NORTHERN PLANNER

You may or may not remember Bruce Wayne's Dad telling him the reason we fall down is so we can learn to pick ourselves up.

 

Or, in My Rules..Toughen the Hell Up.

In this industry, you'll get told no more than yes. You'll get all sorts of knock backs.

A lot of the time it won't be fair. That's because there is not such thing as THE right thing to do, there is no such thing as an unarguable logic. There are only half truths in research, patterns in data and people's world view.

You'll get made redundant probably. People will get promoted above you.

Three options….

Give up and do something else.

Pick yourself up, ignore everyone and follow your own challenging path.

Pick yourself and forensically understand what went wrong so it never happens again. Don't pretend when it goes well it was all perfect either.

Some people get to the top through route two with a great strength of will and even more luck. But they fizzle out, it's knackering fighting everyone all the time.

Most of the people who get somewhere follow path three. They know stuff wasn't fair, but they learn they could have manipulated events and people to get another result (for example, creatives will always ignore the brief and try and do the opposite, there's a lot to be said for getting them to think of stuff for themselves).

They also learn to discern when actually, it was totally fair and they were not up to scratch. This always the hardest, it's much easier to blame everything but your own approach, sub-standard work or sometimes even lack of talent.

 Believe me I know, I was told more than once I would never cut it as a great account man and chose to ignore the advice, failing twice before I realised I should be a planner. It was easier to get angry than to get real.

Anyway, you end up with two kinds of successful agency folk.

The first is the incredible operator who can read people and situations and always knows what buttons to push and what not to. They know they are not the best at the craft skills  but manage to surround themselves with great people, get the best out of them and recognise their contributions. They're usually fully aware they're not the best and try to make the most of themselves.

The second is the craftsperson who has chipped away at the big rock of their talent, learning from each project, what worked, what didn't, what got great things to happen and what got in the way. Confident of course, they're never arrogant and ever ready to listen to others and bang their own heads against a brick wall to turn good into great. They might be shy, but learn to let their passion for their work shine out and infect others. They usually think they're nowhere near as good as they really are, so always end up doing great stuff because they try harder….and never look like a show off either.

Some bastards are combination of both.

One thing both have in common is that they've learned to be resilient, to welcome knock backs and, above all else, never ever lose their cool.

One tip for getting there.

No one, I mean no one, knows what they're doing. Everyone burns inside wondering what on earth they're really doing. This isn't physics, it's not even law where there are rules and truths for everyone to conform to. This job is about influencing people to want things they don't really need – unpredictable human beings.

Throw in the messiness of culture and there are no rules, simply theories that sometimes produce great results but often fail too. It's quite liberating to always sympathise with the individual who is ruining your life at this precise moment, rather than want to eviscerate them, know they're like you too, they haven't got a clue (even if they don't know it sometimes). Think about what's going inside – what is really driving them, what are they afraid of, how has their day been going?

Trust me, I still fail myself with this.

We're all people after all.