NORTHERN PLANNER

The sprinter, Michael Johnson, was maybe the best in history over his distance.

His running style looked very wrong, but he didn't change it, it worked for him.

 

John McEnroe's service action was very, very unorthodox.

It happened by accident while he stretched his back to deal with an injury.

At times, it was virtually unplayable. 

 

Wrong is sometimes right.

No actually, that's bollocks.

People will tell you what you do or how you are is wrong. 

Yet if it's you, truly you, it can lead to greatness.

 

It's the same with most things in work and life.

Your voice isn't wrong just because it's unique. 

Where did your voice go though? Did someone take it?

 

It was there once, really it was. 

When you were little and said what you thought, asked questions without fear and played for hours on end. 

It may have been taken by a well meaning parent or teacher who wanted you to be like them, not like you.

It could have been someone at work who wanted to keep you in your place.

It could have been a whole place that made you do everything their way, or destroyed your confidence day by day. 

 

You might spend everyday now,  trying to be someone else's idea of who you should be.

You might make yourself really small because that's what you were made to feel.

You may feel too big and loud and try to tone yourself down.

But the only size that really fits is your size.

 

This matters if you have to present a lot.

If you have persuade others about ideas. 

These days, most of us do. 

Because great presenters really are not made, they are born.

I don't mean the charisma buffoons that say nothing but make it feel 'inspirational'. 

I mean that people respond to people, they respond to people genuinely caring.

They respond to authenticity. 

But most of us keep our selves hidden.

Many of us are hidden from our own selves.

Like Eleanor Rigby, we keep our faces in tge jar by the door. 

 

People smell belief, even more than confidence. 

So great presentations boil down to two things:

Belief in you

Belief in your idea

But you can still get quite far in life by pretending to be something you're not.

Or channelling what others think is right or good. 

Eventually you find it's not only easier to be yourself, it's actually far more successful.

Believe me I've tried both.

I also know it's better to find 'you' as soon as possible, rather than a crisis to force you into it. 

 

Put simply, if you want people to listen to you, listen to yourself. 

 

Now you can say, hang on, this is only presentations.

You're right its not. 

The bests talks and meetings are not about slick powerpoint.

They are about you and what you want to say. 

It's about you. 

 

It's true that when you assume the traits of others, over time they can become your traits.

This is good, this helps, as long this is genuinely who you want to be.

Look at it another way though.

If we all slip on the same mental uniform, we'll all work the same way and end up with the same results.

So when it comes to work, and everyday life, keep fancy dress for parties. 

 

Much of our education system.

Our work places.

Our very British stiff upper lip and emotional illiteracy.

It builds average, sameness, compliance.

It teaches us not to make a fuss.

It doesn't like self expression. 

No wonder we stow away who we really are. 

 

Great companies make us feel something not just buy something..and sell more.

Same goes for presentations.

Nothing is more infectious than enthusiasm and belief. 

 

So, yes, I'm live in the real world, I know you have to conform a lot not get fired.

I know much of your work needs to be ticked.

But never lose that sense of you.

As you get older and more experienced, you still won't have a clue what you are doing, sorry about that.

But you will have more and more freedom to let yourself out.

In meantime, for every project you do, find a way to make it excite you.

Then find a way through peer review.

 

The best scientific break throughs still need layers and layers of compliance and peer review.

That doesn't make them any less important or wonderful.

In was okay in school, many are not. 

For most of high school I had swimming, which wasn't really cool.

But gave me some sort of double life, which was cool to me at least.

But I loved learning, I was into most of the subjects that were taught.

That made me a bit of a nerd. 

It's a strange thing about the UK, but being actively passionate about something is, well, nerdy.

More than that, we hate people who are earnest, who lay themselves bare.

We prefer irony, facetiousness and never saying what we really mean. 

I can tell you this is hard as a teenager.

It's confusing enough without having to hide what you love.

But being different to your peers at that age is terrifying. 

In many ways, it's terrifying as a grown up. 

It's why I'm determined to be honest and show how I feel.

If one person feels more able to as a result, its worth it. 

But the challenge is huge.

Reality TV and YouTubers reinforce the idea you can get rich by doing absolutely nothing of real value. 

If you work in agency, there can be a 'type' that does well. 

The owning the room, handwavey, super-confident type.

There's also the strategy type who follows the rules to the letter, especially the propriety process.

No ever got fired for following the process. 

But look at Musk (love or hate him) look at Jobs, look at Dyson.

These are geeks who had the confidence to passionately think different.

But also the will to do. 

We need to make heroes of people who are prepared to act, rather than sit on their hands.

Not just talk a good game, prove their point.

See it through. 

Dyson wasn't the only one who thought of a bagless vacuum.

