NORTHERN PLANNER

A couple of years ago Mum and Dad realised a long held dream and retired to St Ives, Cornwall. While it’s not always easy having them 400 miles way, I couldn’t be happier for them. I do miss them but everyday they wake up in a dream. It’s lovely for them.

Having a free holiday home overlooking the beach isn’t bad for me and Mrs NP either..

This is Matt Biondi. One the all time swimming legends.

His record speaks for itself – 11 Olympic medals – 8 golds, 2 silver and 1 bronze. The most ever won by an athlete. He was only the second person to win 7 medals at one games too (1988). His seven golds at the 1986 world championships in Madrid was a record as well. He owned his best event, 100 freestyle and at one point he had the ten fastest times ever. He was invincible.

He was the definitive swimmer when I was competing. I’ve admired Ian Thorpe and Michael Phelps since, but Biondi was in my era and he was great.

I really loved his freestyle stroke. He was a powerhouse – absolutely textbook, he didn’t even look like he was trying. There was little foaming water around him, he just glided along with this perfect execution of simplicity. But that’s not as basic as it sounds. To have a stroke like that needs practise of course, but that’s nothing without feel. And he had a feel for the water like a pianist has for the keys. You can teach techinique, but feel is something you either have or you don’t. Other freestylers bludgeon their way forward, he caressed the pool. It was like moonwalking underwater.

He loved competing. When it came to the big events he nearly always delivered. "Enjoy the moment and quit worrying about winning or losing", he said once. He didn’t mean ‘it’s the taking part that counts’ trust me. It was just that he didn’t like beating others as much as beating himself.

He wanted to do his best and never stop moving forward. Of course he was so far out in front he had no one else to COMPETE WITH! But what he was trying to say was that if you concentrate on the moment, how you’re feeling, what YOU’RE going to do, what the other people do is irrelevant.

So while he was one of the great competitors, he was also one of the nicest. I met him once. He was only putting a medal around my neck, but he took the time to have a quick chat with me and the other boys. He was genuinely interested. He talked to us pretty much about the stuff above and I never forgot it.

That’s how I stumble through big moments. I don’t worry about what other people might be doing to beat me, I focus on what I’ve done to get here and what I can do to be better than I was last time. If someone is better in the end, well tough. If I’ve done my best and it’s better than last time, who can ask for more?

They say you should never meet you’re heroes, but Biondi was an exception for me. He showed grace in the pool, and out of it.

Oh, and in his first race his swimsuit came off during his dive. Not everyone starts well…

This is Ernest Rutherford, the father of nuclear physics.

I like him because I’m a bit of science geek. I also admire the way he shows logic as nothing without ideas. At its best, cience can be beautiful.

It can surprise you, throw things up at you that you might not expect. You have to be ready for them so you can sieze the chance to move things forward – and suddenly everything you know is wrong. Time to think around some corners.

Once upon a time, he was shooting alpha particles through gold foil. Everthing they thought they knew about atoms should have meant that they all came out the other side – but they didn’t.

Every now and again, something pushed some back. This was totally perplexing since conventional wisdom on atoms said this wasn’t possible. It took a piece of pure, unadulterated genius thinking to make the leap that atoms must have a concentrated nucleus. It was herecy, but it had to be true.

He wasn’t looking for it, but he’d discovered the foundation of modern physics. A wonderful marriage of observation and creative thought.

And that’s why great science inspires me as planner. You can’t avoid doing hard work – you have to do the rigour bit, there are no short cuts. But hard work isn’t enough. You need an open mind, you need to be able to look at things in a slightly different way. That’s planning to me.

I wanted to be good at science, but I couldn’t do the maths.  I still like solving puzzles though. That’s another reason I like what I do, sometimes in my own small way, I get to feel a little bit like Rutherford probably did.

By the way I’m off out to Leicester today. I’m having a meeting less than a mile from my old University (not the poly. I’ll be seeing the students malingering about, and no doubt I will feel very, very old.

When I was at school, I was quite good at art. But I don’t paint now, since a teacher put me off and that was that. Sad but true.

When I did draw and paint, I was never happy. It was never quite good enough, I could never get it quite right and most of my work ended up in the bin. I’m a bit like that with most things and funilly enough I think it’s made me better at my job.

I think planning can be beautiful. Great thinking can be like magic. When you know it’s not just about everything fitting, you’ve created something that’s new and interesting it can feel like alchemy. That doesn’t come from falling in love with the first thoughts that come to you. It comes from never being happy with what you’ve got and being very, very hard on yourself. It’s not ego really. It’s the joy of doing something well, not ticking boxes.

And that’s what’s great about planning. You can’t stay happy for long, it just won’t stand still. Not just the discipline itself, but the way the next project won’t be like the last.  You’ll can never say you know it all since nothing stays the same forever. Good that.

One thing I was thinking about while was away was doing what you do as well as you possibly can.

I think I’m doing a talk on swimming at The Interesting conference, and while I may ask for help later, I already know it will be about the joy of doing something well.

So what has this to do with planning? Well…I love this little corner of the web. I love all those ideas, and being able to discuss it with so many people. I love being able to rub shoulders with those far more talented than I.

But learning about the latest thinking isn’t enough to make you a great planner in my opinion. It keeps you fresh, gives something something tougher to chew of course, but it doesn’t help you with the basics, with the REAL day job, which is far less theory and far more work and rigour.

It’s easy to find a blog that rejects brand frameworks, but it’s a lot harder to find one that explains what they are. And in the real world, unfortunately, many clients still want stuff like this. It may be trendy to avoid research these days, but it’s still a big part of planning and can be bloody useful if it’s done well. I still think the best place to start with stuff like this is Truth Lies and Advertising. Aaaaanyway….

I was doing some groups with Stu the other week. We had some creative routes we thought we’re pretty bang on and wanted to check. All the ideas bombed. Totally. Quite a few researchers I’ve come accross would have stopped there. We didn’t. We knew there was something we weren’t getting. We probed, we chatted, we got them to draw, we all worked together. And at the end, we got a proper insight, the kind of stuff that seems so obvious when you have it. All from a group that didn’t like the creative work.

And it felt good (and yes it was only a focus group – not the most fashionable thing to do)just like the beautiful simplicity of frontcrawl, or the perfect marriage of timing and power that’s the tennis serve . Not just going through motions, working hard on the basics.

Just like the work Stu developed as a result. Not an ad really, a piece of commercial film you want to watch again. Something people will actually enjoy seeing. You can tell that people liked making this,not just making a quid. You can see Stu got the best out of everyone. There is a single second that took half a day to shoot. It shows. No one will notice, but that’s the point. Real craft, putting everything you’ve got into making something great. Loving to do something well. Not stopping ’till you’re happy.

That’s what excites me about what I do. Not just the clever theory, but rather the sheer beauty in proper rigour, the unexpected thrills from the simplest of tasks done well. It’s the same as why I love swimming (I’m better at swimming though) and you don’t have to work at a fashionable or large agency, with the correct post code to do it.  These things reminded me of that. Thought you might like to know.