Planning versus Preparation
People are pools of contradiction, trained mostly to recognize the unexpected and discard everything else.
Ironically in this reality, we made an industry out of enabling consistency in order to create an expectation. Or maybe to make a confusing marketplace seem stable.
This is what branding traditionally is, the creation of an assumption.
And it’s this need to find order in the chaos of the marketplace that brought us to planning.
Planning is just a nice word. When you think of someone who makes plans versus someone who goes with the flow, you can probably get a good picture in your head. One in a carefully constructed three-piece suit. The other in board shorts at the beach. The planner is punctual, polite and is where he is because that’s where he planned to be. The other might look a bit ragged at times, but is generally comfortable just about anywhere you put him.
One avoids the chaos by trying to create order. One thinks beating chaos is futile so chooses to enjoy the ride.
If we brought these stereotypes into practice, one model would be rigid, generalizing broad swaths of people so as to not crack the standard. The other would require a comfort in the unfamiliar few possess.
The problem of course is that neither extreme really works all that well. When we sell the idea of planning, we’re selling a calm in the clutter. And when that calm doesn’t come, brands are left ill-prepared for situations unforeseen. Sticking to the plan actually leaves us less adaptable at a time when adaptability might be more important than just about anything else.
So yes, we need plans, insights and the like, but our inability to accept the unknown is a problem with almost any of our current models. Brand after brand markets by setting and executing on a plan that leaves it unprepared for changes.
The question we’re answering now is what will things look like if we're as concerned with preparation as we are planning. How are we making companies structurally more adaptable to new situations and audiences. And what does an input into the system look like when the result is unknown.