Weekly Reid

Keep the main thing, the main thing.

 

I was sent this image earlier in the week by a member of the extended Genius family… it’s self evident what the brief is, what’s expected and even has some political and behavioural guidelines around getting the project done.  Smart it is. Simple. Elegant.

 

Racing forward nearly 70 years later, we don’t see a great of this anymore. We get pitch documents, and proposals and white papers. These sometimes needlessly over complicate. The summary advice feels a bit obvious from time to time. And less we forget the agency and clients involved, they neatly place both logos at the foot of each page. Handy.

Before the world of latte drinking consultants developed, briefs like the above were ambitious and open enough to invite debate and question, but more often than not, shit happened and stuff got done. Perhaps the same sort of wishes are sketched out today in boardroom meetings and then handed to the procurement people to get into finer detail (and maybe there was indeed a more lengthy set of specifications for the floating barges) but the main objective was common to all. Everyone knew what was expected, what wasn’t, what to do and intuitively what to avoid. Call it a strategy if you like and type it up – but you still don’t make things happen. I like the idea of all our projects following the same format.

If it isn’t on a page – it won’t get done.

Next year represents a massive opportunity to spread more growth amongst our client base and spread even more genius thinking around.

My challenge to everyone on the books both within and outside of our business is to start 2014 with the key objective on a page. Let's all keep the main thing, the main thing. Think about that over the festive season.

 

See you in 2014.