NORTHERN PLANNER

Someone once told me that everyone at Microsoft in Seattle used to be ace at crisply describing their what they were working on  - in about 30 seconds. 

Reason was simple.

The office only had two floors, consequently, the lift took about 30 seconds at most. 

Bill Gates was socially inept and was even worse than the rest of us at lift small talk.

So he only said one thing. "What are you working on". 

Everybody got extremely good at distilling their current project down to its bare essentials. 

Something planning folk should practise more. 

What is the one thing you're presentation is really about?

What is the core jumping off point of your brief?

If you can't desribe it in a few words, there are holes in it.

I don't mean leaving out complexity, intelligence or anything like that.

But if you can't compress stuff down, like chinese whispers, the more it gets passed on an talked about, the more it will change.

Think about your client presenting on to the board.

Think about the creatives discussing the brief.

Think about partner agencies. 

That's a lot of potential for stuff to get fiddled with. 

Like an machine with lots of parts, the more knobs and whistles you add, the more opportunties for it to break.