I love planners. Hell, I am a planner. Planners see the world differently. And in a different way to how creatives see the world differently. Planners go deeper, to flip things, question everything and then make the connections. The really good ones solve problems that other people don’t even know are there. And because of this different way of looking at things, they tend to be quite clever and say things that make you think. And that makes them interesting to talk to and hang around with.

But after hanging out with a lot of planners at plannery type events lately, I remembered I also hate planners.

Well, a certain type of planner.

Somewhere along the line someone decided that because they often are quite brainy that to be a planner you had to sound like the smartest person in the room. To say things that are so ‘clever’ that people think you must be really good at being a planner. That the very act of saying smart sounding stuff made you a good planner. And so an arms race started, with planners beginning to quote ancient philosophers, referencing obscure cultural nuances, dropping intelligent-sounding phrases into conversation.

This behaviour was adopted and evolved to its perfect form by the ‘social media expert’. Making up clever sounding ‘strategies’ that don’t really mean much. But crikey do they sound fancy.

The approach was set; bamboozle clients and colleagues so they are so confused they’ll buy whatever you’re selling.

The problem with these self-styled experts is that they were imitating the imitators, copying the illusion of a clever planner instead of actually being a clever planner. All style, no substance.

Planning has its very own cargo cult. When making contact with indigenous people’s colonists brought with them new technologies, including the aeroplanes that took and delivered cargo to burgeoning colonies. When these colonies collapsed or the colonists returned home, the indigenous people, in an attempt to get the cargo deliveries to return, would rebuild dilapidated airports. They worked, so the theory goes, under the illusion that if the airport looked like a real airport, the planes would certainly return.

Saying something clever sounding and putting it in a framework doesn’t mean it’s insightful. And worse, it doesn’t mean it’s useful. In fact, the exact opposite is often the case.

In trying to be the cleverest person in the room planners often over-complicate, when our job is to simplify. Framework after framework after framework. Planners love a good framework. But why use tables and triangles and VMOST structures or brand onions when words will do. Hell, even a picture would do. But not a picture of an onion. Time and time again a planner will work to produce a hundred slide deck of fancy looking frameworks and triangles that everyone has to sit through, and is then NEVER looked at again.

The classic example is the proposition. I’ve known planners toil for days to get the words for the proposition ‘just right’. And invariably they come up with a great sounding line. But that’s all it is, a line. Give it to a creative team and they’ll struggle to do anything with it. Because as clever as the line sounds, until we’ve done our actual job it’s not very useful. Our job is to unearth the insight, the real problem, and then work out what we need to get people to think or do. Not write the end line for the copywriter.

Yes the proposition is an important part of the creative brief, but it is just a part. Because almost anyone can come up with a clever sounding string of words given enough time. But the words aren’t the idea. Don’t get caught up on the perfect proposition, crafting it until its just right. Explain the actual thought behind it. What it means. Where planners are clever is where we spot the problem no one else has, or flip the problem and see it differently. We make people see old things in a new way or new things in an old way, and you don’t need a clever proposition to do that. You just need to focus on what the idea is meant to do, or make people do.

One of my first planning directors told me that yes, planners are supposed to be the smartest people in the room, but we’re meant to make what we say sound so simple it appears to be common sense. Our job is to be clever enough to make complicated things sound simple.

Sometimes that will mean saying stuff that is common sense. More often it’s saying smart stuff that is so right other people think it is common sense. Our duty is to be useful not smart, to make a difference.

Planners that don’t do that, ones that try to be the smartest person in the room at the expense of actually explaining with clarity, give the rest of us a bad name.

I hate planners like that.