Did something interesting in my lunch break today. I teamed up with the Planning4Good AllStars who were competing at IPA’s FAST Strategy event today.

Ok, explanations first: Planning for Good is essentially a club of Account Planners all over the world that tackle strategic problems for good causes and non-profits. Members include Gareth Kay, Planning Director of Modernista!, Aki Spicer of Fallon, Mark Earls (author of Herd) and many more notable names from the Plannersphere.

Anyways, Mark Earls was team leader of the Planning4Good AllStars (him, Jon Leach, Chris Forrest (The Nursery) and Ian Tait (Poke & crackunit)) to work on the brief as the P4G Allstars, one of three teams competing in the three hour battle for the title Fastest Strategist.

Mark additionally called – through the power of the Internet! –  the combined brain power of Planning for Good people who could spare the time. So my lunch break was 30 minutes of furious typing, reading and searching at once, trying bring in as much thinking, ideas as possible. The Brief was about creating a strategy for a dog owner’s registry in the UK.

What I learned today (apart from „30 minutes is not much time“) for doing strategy in a team online and fast:

• kick off fast, don’t wait for suggestions, have influencers just throw starters
• keep the team updated of what you are doing, ask questions constantly
• choose the platform wisely. wetpaint is good for a wiki, but maybe twitter would have been better for this fast event. Communication felt slow both ways.
• give directions once you feel where you are heading, this will organize the herd instead of dispersing the effort.

Mark Earls posted that they just made second place. Bugger. Still was fun.I hope I can see the presentation they gave.

Apropos, presentations. In my Vodpod there is a splendid presentation Mark Earls gave at the ARF conference in New York (via Gareth Kay). He talks about Word of Mouth, decision making in our connected lives and how to best influence those processes. Intriguing stuff. I think I will get his book.