and canvas their attitudes and perceptions because then we will know what it means to be this consumer segment. Then we must find the right representatives of this consumer segment to help us write the story of everyone within that segment. When those stories don’t mesh, when so-called outliers appear, or worse, speak up, it feels like the foundation of the narrative wobbles, or worse, teeters and collapses.

I have a solution. Accept the work of the strategic planner (in concert with market researchers) as being as rigorous as is possible when there is an unreliable narrator and an unreliable reader. Furthermore, accept that the work of the creative brief or the segment portrait is novelistic rather than documentary. And finally, accept that the role of most marketing is not to present the world as it is, but rather to present a profoundly (and this is not about size or scope but impact/depth) altered model of the world, predicated on idealizations, simplifications, archetypes and aspiration. Verifiable accounts of how “the consumer” spends her day are only useful in juxtaposition to how she believes she spends her day, how she wishes she spent her day, what she wishes her day would mean for the day after, and what she wants that day to mean.

Then there is that next step I will always promote: the part where some smart person, some creative imagineer, puts forward an idea about some other, new, more fulfilling day, presented in an undeniably true, deeply affecting way.

So, not just novelistic, but theatrical. That’s the sweet spot. Might be helpful to discard the veneer of science and focus on the performance and persuasion. Also. might be more fun.

When you’re an account planner, this is the inevitable follow-up question to the essential, “So, what do you do?”

As a tag for the role played, it’s remarkably inadequate. If planning modifies account, then it sounds like an account management role. It conjures up media planning for some who work in agencies but don’t have planning. Nothing about the tag suggests creativity. It only barely suggests strategy. And by placing ‘account’ at the heart of the tag, it suggests a role that is solely focused on the client.

Jennifer Morozowich posted this provocation on “The Future of Planning” on the Canadian Marketing Blog. She makes the argument that all the splintered and specialized sparks the industry casts off as it tries to weld together the old and the new, is counter-productive at worst and unnecessary at best. A good planner is a good planner, or as Faris Yakob remarked, there “ain’t no flavors.”

What she thinks a good planner is, I imagine, coincides with what she thinks planning is all about:

Good planners have the ability to bridge together their understanding of the consumer and how they relate to the client’s brand and visa versa.

True, true.

“Do you know what the role of account planning is?”

I worked for a planner at Chiat who asked me that question once. I babbled on about establishing the strategic vision for a campaign, advocating for consumers, and so on. She smiled at me, somewhat condescendingly, and said, “It’s to ensure that the work we produce is effective.”

Effectiveness, now that’s sexy. She’s not wrong; she was probably writing case studies and EFFIE submissions. The job of the planner, as she saw it, is to provide some conduit between what the client’s business objectives are, what the consumer’s desires are, and the creative idea that will guide those two forces toward each other, in a way that we can measure.

She saw this as a highly strategic role; some firms in fact call planners ‘brand strategists.’ This gets closer to the actual job, especially as it has been imagined and shaped over the past 50 years. Many firms root planning in ‘information’ as Stanley Pollitt and Stephen King did (as quoted in Morozowich’s post):

“The account planner is that member of the agency’s team who is the expert, through background, training, experience, and attitudes, at working with information and getting it used – not just marketing research but all the information available to help solve a client’s advertising problems.” – Stanley Pollitt

Having worked in market research, I understand why agencies require ‘proof’ of a good idea. Instincts, which are honed through experience and expertise and attitudes can be a tough sell when millions of widgets and hundreds of millions of dollars are on the line. So planners often must carry credentials that relate to their familiarity with different research methodologies, and their comfort levels with reading data tabs and comprehending statistical regression analysis – those hallmarks of intellectual rigor.

In the research role, I often felt duty-bound to reflect only that which we ‘heard’ in the research, and as a qualitative specialist, to hedge: of course what we believe we learned and what we believe that means is still conjecture, the sample size is not projectable. We’ll need a survey to get real numbers. As a planner, a good hunch could be killed quickly by a standard research design. Research does a good job of illuminating how things are; the person using the results of that research must be trusted to imagine how things will be. And that needs expertise and experience and attitudes, yes; but that’s not all it needs.

I knew I’d get to Mad Men eventually.

