NORTHERN PLANNER

If you haven’t read Mark Earl’s Herd yet, you should. It’s about time someone wrote a planning-ish book that argued for a new approach that was more than a long creds document.

And being a geek, I found the first bit fascinating. He uses science to argue that humans are social creatures buy nature, individualism is just another smokescreen. We con ourselves (in the west that is) into thinking we’re more different than we really are. Of course this has implications for marketers, but I want to talk about how it makes us useless at learning from others.

Human beings are doomed to repeat the mistakes they, and other people, have made time and time again. We never learn from our own folly, thanks to our memory being too selective – and this sense of ‘I’ rather than ‘We’.

Our memories do not tell us the truth.  And other people’s recollection is just as post-rationalised. There’s only one option.

This applies to research as well…….You only get a reliable account from people GOING THROUGH THE EXPERIENCE – but guess what? We won’t listen to that advice. We’re so sure we must be different to everyone else, we can’t bring ourselves to believe our experience will be the same as theirs.

It’s true to say that everyone is an original of the species. Everyone’s DNA is about 0.1% unique. But that also means we’re 99.9% alike. However much you try and convince yourself, you’re really not that special!