Do agencies need more “present thinkers”? Jason Burnham of Burnham Marketing thinks so. In his recent article “Why Our Industry is a Mess,” he observes:
“We noticed that the majority of our industry is comprised of Past and Future thinkers. There were barely any Present thinkers. The skews were dramatic. To put this into some context, it is Future thinking that drives innovation, the launch of new companies, creativity, sales, and coming up with the “big ideas”. Past thinking drives validation and most likely comprised of our industry’s research and analytics. However, it is the Present thinking that excels at client services, account/project management, strategic planning, operations, systems integration, time management, privacy/data management, process, work flow, budgeting, scope of work, etc. Most of the problems our industry is encountering is due to lack of the right Present thinking attacking these needs.”
The MindTime Framework reveals that present thinkers are good at getting things done. They organize their time and work towards a goal. According to a recent survey, CMOs rate “ability to execute” as their #1 criteria for choosing an outside agency. It’s clear that present thinking people are critical to an agency’s success.