In the 4th episode of this season of Mad Men (season 4), titled “The Rejected“, Faye does a focus group with the young, single secretaries about beauty. Faye’s got all the tricks for moderating – dress well, but neutrally; be innocuous; be self-deprecating; offer them food; tell them something that seems personal; and so on. These are tricks for setting the tone and fostering comfort and (we all hope) candor.

But Faye glides right past important bits as though they weren’t there, or sees them through very conventional lenses. The first woman to reply speaks of her national/ethnic origins, her mother’s perfect skin, the routine she uses: simple – just warm enough water, and patting her skin with her fingterips. She mildly protests that despite not using soap, her mother isn’t dirty. And she implies that this is her routine, though she never describes the routine as belonging to her. For her, beauty routines are the domain of this perfect creature, her mother, and are closely tied in with culture and class. But that routine is where her mother is entirely tuned in with herself, looking at her reflection, touching her face, caring for herself in a moment that belongs to her (even if there was a small girl who once watched from the doorway). This routine, as used by the secretary, is described in a quiet voice, with a slow tempo; she blushes a little, and bows her head slightly, and smiles broadly. This is something sacred – her mother’s beauty, this private moment, were and are still awe-inspiring to her. Here we have one archetype to begin to draw.

Then the next secretary, Dotty, speaks about using a night creme at her vanity. There is a ritual here, too, that is for her something like play-acting. She describes ‘playing house’ with her boyfriend and him laughing at her for it. Faye lets this moment elide as the embittered girl next to her takes the conversation down an inevitable route: “You shouldn’t do things for them. They don’t appreciate it.”

Dotty describes their subsequent break-up, “I don’t know what he noticed… but, it wasn’t me… I guess.” The play-acting evaporated into reality. Dressing up like your beautiful mother, or a glamorous actress, or mimicking daytime soap opera starlets is fun; but it doesn’t define who you are, or what makes you special. Faye could have grappled with the physical experience of caring for your skin (e.g., your beauty) and how you feel about yourself, versus how others see you and what your beauty means to them. Dotty wanted to be loved, sure – but she wanted to be seen by a man who liked what he saw. Then Don’s secretary, Allison, takes it from there, noting that “It’s worse when they notice, sometimes.”

And down we go into the tears and commiserating that all single women in New York are said to be familiar with.

Faye predictably concludes that these girls just want to be married; link Pond’s with matrimony, she advises. She also decides to kill Peggy’s hypothesis, that the routine itself is physically satisfying (oh Peggy, that great hedonist!). Don, rightly, sneers at her, “Hello, 1925.”

He’s found the problem – Faye was looking for what was expected, she was able to identify and identify with the notion that “single girls want to be married women”… and then let the conversation end there.

But maybe there was something else, something about letting mascara and lipstick be for him, but letting Pond’s be for me; or about taking the time to care for yourself; or about confidence and youthfulness; or about stolen moments of beauty. Don rightly pushed back and decided to lead rather than follow… but then there’s the matter of what the report will say…

Maybe instead of what it is, we should ask what it could be

The core ‘product’ of the planning department was traditionally the creative brief. This is a document that should give the creative team all the information they need to develop a campaign. But pat data is not enough, the document needs to inspire.

I used to write ads, and would shake my head (rattle my brains, more like) when I saw a brief that outlined the target as “25-34, single, college educated women with $55k+HHI, living in A & B counties”. I might be able to buy media space for this target, but I can’t single out one woman and write to her based on this. I need to conjure up a woman, the woman, what her life is like, what she loves and hates, what her hopes and dreams are, how she sees herself, how she wants to be seen (of course, this should be tailored to the category or brand). And then I need to know what you want me to do. What they currently think and what we want them to think, that’s a start. Wieden’s planners used to use “The Exciting Possibility” as the springboard from strategy to creative – the face that would launch 1000 ships, to carry on all this beauty crap.

So we have a slightly different role here, one that the word ‘account’ so often seems to contradict. This is the role of the creative muse. The planner serves as the Patti Boyd or Pamela Des Barres to the creative teams’ various interpretations of rock gods. Let accounts advocate for the client – we all know who pays the bills – while we, over here, create a communal space between consumer desires, client objectives and something else… ideas.

I sometimes imagine that the best planners would be Method. They would live as the target does, speak like the target, spend time with the target, befriend the target, sleep with the target (cue, “Common People” by Pulp). They would be the target incarnate, guiding the creative team along a meditation on what would inspire them, seduce them, convince them, lure them.