He was the only one who had the will to get it to market. 

Jobs was the only one who could be bothered to make an MP3 player that was actually a joy to use.

He didn't invent mobile music, he just tried harder at making it good. 

How many times have you thought, "Is it just me?"

How many times did you keep it to yourself?

How many great ideas have you worked on that died because everyone lost the will to stick with it?

Conventional wisdom is one enemy of course.

Apathy is even bigger. 

I don't think we're short of people with knew ideas.

We're short of people given the space to do something about them.

Or with the will to do it themselves anyway.

Different is okay, but it's useless without do. 

Brand babblers do my head in.

It may sound a bit rich, someone who gets paid to build brands saying this.

Except I don't paid to build brands.

I get paid to help people sell things.

The answer to that is rarely brand stuff. It's dealing with barriers to selling more. 

People don't think about brands that much.

People with brand in their job titles do. 

The brand babblers do my head because they think brands are intangible things that exist in the customers' minds.

They are not.

They are extremely tangible.

Our impressions of people and organisations are made of our most common experiences with them. 

Just like you probably only know me through a series of badly written blog posts.

But the people I work with know me for great tea, too much dry humour and too much lycra.

We all know that our opinion is really governed by experience. 

Amazing food can de destroyed by a crap waiter.

The joy of buying a new bike destroyed by a shop who treats you like an inferior species.

The 5 star hotel experienced ruined by a room that isn't clean.

The e-commerce site that is hateful to navigate.

Your relationship with a client can be obliterated by putting your most junior person on it, after promising the earth.

The most creative thing you ever got signed off can be hateful if its a nightmare to get made. Or if everything is always late. 

It doesn't matter who you are, if you hire people who don't care, they will show it to your customers. 

All the effort put into everything else gets crushed.

So when you recruit someone ask this.

Do they care about what you do?

Even tougher, will they have any reason to?

The first is OK, just don't hire them.

The second is a catastrophe. Fire yourself. 

For me, the really great companies make you feel something, not just buy something. 

Mostly because they have something they want to do.

Usually they want to change something. 

As people, we want to be part of something, we want to belong. 

So we want to part of that change. 

This is where so many challenger type companies tend to go wrong because they criticise the world as it is. 

The best organisations feel human, because they tell us how it could be. 

They strip away the layers or corporate bullshit and lay themselves bare.

Life isn't perfect, especially at the moment.

So celebrating and documenting the real struggle in company's journey.

Or genuinely being part of theirs.

Stands out and gets related to.

Computing that works for creative people, not corporations. 

A beauty brand that wants to stop the beauty industry making you feel bad.

A diesel engine for people people who hate diesels.

A car company for successful people with a work ethic as high as theirs. 

An premium insurance company for people who know you only get out what you put in. 

A strong deodorant that wants to give you a break from having to look strong all the time. 

Just as the greatest heroes in our greatest stories are flawed, their journey is a much about overcoming themselves as any bad guy.  

You could call it a purpose, but that term has been mangled by the PR folks into CSR bollocks. 

Don't believe the self-serving 'trust' data either, it's much simpler. 

In jaded world, we're all a bit numb, we all want things that make us feel more.

No amount of programmatic precision will help with this.

Nor will knowing what a company makes is really good.

In a busy world, brands that make us feel something, sell more.

Because they are in tune with the rhythms of our real lives.

We can't say why they're different, we just feel different about them (hi Byron Sharpe). 

This isn't love, we don't love brands, we love our friends, family, maybe Star Wars.

It's simply getting noticed.

Getting brought without thinking.

The rational facts justify the emotional decision we've already made. 

Because people may block out marketing, they don't block out life.

And when so much if life is pre-programmed these days, feeling something is really powerful.

 

 

When I was working at an agency in Manchester over 10 years ago, I had a marathon month.

(This was an agency that habitually did 12 hours a day anyway. Thankfully things are a little less brutal these days)

Pitching for a supermarket, it mattered. 

Working on one of those demanding showpiece clients everyone wants to work on, that only looks good on the outside.

A series of workshops, the ones that demand hours of prep, dressing the room, timed to perfection, all me. 

It was too much, it was exhausting, I got little help. I was simply told to feel lucky to work there. 

It was the agency where a director said they loved recessions because you could squeeze more out of your people.

You get the picture. 

There was one day I got in at 7am (after a hour's commute) to frantically make sense of a pitch brief.

I finished after midnight sticking reference onto boards for a workshop the day after. 

In at 6 the next day to finish it off. 

When it all ended, I called in sick with man-flu, but it was exhaustion. I was running on fumes. 

Simply crumbled like a Jacobs Cracker. 

Did I do my best work? Are you kidding? I was lucky to simply get everything done.

