I’m not a fan of planning’s unending and wearying ability to gaze into its own navel and contemplate what it really does. Indeed, much of the time it would appear that the one brand that planners are most interested in planning is in fact the discipline of planning itself.

I’m going to give in to this tendency just a little bit today because the wonderful and awesome Mikey Farr gave me today the best definition of planning I’ve come across in a while.

Actually, it’s less of a definition and something altogether more helpful, and more inspiring. A request that the planner be part of the creative team:

“In my mind the best planners are good creatives that just like big words, and the odd graph. This is sacrosanct in my opinion. Planning is just a different face of the creative bubble. Planners should be teeming with ideas. Bad ones mainly (that’s why they’re planners) but they should have lots and lots of ideas to create a rich humus on which our creative flowers can blossom”

When we ask What Planning Does perhaps planners are the wrong people to ask. Perhaps we should have been asking good creatives all along.

Thank you Mikey.