What the leaders of tomorrow can learn from planners

I have found that planners across a number of different marketing companies can often play the middle man between departments in trying to drive change which in turn is trying to drive a favourable outcome for all. I find myself doing this a lot lately with a lot of the strategic techniques actually playing out on internal and external stakeholders more than the actual strategic work on the audience at hand. I was lucky enough to get a lot of the awesome Russell Davies and his view of shepherding people through your thoughts. Which I have used a lot

The truth is that it can often feel a bit lonely. It can often feel like you are an outsider as you can see it like white on rice, but getting everyone to break away from their area of expertise to understand the greater thought can be freakin hard work. I feel often my days are spent playing people and not actually concentrating on what I am here to do.

But here is a video that a guy in the states put together which I got from conversationagent about how a key player in the US military tried to change the strategy in Iraq. Its interesting to show the generalist nature of the key person and how he is somewhat empathetic and understanding of each party in order to bring them together. I think it will be quite interesting to have these key skills in leadership on major and minor organisations in the future.