Of course, it can’t always be that – the planner must pivot in this role, playing muse to both client and creatives, inspiring them to think about their business issues, the world in which we live, the trends impacting our audience and business, and the lives and aspirations of our audience in fresh ways. Done artfully, the ideal planner sets up the creative team to develop insightful, creative, break-through work, and equally sets up the client to expect and embrace it.

But as agencies scramble to solidify client relationships, move ‘upstream’ as ‘partners’ in the business, and to be quite simply taken seriously as the experts on consumers and brands that they are, I find planners are cleaving ever closer to the client, aspiring to be ‘problem-solvers’ and business partners and consultants… But while they court clients and read data tabs and steep themselves in consumer and media and technology trends, they risk neglecting the importance – sometimes even the transcendence – of great ideas artfully executed.

So yeah, digital planner, brand planner, communications planner, whatever. There ain’t no flavors. But sometimes, I feel like there ain’t much ‘flavor’ at all.

via scienceblogs.com

In the spirit and style of any self-respecting talks-to-herself-looney, I thought I’d go ahead and try to answer my own question.  How do you tell a Big Truth?  A truth that requires you to stop believing a whole lot of other things in order to believe this new replacement thing…

A few possible tactics spring to mind:

Tell a Lot of Little Truths

This is the backbone of any marketing campaign that relies on ‘pillars’ or thinks of itself as ‘educational’ – we’ll tell you about these things that we think are really important about our brand and product, and in the end you will be willing to drop everything in favor of us.

Sometimes, I suppose, that works.  When marketers attempt to educate you about the product, they are trusting in the notion that an ‘educated’ consumer is, first, something people want to be, and second, a quality that runs in their favor.  In my cervical cancer vaccine example from a couple of days ago, maybe this means backing up and spreading a few different messages:

• Eureka! We discovered something amazing! A virus causes a kind of cancer! It’s not about heredity or diet, it’s about a virus!
• You know, this virus is really common, and there are lots of kinds of it.  That wart you had frozen off your finger last year?  Same kind of virus as what we’re talking about here, only this version causes cancer… weird/kinda scary, right?
• Having a strong immune system helps some people suppress this virus on their own; but you take vitamins to keep up your immune system, right?  You get your vaccinations as a kid to help your immune system fight off chicken pox and things like that, right? Same idea.
• An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Get your kids inoculated now, then breathe easy.
• Sex is intensely personal, private, and it’s a big deal.  It shouldn’t be entered into lightly – but it shouldn’t be inherently dangerous, either.  Let’s make it a little safer, so when our kids finally do become sexually active adults, they aren’t at unnecessary risk.
• More people are diagnosed with cervical cancer each year than you think – and while regular screenings will catch early signs of the disease, they don’t prevent cancer.  This vaccine prevents cancer.
• Caught early, this kind of cancer is treatable – but a lot of the time it isn’t caught early enough.  Complications of treatment for cervical cancer run from fertility/pregnancy complications to hysterectomy to death. It’s serious.
• And so on…

The problem with an ‘educated’ consumer is that there is so much information available, and so much of it is conflicting, that a consumer who tries to educate herself about a particular product may find herself even  more confused.  Confusion, I would argue, is the worst experience a person can have cognitively.  Confusion leads to frustration, skepticism, mistrust.  Confused people don’t understand why they are confused – we tend to believe that everything should be understandable, clear, simple.  When something is complicated, contradictory, or controversial, people keep it at arm’s length.  Educated consumers take one of two paths – endless ‘research’ in which they take in all the he-said/she-said without a way of judging which side is right, or sitting out the debate until an authority can weigh in.

Don’t Explain

This is related to two things I spend a lot of time thinking about: prototyping and iterating.  People do better with a prototype than with a concept.  Put the thing in their hands, implement the program, install the device, require the vaccine, launch the site/campaign/app/etc.  The implementation doesn’t have to be 100% perfect, but the product has to work.

In the case of the vaccine, the governor of Texas skipped the parental hand-wringing by mandating it for school-age girls.  It was highly controversial, parents were outraged, doctors rushed to get adequate supplies, and so on.  But it temporarily took the decision out of their hands and placed it into the government’s.  The state already mandates other childhood vaccinations, and the governor felt strongly that the high incidence of HPV infection and cervical cancer diagnoses in Texas constituted a public health interest in mandating the vaccine.  However, in the end, the state legislature overrode this executive order, stalling mandatory vaccination until 2011. Most states managed to kill or stall implementation of a mandatary vaccination scheme; even those states with opt-out provisions still find their bills lost in committee.

