From Planner to CEO?
How does a career as a planner prepare you — or not — for life as the CEO of a creative agency? And what fresh perspectives can those who’ve made that leap share about the discipline they left behind?
For the latest School of Planning evening, we invited two stellar planners who made exactly that move to tell us about their experiences: Sophie Maunder-Allen, CEO of VCCPMe, and Lucy Jameson, former CEO of Grey London (currently working on setting up her own shop).
The top job of running a creative agency is traditionally the preserve of experienced account handlers. But increasingly, it’s opening up to other disciplines — including planning.
As it turns out, there are plenty of directly transferable planning skills that can be put to use in the role of CEO.
There are ways in which applying classic planning thinking to yourself (the way you might a brand) can help you to tackle new challenges — a lesson that applies to anyone wanting to stretch themselves in any direction, not just that of the C-Suite.
And then, both our speakers acknowledged, there are the situations and tasks that any planner-turned-CEO is just going to be hugely unprepared for. But that is no reason not to make the leap, because with a combination of the right team around you and some serious homework, even those can be overcome.
What we heard from our speakers were stories not just about going from planning to running an agency, but about having the right combination of confidence (to say yes to what is unknown, but potentially hugely rewarding) and humility (to acknowledge and address any inevitable areas of weakness) needed to make any bold move. That’s perhaps even more vital a lesson for women than it is for men, as both our speakers acknowledged.
And even for those planners who don’t think it’s a move they’ll ever want to make (spoiler: nor did Sophie or Lucy, until the chance arose!), there’s a great deal that can be learned about core planning skills by looking at the discipline from another perspective — one which throws it into sharp relief.
Sophie Maunder began by listing the classical planning strengths that she brought to her new role: curiosity, going with your gut, and the habit of sometimes uncomfortable truth-telling.
Every planner has their own strengths, of course, and Sophie had a great tip for helping anyone to identify theirs: ask yourself, What do find it frustrating that others just don’t “get”? Whatever comes unusually easy and quickly to you, but not to others, is your strength.
But Sophie was frank about her weaknesses, too. Managing a P&L and scoping projects — all classic account handling skills — sent her scuttling back to her comfort zone. Only through a frank acknowledgement of those weaknesses allowed her to address them and set herself up for success — by hiring the right people to delegate to, and by applying herself until she was “good enough” — not the best, not outstanding, but just good enough — for them not to hold her back.
Above all, the biggest shift for Sophie — one which Lucy Jameson described too — was taking on the role of chief executive firefighter. Whatever you might have planned for your day as CEO, you’ll generally find yourself spending it desperately trying to resolve the latest crisis that’s arisen — because as CEO, the buck stops with you. If planners are an agency’s brand architects, then CEOs have to learn to build the future of their business with one hand — while holding a fire extinguisher firmly in the other.
Lucy Jameson was just as frank as Sophie about the mostly unplanned (ironically) nature of her move, suggesting that when it comes to a career, half a plan is probably enough.
Planning skills, Lucy argued, aren’t just useful applied to your work as CEO (although they are), they’re useful when applied to making the leap to the new role. Bold lateral thinking is required to go from being from planner to chief exec — but that’s exactly what planners do every day for their brands — so why can’t we do it for ourselves?
And classic planning thinking also makes for good business sense as a CEO — especially in an increasingly disrupted industry. Perhaps, Lucy suggested, this is why planners are increasingly looked to as leaders — because innovation and change is more important than ever, and looking for new areas of growth and revenue in a rapidly-changing world is as important for an agency as for a consumer brand.
Anyone who makes this kind of move has to be happy with duality, and Lucy suggested that this is precisely the planner’s superpower, because of the position they occupy at the intersection of commerce and culture. Planning requires you to be good with systems, but also with the complex and messy business of people. It requires you to have a thorough understanding of history and the forces that got us to where we are, while also imagining what needs to come next. It is a discipline that gives you insight across a huge range of sectors, meaning you can draw on expertise from a breadth of industries to benefit your agency’s business.
Lucy finished by emphasising that this isn’t a one-way street. Being a planner makes you a better CEO — and being a CEO makes you a better planner.
An hour in the company of two inspiring planner-CEOs had much the same effect.
Find all the videos from the evening below:
The next Open Strategy School of Planning evening will take place sometimes this summer — Subscribe to our newsletter or keep an eye on the Open Strategy Facebook page to be notified.
