The door to The Communications Room is open

I’ve been toying with the idea of inviting people to share this blog for a while. I had the rather stupid idea of a name for an agency after watching The Good Shepherd where the opening sequence starts with the CIA’s communications room.

It’s not that I’m a massive fan of the CIA, anything but, I just liked the concept of a bunch of clever people with different skills sitting in a room observing stuff, solving conflicts and making the world a better place. So I bought the URL and thought perhaps one day? Well that day isn’t quite here yet, but I thought it might make a nice blog in the meantime.

I’m a bit on the nervous side opening up this blog after all the effort getting it up and running, but I think it could be very interesting if I can find the right people. There’s a lot of planning, creative and media blogs out there, but not many that have a range of perspectives in one place. Therefore I’m looking for 3 or 4 people to start with. It’s open to anyone, although I’m thinking a creative, an account person, a media person and a technologist initially.

If you’re interested in contributing drop me an email with a short biog.

Activists for the liberation from seagulls

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I'm a bit of a sucker for anything related to group dynamics and problem solving, particularly when it comes to a good old fashioned agency ding dong about processes and politics. To the annoyance of my colleagues no doubt, I'm somewhat of an idealist. I believe there should be way more collaboration, more productive conversations with smaller groups than long, pointless meetings with all and sundry.

I also get angry with pessimists, idea killers and micro managers. They are the antithesis of the kind of people you need in an agency to get ideas off the ground. In my opinion these people should realise their skills might be better suited elsewhere, like perhaps a bank, or better still a factory.

I like to refer to these people as Seagulls. They fly in to meetings squawking away without any idea of what's going on and then proceed to shit all over everything. Undoubtedly this will be repeated everyday up until there is nothing left in the team or the idea. They will then blame everybody apart from themselves and simply fly off and shit somewhere else. There's at least one of these in your agency, admit it? You avoid inviting them to meetings at all costs, or you refrain from putting yourself forward to work on certain accounts. They sap the life and enjoyment out of everything and turn the process of creation into a stressful and frustrating job, that just needs doing. That's why I find this idea of coliberation refreshing.

I try my best not to get caught up in all the politics, but occasionally it's inevitable, particularly as a planner. It might just be me, but I think the 'planning department' is often treated a bit like Switzerland. You're seen to be this kind of objective mediator between feuding nations. I believe we would all like to think of ourselves as liberators as opposed mediators and coliberation is a much more productive term than collaboration when it comes to agency group dynamics.