My boss was more bothered I had an Excel plan for each workshop with each minute accounted for.

The creative director was more interested in the workshop boards looking symmetrical.

The boss also cared more for a brief having a disruptive bit than actually translating business opportunity into creative opportunity.

Things we're, obviously out of balance and I'm glad for everyone this is less common than it used to be.

I'm also determined no one who works with me ever has to go through what I did.

Yet even now it's common to hear senior people talking about 'earning your spurs'. 

Not through excellence. Through sheer brutal hard work. 

What the fuck is that about?

Yes, creativity is not a just a process, it's not predictable and things can get out of control.

Yes, there are late nights sometimes. 

Yes, adrenaline is cheap and hiring more people is expensive. 

But when you decide to look after your team, you are looking after your business. 

You have to make sure the insane times don't become the everyday. 

A culture where people can have hobbies makes the people more interesting. 

And the work.

95% of marketing is crap because it's done by people who only care about marketing. 

A culture where people take holidays and even lunch breaks keeps them fresh. They work less, but they work better. 

A culture than encourages actual fun, rather than away days to make up for the lack of it, makes people do their best work everyday.

I business that looks after its people makes those people want to look after the business.

It means you can trust more people to do their best work while you do yours. 

That means you are less alone.

It's lonely at the top, but with a little more balance at least you're a little less isolated. 

Your team are more creative, more committed and more fun to be around. 

It's too hard not to be fun. 

They everything. You don't stand a Chance

More experienced people. More track record. More money. More tools. 

The famous propriety process. The entertainment budget. 

They never run out paper. Their printers all work. Their coffee budget is bigger than your IT budget. 

Who would be insane enough to take them on?

 

They have everything. They don't stand a chance

More rules. More internal politics. More politics. More shareholders to answer to. More meetings. More committees. More people to kill ideas because they need to have something to say.

More pissed off staff than you. More energy sucked out by outdated ways of working and models. More people wondering why they got out of bed.

More 'that will never work' More 'it's just the way it is'. More 'because I say it is'. 

Every meeting a graveyard of humour, ready to strangle anything vaguely interesting or different.

 

 

There has never been a better time to attack the status quo, because quite frankly we're all in uncharted waters. The best people to succeed in world of uncertainty are the people who don't get paid to keep things as they are. 

So don't give a monkeys about what they have. You have everything. Something you care about. The fire in your belly.

Something you want to change. 

There have been times on my ride home from work, when I just feel like hammering the peddles. Usually after the odd rough day, or odd really good day, I just want to go all out.

And it feels good at first, you feel superhuman, the adrenalin firing the urge to just go.

But adrenalin is myth your brain teaches your body. It doesn't make you into a superhero, it briefly masks the fact you're mortal. So when the initial zeal begins to fade, like the moment the curtain is drawn to reveal the true Wizard of Oz, the real you is revealed again. 

In my case, a 46 year old man with 46 year old legs. I blow up and crawl the rest of the way home. This is why interval training is the smart strategy. 

It's the same with a new relationship that fizzles out after the first jolt of excitement. 

Or a project you start at a million miles an hour not stopping to think, tearing away at your first instincts.

Or the job you take because you hate the current one too much to think straight. 

Because there are two kinds of passion. 

There is kind that's Fire. All heart, the head doesn't get a look in. Like a supernova, it burns really brightly and then fades just as quick. 

Then there is Ice version, it's cool, calm, considered. It lasts a hell of lot longer because both the brain and the emotions are collaborating. Emotions don't call all the shots, you don't do anything too dumb, but the head doesn't rule either, so you don't end up bored. This is much more effective and at getting results, and when you apply it to yourself, you are more likely to find a love that lasts and lasts. 

To succeed, I think you need to learn the trick of understanding and learning the art of Icy Passion. 

Making sure both head and heart are involved in making decisions. You won't last if you do not deeply care, yet without guidance by the head, you'll either burn out or simply commit to the wrong thing. 

It's tough to control your emotions when you're inspired, but nothing worthwhile is ever easy is it?

I'm 46, I help run a business and I'm a parent. Society at large kind of expects me to be strong and look like a know what I'm doing.

No one really knows what they're doing of course, they just get better at dealing with it. 

The strong thing though, I think more of us should be able to take a break from having to man-up all the time and admit when they need a hand, or are just having a bad day. 

The British stiff upper lip is bullshit. It should be okay to vulnerable and talk about how you feel.

So I'm just going to say it. I spend a lot of time alone these days and this is mostly okay, in fact mostly really good, but every now and then, this year, I get lonely. 

Much of this is because in 2021, despite spending much of my life fighting the clock, my timing has been terrible. 

Years of daily struggles in a cold pool, doing repetitions against the merciless timer. The slower you go, the less rest to get before the next rep.

