The Future of Good Planning is In Finding The Joy

Through this series of articles and the industry in general, there’s been a lot of discussion around the merits and dangers of AI, and the tools we use as strategists. In relation to the future of planning, I’m sure that discourse will motor on for the foreseeable. But irrespective of the tools we choose to use, I think the most interesting stuff in the future, and our success in it, will come from finding new ways of looking.

I say that with hope, because it’s what I enjoy most about my job and our industry as a whole.

Beyond our obvious duty to our clients to provide interesting perspectives on everything from business problems to behavioural patterns, I think we have a duty to ourselves to enjoy what we do. And I, like I suspect all of you, crave the buzz of new ideas, the leaps, and new ways of seeing things – those points when the penny drops, patterns emerge and we are able to appreciate something with fresh eyes. To quote a colleague far more poetic than me, “it feels like the sun’s come out”. What’s equally gratifying is when our work lights up other people’s faces. Quite simply, it’s a rush.

Setting aside my craving for warm and fuzzy neuro-chemicals, I strongly believe that finding joy in what we do isn’t just a luxury, but essential to the future of good planning. If we take a look beyond our industry, an array of luminaries from the arts and sciences have long championed play as essential to productive thinking, innovation, and creativity.

But more than just optimistic theory, there’s a growing body of empirical evidence which supports the idea that pleasure and 'combinational play' tangibly improve our cognitive flexibility, empathy, and problem-solving abilities. To me, that’s a heady cocktail of great planning skills.

So, I hope that as an industry and as a discipline we continue to embrace new ways of doing and seeing things.

I hope we continue to foster a culture that actively breeds serendipity; a culture that’s fuelled by gloriously left-field questions, diverse inputs and an appreciation of adjacent possibilities. And to round off roughly where I began, I think our success in the future will come from finding new ways of looking and taking great pleasure in doing so. In fact, I’d go so far to say that it’s the lifeblood of our industry.

Ben Jaffé is the CSO at FCB London.