I’m a Raving Fan of Mitch Joel, as longtime readers of this blog undoubtedly know.

A few weeks back, he penned a post called “Maybe It Is Time For Marketing To Move Away From "The Big Idea" which, if I understand it correctly mirrors a lot of what I suggested had changed in marketing after Chris Anderson’s new book, FREE, helped conceptualize it for me.

Namely, that the idea of having a locked “marketing plan” is an anachronism. In more military terms,von Clausewitz in his seminal book “On War,” famously stated (paraphrasing here) that ‘no plan survives its encounter with the enemy.”

And while our customers and clients are surely not our enemy, they do represent the reality of the marketplace, which is often messy and less organized that your 20 powerpoint slides would suggest ;-)

So, what that means is we fall back on the idea of “Commanders Intent.”

We have a goal. An objective. We know what we need to do, but HOW we go about doing that has to be fluid. We have a plan, but we have to recognize that changing our plan (perpetual beta anyone?) is now a part of the plan.

Our listening posts allow us to pick up customer movements and sentiment more rapidly than ever, so our systems have to be designed for flexibility, not rigidity.

That, in and of itself, is a change, since, if you think about it, system usually implies rigidity.

Flexible systems are not an oxymoron. Lego is a flexible system. Software coding is a flexible system.

Human ecology is a flexible system.

And our marketing needs to be as well.