Paul Isakson

Speaking of Not Having Plans

Earlier this summer I read A Million Miles In A Thousand Years. (It's a fantastic book. I highly recommend it.) After reading it, I was inspired. In going to check out Don Miller's blog, I saw he was putting on a workshop based on the book. I had been wanting to get up to Portland (Oregon) for the past few years but couldn't ever find a good excuse. Now I had one.

With that, I'm coming to Portland later today. Andy is coming too. I've got a few plans to meet-up with some people, but in the spirit of not making too many plans, a lot of this trip outside of the workshop is completely unplanned.

So, if you're in Portland and are free tomorrow (Friday) evening, come hang out with Andy and I at Rontoms (the page isn't blank. Just "select all") around 6pm or so. Should be fun. We'll have a night of not making plans and see where that leads us.

And if you can't make it but want to try to meet-up, ping me on Twitter, text or email. All the info is over there on the right of this page.

Not Making Plans

Photo credit: Norman Jean Roy, Details Magazine

"I don’t have this huge, overarching plan. I don’t know what I’m gonna wake up and feel like doing tomorrow, let alone five years down the line. I think that’s enabled me to get to where I am. I certainly go after what I want. But I just have detached amusement about a lot of it. Because it’s silly. This job is ridiculous."

- Jon Hamm

Andy wrote a post the other day on the pressure to have a plan and his preference for trying not to have too much of one. Earlier in the week I read a few Proverbs that had to deal with making plans. Then I read the article on Jon Hamm in the latest issue of Details, where he said the above.

As I considered all of this, I remembered a time in my life when I didn't have too much of a plan.

It was the day I graduated from high school. As family and friends passed through my graduation party, I remember them all asking me something to the effect of, "So Paul, where are you going to go to college?" Or, "What are you planning on studying?"

I can also perfectly recall the looks on their faces when I told them I didn't know—that I didn't really have any plans at that point except to take a scholarship offer from one the schools that was recruiting me for baseball. Other than that, I didn't know what I was going to do. I just wanted to play baseball somewhere.

To me, it felt freeing and fantastic. I knew that no matter where I ended up, I would be doing what I loved. To them it sounded horrifying (at least judging by the looks on their faces). They couldn't imagine my not knowing where I would be going to school and what I would be majoring in.

Of course all of that changed the day I stepped on to campus and I had to begin thinking about what I wanted my major to be and with that, what kind of job I wanted when I would be done with school. There was no option for not having a plan. I had to pick a plan and attend the appropriate classes.

For the next three years I changed my plan three times. It never felt quite right. And in that time I lost my enthusiasm for playing baseball. All of this caused me to pause for a semester and figure out what I was good at and what I liked doing. I realized that I liked applying my creativity to problem solving and I liked coming up with ideas that inspired people. So, I thought advertising would be a good fit.

Being forced into a linear way of thinking through my engineering, math and science classes the previous three years, I deducted that advertising was a function of marketing, which was a function of business and because of that, I needed to get a business degree with an emphasis in marketing.

I was back to not having much of a plan. I didn't know how I was going to get into advertising or what I was going to do to once I did, or God forbid, if I didn't. All I knew was that I was going to transfer schools and learn about marketing and advertising so that I could do it. It was fantastic and freeing. And with this feeling, I knew somehow that I was headed in the right direction.

An Unexpected Lesson in Humility

Sometime last winter I came across Jonathan Harris' Today project. Since that time, I have been enjoying his photos and stories—passing several of them on to friends. Then, in the post dated August 27, 2010 (what follows will make more sense if you read that first), he made a few remarks that really bothered me.

They bothered me not only because I felt they were inaccurate statements about my chosen faith, but also because my spiritual life has become an area I've spent a lot of time diving into this past year and as such, they cut deep.

I was angered by his assuming that these people were "brainwashed into thinking the point of this life is just to prepare for the life that comes next." Yes, they may believe that "there's a better home awaiting in the sky," but that doesn't mean that they believe that the point of this life was to just wait for God to bring them home to it.

I was irritated that he saw Christianity as a marvelous tool for keeping people tame and under control. Yes, there are some Christians who choose to live tame lives. And yes, there are some leaders who claim the Christian faith as their own and use it to try to keep people under control. Just because of those two things though, it doesn't mean that all Christians act like this or abuse the faith in this way.

As I analyzed my frustration more, I came around to seeing that what bothered me the most about his entire post is that he had so quickly judged these people without talking to a single, solitary one of them. Had he talked to them and in that process, saw that they believed what they did simply because that's what some pastor told them to believe and that they lived dull, fruitless lives because of it, well, I couldn't have been upset with him for stating what he did.

But he didn't. Rather than talk to the people who had just given him goosebumps and nearly brought him to tears so that he could understand why they were so jubilant in their singing, he merely tried to look into their eyes so he could judge them without the bias of their actual personal stories getting in the way.

Then I sat with this anger and frustrtion for several days. As I considered this more and more, I realized that I am just as guilty of the things that I was upset with Jonathan for in a different way.

We do this exact same thing in marketing and advertising, quarter after quarter, year after year.

We send out surveys asking people to answer questions they never even think to think about on their own. Then we use this data to justify the decisions we're making to the higher-ups contolling the marketing purse strings and to make ourselves believe we understand how people think about and buy our products and services.

We spend an hour or two in focus group facilities across a few cities with people who buy our products or services and from those brief moments (which are out of these people's natural environments and real lives), we make judgements on what all people who fit their demographic and psychographic profiles are like so that we can create communications and applications and "utilities" that "connect" with them.

As this realization took hold, I lost my steam for being upset with Jonathan and instead, I felt humbled.

By experiencing the frustration and anger of someone making broad, overly presumptive statements about my faith, I was able to see how wrong it has been of me to do these types of things at times in my past about the people I'm supposed to be representing within the agency and to the client.

Now, rather than being angry, I'm thankful for Jonathan's post—and I pray that I remember this the next time I begin to do them again.

Your Culture Drives Your Brand

It's true. The energy, attitudes and effort of the people working on a product or service ultimately drive the brand's face in public. The more you care about what you're making and doing, the better you're going to make it. You want the people who experience it to love it just as much as you do.

The opposite is also true. When a job is just a job to get a paycheck, or to put a big title or big company name on a resume, or to get promoted on to the next role or brand, the less one cares about doing something that actually speaks to people. It's more about one's own personal situation than it is about getting others to love what you make or do. It's about doing only what you have to do to move on to the next or to stay comfortably seated where you are.

Great brands attract people who have passion for what their brands do or make. Great brands inspire employees to make their brands their own. Google is a good example of this.

More about the contest here and pics of more entries here.

via Brandchannel