In the case of electric vehicles, the fact that federal dollars are available for pilot programs in providing charging stations and other incentives for driving electric vehicles, that many of the major manufacturers are going ahead with development of EVs and plug-in hybrids, and that all of this is happening nowish, all combined to leave people feeling, frankly, resigned to the new reality.  It felt like it was out of their hands, and therefore was all perfectly acceptable; maybe there would be some inconveniences, maybe they’d be annoyed, maybe things wouldn’t be perfect – but since it’s not up to them, they might as well just go along.

People do a pretty good job of adapting to change once it’s here, no matter how much time and effort they spend resisting the change.

Manage Expectations

I have an idea for a mobile app.  I like the idea, a lot of people I’ve spoken to like the idea, and now I just need to figure out how to implement it.  But – there are some people who don’t love this idea. Every once in awhile I encounter someone who doesn’t think it’s fantastic, and while this bruises my fragile little ego, the bigger lesson I take from it is that I’m not doing a good job of helping them picture what the app will be like.  I tell them what it does and what it’s for, but they can’t picture it – they can’t see it in their minds, imagine themselves or their friends using it, create an imaginary world in their minds in which this thing exists.

In my previous roles using a lot of qualitative research to help clients, I’ve seen this phenomenon frequently.  Some people are really good at taking the kernel of an idea and running with it – imagining the universe in which this idea is fully implemented, in which they use it and like it, or in which other people use it and like it.  And some people struggle with this exercise – they simply can’t imagine what it would be like.  They aren’t on board with filling the gaps for you, the inventor or the creative director or marketer.  They need someone to draw them a picture.

I wasn’t convinced about the iPad, the notion of a tablet computer, an oversized iPhone, until I saw this image:

That posture, sitting in a partial reclining position, feet just a bit up, reading the paper, and doing everything through gestures – that was enough.  I didn’t need the technology – I needed that posture.  I needed to sit like that and do that stuff.  I could already do that stuff, I just couldn’t do that stuff while sitting like that.  Am I making myself clear?  It wasn’t about the object, it was about me.  I could imagine myself sitting on a couch with that object, doing that stuff, in a comfortable position – and this was, for me, revolutionary.

It’s similar to why I bought my Kindle – check out this image:

Reading books on a digital device? Yeah, okay, big deal. But reading books on a digital device without any glare?  Sitting on the beach reading books on a digital device?  Now you’re talking.  In fact, this is my biggest peeve when it comes to the iPad – the glare on that screen when I’m in the park can be almost painful.  But this image once again was less about the device and more about me – I could imagine myself doing exactly what she’s doing, and the benefit (no glare) was compelling.

Helping people imagine what their life will look like, how they will move through the world, which chair they’ll sit on and whether they can wear sunglasses in this new world are incredibly important aspects of helping people get comfortable with any new Truth.  I suspect it’s just as important for helping people prepare themselves for a Big Truth.

And this, I suppose, is why product demonstrations and testimonials will never really go out of style – they are effective means of helping us imagine ourselves in the universe of that brand or product, in a world where this new Truth is accepted.  Marketers can help here in establishing and managing expectations, in making the abstract concrete, accessible.

…

What else?  What other modes can we employ in helping people put aside old ideas in order to adopt new ones?

[note: posted this elsewhere, too. trying to get things consolidated, and not lose stuff in the process.]

First a link – I stole it from Noah Brier, but here it is anyway – on the phrase “that’s executional.” One of my other agency favorites is, “Well, you’re not the target market.” But that’s a post for another day. Anyway – seems to me that the thinking on the other end of this link makes part of the case about why the planning and creative processes should be ‘collapsed.’ More on that later, too.

[Note: I posted this elsewhere awhile ago. Since then I've thought a little more about it...]

Much has been made of the specialness of brands that are adored, desired, and truly loved by consumers since Lovemarks was published. Only a few consistently come to mind, and you can see how they play out in the brand battles at brandtags.net. Sometimes it seems like there are so few true ‘brands’ that you can count them on both hands: Adidas, Apple, BMW, Coke, Ferrari, Google, Lego, Nike, Pixar, YouTube. They stand for something, they have meaning, they evoke imagery and feeling and spirit. They are, in other words, lovable.

