APG’s Post

Yesterday I heard a brief snippet on the radio. I came in half way through but it was clearly an item about what luxury means to people and how interpretations are so singular and individual. 🏊 So one person's swim in a half empty lido is another person's Taylor Swift tickets to Wembley with a friend. (I'll exempt the PM from that example) The luxuries people talked about were all experiences, not things. No surprises there. It was 📻 Radio 4 after all. I quickly forgot about it. There was nothing deep. It was just momentarily interesting. I then spent the afternoon in the company of 11 lovely, senior, strategists and two strategy legends: Craig Mawdsley and Bridget Angear. It was the final module in a series of Strategy Management Masterclasses run by Craig and Bridget. We were talking about agency and strategy culture and how to influence it as a senior strategist. We heard from the inimitable Raquel Chicourel and Raj Nathwani who spoke movingly and compellingly about work and life. It didn't feel like 🏫 training. We listened and commented and asked questions. The delegates talked to each other about their own agency cultures and what they thought they could and should do to change them for the better. It was enlightening and fascinating. And it struck me then that the real worth in the course was the luxury of time. ⌛ Time to think. Time to reflect. ⏳ Time to talk seriously and openly (about all the things we don't talk about much because we're all so busy doing pitches and helping clients and writing briefs and sitting in half pointless meetings). ⏲️ Time to listen to Craig and Bridget reflecting on what they learned in all those years running strategy at AMVBBDO and distilling it into practical advice and new ways of confronting problems that senior planners face all the time as they take on ⬆️ management roles. Whole afternoons with guest appearances from Emily Harlock Cat Wiles Andy Nairn Will Whalley. It's not easy at all to carve out time from your schedule to think more broadly about the non-urgent, non specific aspects of our work as planners. Things that have as much if not more impact on a career and life at work. When I was first promoted to Head of Planning at Ogilvy I had a chat with fountain of wisdom Paul Feldwick. He listened to me running through all the stuff I was doing and trying to do; the lists in my head; the next actions that I planned to propel me forward. ⏳ And he said: 'Spend a bit more time thinking, and a bit less time doing'