This post is not the one I was going to thrill you with. But I'm thrilling you with this one instead because of a chance meeting I had this morning with my one-time employer, the magnificent Martin Lambie-Nairn.
We chitty-chatted about what had happened in the 24 years since we last clapped eyes on each other. I told him of the highly regarded companies I had joined to prove (to myself) that they were as creatively bereft and process-led as I had imagined them to be. McKinsey-ite theology rules in such companies and, sadly, it is the people who do not have a creative bone in their bodies who then cascade 'ideas' down to the (lowly) ‘creatives’ to 'work-up'.
Ideas will never be the product of flow charts, indices or percentages: those things inform. Ideas are borne of things that cannot be explained. They come from people who cannot be classified. So we should dispense with the trite "ideas can come from the cleaners" bollocks, because they do not. This is what companies say when they are trying to be ever so achingly PC and collaborative. A 'truth' or an insight may come from the cleaners, but an idea will most definately not.
In any given presentation there is always a moment when, having answered all questions and ticked all brief boxes I say, "I can't explain any further, but it is right. You have to trust me." And that's because what I do - we do - is, to a great extent, indefinable. That's why some of us can do it and most others cannot.
As Martin said. "They want to make it a science. And it isn’t.” No further questions, your Honour.
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