Weeks and months mapped out, building form to coincide with the big races of the year.

Then a career in agencies fighting deadlines, doing your best work within increasingly less time. 

I should be a master of timing, yet the fact remains that in the year of lockdown I became single after years of marriage

Of course, helping run a business in a global crisis is a challenge and I'm happy to confess it's scary at times. I wish more would, I know I'm not alone in that sense.

I am in others. 

Now I share the kids, I don't see then everyday.

Now I'm one, not part of a two, I am alone so for large amounts of the week, and have been during various restrictions on seeing other people. 

For a while, you couldn't really see anyone face to face, then, thankfully, we could actually see real people.

But the most of the usual interactions we have taken for granted were largely removed.

And for those of us who are alone in middle age, many of our friends don't have the time even in normal circumstances. 

Yes, single people in their forties are alone. A lot. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm an introvert. I'm good at being solitude.

I can happily spend hours on a bicycle with nothing but the hum of the the wheel hubs, the ache in my legs and my own thoughts.

I can swim in lake, or a pool and get lost in the ache in my shoulders and buzz of doing what I think I was really made to do. 

I can still get lost in my work, when I'm on a roll and a brief starts writing itself.

There's the never ending book pile, the untouched playlists. 

I can potter over cooking for myself, eating what the hell I like. 

But I still love being around people. I'm lucky to have the kind of close, good friends, who ignored zoom fatigue, for virtual chats when we were properly locked down. 

I sat in people's gardens and eventually their houses.

I have a couple of couple of 'husbands' in my village who are always there. 

I have close family, even I we live far apart. 

I know I'm lucky. Many people are less fortunate. 

I'm also choosing to crack on with living without compromise and discover all sorts of stuff about me, who I am, what I'm capable of and what I want. Little really gets me down, I'm moving forward, struggling at times, making mistakes but enjoying the battle. 

In fact, to be more specific, its LITTLE that does sometimes cast a shadow.

It's small, mostly rare moments that, in a world of mostly great, suddenly make you feel less alone but doing great – more a little lonely. 

It can be a full day of working from home and realising that apart from the morning agency WIP call, you haven't said a word out loud. 

It can be a watching something on telly that makes you laugh out loud and realise you're laughing alone. 

It can be wandering around a supermarket watching a couple argue and simultaneously feeling thankful you're not arguing over a shopping list and wishing you had someone to bicker with.

It's uncool to admit to be flailing sometimes, but the British Reserve is just crap. I for one, want to be less British and more human. 

The most recent little thing, was wonderful yet laced with sorrow.

It was little boy, after a brilliant day together, who came in for a spontaneous cuddle and whispered, "I miss you Daddy". 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In normal times, when I'm working in the office, it's 5 mile bike ride home. 

It's nothing in terms of time or distance next what a proper training ride should be.

Conventional wisdom says you need at least an hour to bother at all.

But who needs convention wisdom? 

The science shows that for some, HIIT training for 7 minutes is as beneficial as two hours conventional exercise for others.

Thankfully for me, my body seems to made for HIIT stuff.

The ride is mostly up-hill, no traffic light stops.

I've worked out I can do a minute at absolute full beans, agony inducing pace and gearing.

20 seconds easy.

Repeat until the hill ends, try not to cry. 

When I broke my wrist and did no exercise, apart from this little commute for 5 weeks.

I found I came back only a little less fitter than before the accident. 

There are only 24 hours in the day, you can't change that.

What you can change is how smart you are with that time.

Think about that next time you're power-pointing at 12am. 

Are you really doing your best work?

We live in a world that hates us switching off.

You're phone is designed to suck you in with the little beeps and notifications.

Youtube is specifically designed to keep you there for as long as possible, they have pre-roll inventory to fill.

Then there's work. Slack (FFS), email, zoom calls. 

To do your best work, you need focus.

Just as life needs focus too.

Cut through the spiel of mindfulness, it's only really about being present in your own life.

Actually tasting your food.

Talking to your children without your nose in your phone, or worrying about work.

We all find it hard to switch off right now of course, there is too much to worry about. 

One way to do is to find something else to obsess over. 

Take up a sport, a new hobby, it can fishing, tiddleywinks, baking whatever. 

No one has the time, but ask another question, how can you make the time? What really matters?

Because while you obsess over your hobby you are present, you're in the moment, you're alive.

You're likely to be in the flow state from time to time.

Which is one the most mentally beneficial things you can do.

It's a drug that's good for you and it's free. 

And while the mind is switched off, the sub-conscious gets to work on everything else while you're not looking. 

Sometimes the best way to solve problems is purposely avoid them.

Fun pays back. 

Who knew?