Sheep and feigned incompetence

There is a great article by former APG chair Merry Baskin subtitled ‘what do account planners do exactly’.  My favourite excerpt reads:

In general, planners are not very well organised. Tidy minds tend to move in a linear
fashion, rather than laterally. And while some may feign incompetence so they don’t
get stuck delivering proofs to clients at 11pm…

Feign incompetence, thats what I should have done.  Then I wouldn’t have got stuck organising an event for one of my clients on the basis that I had the client relationship and everyone in the agency with even a passing knowledge of event management was on holiday/sick/incredibly busy.  It did however give me the opportunity to develop my theory on ‘when intelligent people turn into sheep’.

I’ve seen it happen at horse shows – perfectly intelligent people lose the ability to make rational decisions as soon as they are part of an organised group and therefore have to have everything spelled out for them as simply as possible.  Which is when my advanced-shouting-with-clipboard-waving skills come in – which have turned out to be remarkably transferable to the world of corporate events.

Why do we switch off our common sense and independent thought when we join a group?  You only have to look at the average group of package holiday makers meekly following their teenage holiday rep to know that it only takes a clipboard to move a herd of sheep.