But for many years now we’ve been convinced that anything with a trademark or a .com or a business card can be a brand. It isn’t true. Not everything – or everyone – is a brand. Sometimes they are just people, companies, products, services.

A friend and former colleague told me about a client who wanted to make a button on one of their remote controls a brand. A component piece of a component piece of a utility service – made into a brand. I’ve had clients who want the silhouette Apple iconography – now. I’ve had others muse that if they just had the Intel chimes, they’d stick in people’s heads longer. They’d completely forgotten about the work those companies had to do to earn the right – and the privilege – of being so recognizable. We had to have “1000 songs in your pocket” and “Rip. Mix. Burn.” in order to get to the iconic iPod earbud cords. We had to to see stickers on every PC tower and see the dancing technicolor ‘bunnysuits’ and get excited about the Pentium (remember that?) to give Intel credit for that sound.

And as we know, love fades. Brands that once deserved, even demanded our love, have grown distant, tiresome, old. Some brands have deserted us for younger consumers. Others stopped bringing us flowers, thinking we’d settle for something a little less. Many make us work harder to get their attention and their affection. You see, the problem for years was that marketing managers, companies believed it was their right to demand our love. They believed if they were loud enough, repetitive enough, big enough, we’d all adore them.

Over the last decade – the one just ended – many marketing managers concluded that the brave new world was upon us; that the monologue had been supplanted by a dialogue. That was the nice way of putting it – what many really thought was that they’d opened up the doors to all the riff-raff and found themselves deafened by the cacophony of consumer voices. Control of the brand was threatened by this transparency, by all this commenting and linking and reviewing and forwarding and tweeting.

But a new age is upon us – everyone’s going digital, everyone is, in the parlance of The ARF, “listening” – or in the framework of Henry Jenkins, fostering participatory culture. Yet even this winds up as a one way street. Many agencies are interpreting digital solely as online direct response marketing – and leaving creativity, demand creation, brand building in the dust. Many researchers and brand managers interpret listening as eavesdropping, getting consumers to do the work for you. It reminds me of how Tom Sawyer pulled a con – I’ll let you paint my fence if you’ll give me your apple. Who’s getting the better deal? As it turns out, no one.

Positioning and brand strategy have become empty vessels for a lot of companies. Getting people to love you is the result, not the strategy. What I’m interested in and passionate about is figuring out: what do you have to offer that makes you lovable? What can you offer people that shows them you care?  And how do you prove it?  When I talk to clients, we’ll talk about your brand, and your consumer – but we’ll have to talk about it in a slightly different way. We’ll need to reckon with your present and your past, but we must face the future.

If we don’t talk about who you really are as defined by what you do, what you make, how you present yourself – in other words, your products, services, employees, distribution methods, design, pricing and service – we’re only ever talking about window dressing. If we don’t align who you are with how you want people to feel about you – we’re likely to make products and messages that don’t break through and don’t stick.

And if we don’t keep our eyes open to the possibilities – to the people who do, could, and should love you – then we risk your business. To get love, you have to give it – all the relationship advice in the world can be boiled down to that truth. The way companies give love is simple: respect the people you want to sell things to, and make things they would want to buy. The hard part (read: the really fun part) is figuring out how to get there.

You’re definitely going to see this as a key theme to what I hope to explore here – that in the quest to get ahead, most companies and brands find themselves mired in cultures and processes that actually can only truly accomplish keeping up.  And keeping up is what they can do when the engine is firing on all cylinders.

As part of their quest to keep up, most companies and brands spend significant resources on ‘keeping their finger on the pulse’ of their consumer.  This is usually done with only the best of intentions, and with a goal of responsiveness.  But responsiveness is taxing and time-consuming.  What trends do you watch?  Which consumers do you track?  How do you know what’s important to respond to and what is not?  It’s classic Stephen J. Covey stuff – what is important, and what is urgent?

For many brands this results in what I think of as chasing consumers, following them around.  A lot of fads in strategy, planning, research and brand management are reinterpretations of ‘responsiveness.’  The strongest brands – and we all know who they are – live and breathe the worlds their best, most influential, most discerning customers experience, they interpret the signs and signifiers of that world, and they think deeply about how that leads their product development and how it leads the consumer to the brand or product.

