I love that proverb - but thought i had the ownership of it outside of Italy!....it's so true. You can never have too many friends - except on Facebook.

Now think about how Facebook has changed the notion of friends -- we had a few friends growing up -- now we have thousands -- whar are friends for??

A perfect circle – Once achieved cannot be made more perfect. You can work within the parameters of that circle, changing colour, texture or outline, but once you start altering the structure its perfection is lost. Push an edge here or there and it becomes an oval. In eastern culture perfection is admired and the challenge lies in maintaining its purity, in western culture, we try to push it beyond its design, its purpose, its perfection. Exceed expectations, over deliver, give 110%. Greatness lies in consistency of perfection. Lester Wunderman created the circle, individuals add colour and texture and are charged with the responsibility of maintaining its perfection.

Plato (paraphrased) would have said that in the physical world a Perfect Circle can’t exist and is unachievable, as it is only (at best) an approximation of the idealized Form. But is the best, the best you can do; the best that can be done; or simply better than all the rest? If you’re doing it better than all the rest, but it’s not your personal best, have you failed? And if you’re giving it your personal best, but it isn’t better than all the rest, same question. Ultimately, if you don’t give your friends and significant others a certain amount of slack and forgiveness for their flaws, failures and foibles, pretty soon, you won’t need to worry about them giving you back slack and forgiveness for yours.

There is an old Chassidic tale that tells the story of a righteous man who on his death bed becomes frightened of his final judgement. His students try and comfort him -- you were as great, no greater than anyone in your generation; you were as kind and humble as the holy men of the past -- why are you worried? His answer -- While thta might be true my fear is that I am judged on whether or not I was as great as I could have/should have been. Did I meet my potential....

Opening gambit (usually undisclosed): En avant, contre la médiocrité... Main theorem: Any attempt to dislodge or challenge mediocrity needs care and planning - and allies. And as well as knowing I'm on a campaign, I need to know I'm not wrong headed or distracted by emotion or trickery. Corollary: Everyone has objectives, including those who seem to be manouvering in futile or apparently irrational directions. Some of them have survived a long time. Some even can look good in the short term while ultimately doing damage. The solution may be simple, but finding it (and delivering it) usually isn't. The tailor's rule: measure twice, cut once. Tom (more egotistical than usual).

“Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them.” Joseph Heller more than usually cynical -- David

Best (and worst) example of this I recently came across was an FMCG client that wanted us to develop a website for their new 'water' beverage ... when asked 'Why?' (the Objectives) ... she said, 'To be 360'.

The technologies and strategies have evolved, been honed and become more complex. But everyone on the battlefield is using them. This raises the bar for all concerned and makes big results much harder to achieve. No excuse for pursuing glory rather than results. No excuse for not learning from glorious failures. Tom.

Unfortunately, many senior "strategists" get left behind by technology, through lack of knowledge/time or whatever, they pluck out "key words" from some article they have read and push them as strategy without truly understanding the implications for the foot soldiers and consumers. But then again..the world is not perfect, and egos abound in our industry.

Nick unfortunately reveals a sad truth here. Strategists and planners need to be genuine strategists and planners, and "not a few of them" aren't the real thing. If they are only part of a sales operation and don't think about implications, long term objectives and infrastructure, they only succeed by luck and client gullibility. Their days will be numbered. On the other hand, convincing clients to invest in long term data strategies is really challenging because it costs, and needs simplified "painting of pictures" of a rosy future. We still have to sell our best good! I don't care about the gloss, as long as everyone understand that hard work needs to be done to get real results. Everyone also needs to understand that the quant/tech/data side is only part of the story. An integrated story... Tom - sometime "Data Strategist".

Sometimes we are so enamoured by our strategy that we take the outcome for granted – or, God forbid, lose sight of it. Although the outcome is sacrosanct, and therefore to be determined before everything else, sometimes we are unsure if the strategy determines the outcome or the outcome determines which strategy to deploy. I’m reminded of a dialogue between Alice and the Cheshire Cat from Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland’: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where…” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.