for when you're flying a plane

I always like to find mnemonics and heuristics from other industiries and see if I can apply them to planning, because

a) I like typing and saying both heuristic and mnemonic

and

b) other industires tend to be about proper things that actually matter to people in some important way so they tend to have applied decent thought to coming up with some sound advice.

And I was reminded of the thing pilots in trouble are always told the other day - Aviate. Navigate. Communicate. And this seemed very apposite to the life of the planner. Especially in these days of over-communication and too many pointless meetings. (NB: not too many meetings, meetings are a good thing, but too many pointless meetings.)

What it means ( I believe) to a pilot is : first fly the plane, make sure it's level, not going to crash and you know where you are, then figure out where you want to go, and start heading there, then, and only then, get on the radio and start asking for help etc. Otherwise you'll confuse yourself, miss something vital, screw up somehow and your communications will be useless and/or counter-productive.

I think similar advice might be useful for planners approaching a brand problem. First thing: work out where you are, what's going on, do you know the stuff you need to know to 'keep the plane in the air', second thing: work out where you think you need to go and start heading there, start writing that down, start working towards that solution. Then, and only then, do you start asking the world their opinion - whether it be your colleagues or consumers or whatever.

Because (and I'm a huge believer in lots of conversation and lots of collaboration) if you collaborate too soon you'll end up nowhere. You'll spend so much time exploring so many options and opinions that you'll fly the plane into the ground. People will quite happily throw all sorts of ideas at you because they're not flying the plane, they don't really care if it crashes or not. So you've got to go into those conversations knowing where you want to go. You should look for help with how you get there, how you can land succesfully etc. If they've got a better idea then fine, but you should have something in your head to start with.

So there we have a planning lesson - Aviate. Navigate. Communicate. Anyone else got anything we can steal from other industries? Do think there are any valuable shortcuts in the world of Yellow Fats?

Comments

[neil]

Lactate, saturate, salivate?