The future of planning is ... doing

Barely a day goes by that I don’t think about Janet Mock’s monologue on Blood Orange’s beautifully vulnerable and empowering “jewelry”:

“People try to put us down by saying ‘she’s doing the most… or… he’s way too much…’ but… why would we want to do the least?’”

The future of planning wasn’t my first reaction upon hearing Janet’s words for the first time in 2018... But I do recall how it immediately made me think about who gets to (has the right to?) "do the least", and who feels utterly compelled to "do the most." 

Now this isn’t a dog whistle for hustle culture.

This is a reminder of the power of doing. Perhaps even, a reminder to take pride, and never feel ashamed to do.  

Not the doing of theory, the delegation of tasks, or the direction of thought, but rather, I believe the future of planning is a place where nobody is too senior to do the work. The work work.

To receive the brief. Question the brief. Get to a hypothesis. Do the research. Know the logins. Disprove the hypothesis. Doubt yourself. Present to your internal team as if they’re your highest spending, most senior client. 

You’re never too senior to overthink. Doubt yourself. Write the solution yourself in a word doc. Overwrite it. Rewrite it. Make it slick. Make it shorter. Make it less slick. Make it longer. Doubt yourself. 

To make a short version and a long version in slides. Then go back to your word doc. Get to a different narrative. Have a meltdown. Rewrite the slides. Feel good about it. Doubt yourself. 

To make a word doc version for your account team. Make a word doc version for your chief executive officer. Make a one-pager in Keynote for your chief creative officer. Make a Notes app version for yourself. Go home. Tell your partner about it. Rewrite the insight. Tweak the proposition. Present your thinking to the designers, copywriters and the CX specialists. Get your hands dirty. Work with everyone in lockstep. Win their trust. Write the end line. Propose design solutions. Make them all feel the invisible frequency of care - the frequency of care that enables big creative leaps.

Get in the weeds. Get your hands dirty. Take big leaps and micro leaps. Be a doer. And never ever feel like you’re too senior to author the work. 

Or don’t. 

Choose privilege, theorising at the lectern, nostalgic for delegation, grandstanding on the panel at 42 thousand feet, so high that you blunt the edges that got you this far in the first place, watching on as artificial intelligence and reduced budgets edge closer to your zone of comfort. 

My future of planning is in doing (the most). So I better stop writing about it, and start… you get the point. 

Aaron Harridge, is the head of strategy at McCann London