In other words, they anticipate problems and solve them; they anticipate changes and adapt to them; they, simply, make good things and treat people with respect.

My friend and former colleague Susan Coghill (now of The Campaign Palace in Sydney) noted this WARC article about Coca-Cola’s quest to get ahead of the curve and to ‘shape change.’

“It’s not about following the change as quickly as possible – that’s being reactive. It is about helping your company to shape change.”

In order to achieve this goal, consumer insights specialists will need to radically rethink their traditional techniques, which typically emphasise understanding previous or present behaviour.

“We spend 80% of time on ‘rear-view’ research – brand-health tracking, validation, and risk-avoidance research,” Sthanunathan stated.

“On top of that, we spend 80% of our remaining time debating report cards. And, whether it’s good data or not, it’s all about explaining the past.”

“No company has become great by using the past to predict the future. Companies become great by dreaming of the future and then taking the company there.”

Definitely worth a read-through – but more importantly, worth a meaningful debate about what it will mean, day-to-day for brands and companies.  Time to get beyond whether to do things differently and start figuring out how.  And then of course, you have to commit to it.  But that’s a post for another day.

I’m looking at my desktop.  I have 8 short stories I’m supposed to read and give comments on.  I have a short story to revise, another to finish, and about 6 good starts to short stories that I am tempted to work on instead of the one I need to finish.  And there’s always the temptation to start something entirely new based on a fragment of conversations overheard at brunch.

I am looking at my coffee table.  I have a stack – nearly a foot high – of magazines I want to read.  1/3 of the stack are issues of Vogue that I want to flip through in search of hairstyle and clothing inspiration (I’m planning yet another makeover).  The other 2/3s are miscellaneous mags that have articles I want to get to… eventually.

I am looking at the whiteboard in my home office.  It has four columns of ideas for projects, and lists of people and tasks under each one of them.  Then there are the post-it notes and the clipboards.

I know I’m not alone here – people who love to make stuff have no shortage of stuff they want to make.  Some get only as far as the sketches – books and books full of sketches, drafts, schematics, flow charts.  Others actually get started on prototyping but don’t get through the revision process.  Folks like Seth Godin remind us that the measure of success is ‘shipping.’

So this article in GOOD has an interesting couple of ideas on how to overcome the gorging on ideas that some of us suffer from.  One idea I really was drawn to is the idea of the “sober monitor” – someone who isn’t high on ideas and can help you see the ideas worth sticking to and to be skeptical of the half-baked or far-fetched.

There are some other really useful ideas here – and I bolded the ones I like best…

For his part, Karnjanaprakorn has made some major improvements. He divided up his projects with an action-oriented partner, and he has committed himself to saying no to the majority of new opportunities and ideas that come up. He explains, “When your purpose and mission in life is to make the world a better place, it’s really easy to get distracted and overbook yourself. You’ll paralyze yourself and end up doing no good.” Karnjanaprakorn has also taken some practical steps to increase his focus and productivity. For starters, he has completely cut out meetings during the day that have no intended outcome. When people contact him out of the blue—or when a meeting doesn’t have a clear agenda—he politely declines. The problem, as Karnjanaprakorn describes it, is that everybody, especially in the world of social innovation, loves to talk about changing the world. “The problem for me is that I get excited about a lot of these ideas and it gets me sidetracked,” he says.

The action-oriented partner is the thing I’ve recently started using a lot more.  It helps that I’ve met some amazing people who are interested in collaborating; and that I have a few old friends who have always been incredibly supportive (to the extremes of: giving me places to live, finding me jobs, introducing me to cool ideas and new fabulous people).

The second one seems trivial by comparison but is a big problem for me.  Like a lot of people in the strategy/planning business, I start out the week with a few conference calls and meetings already on my calendar, and then I watch the week fill up with them.  I’ve started pushing back on meeting requests using a tip from Tim Ferriss’s 4-Hour Workweek.  I ask people for a quick agenda, “so I can be prepared.”  Then I can cut down the meeting from 2 hours to 10 by answering the questions that can be dealt with in e-mail.  Often it means not bothering about a phone call at all.

But it’s too easy to blame all those external distractions when the real problem is addiction to new ideas.  We need air traffic controllers and co-pilots to help us get the right ones off the ground.