One peak fewer

Count the moments between now and the end of the year. National Day next month. The Riyadh season, opening in the autumn and running through to spring. The promotional month, which starts with 11.11 and does not let go until the end of November. December, which is one thing in Dubai and a different thing in Riyadh.

Four peaks in four months. Each of them wants a campaign, a creative refresh, an offer, a licence where one is needed, a media plan, and a person awake at midnight watching it land.

Now look at the team. Not the org chart. The people who will actually be in the building: minus leave, minus the one who is leaving, minus the freelancer who is also working for someone else. In every in-house team I have sat in or beside, that team has the capacity to do three of those four well. Not four. The plan always says four.

So the fourth gets done anyway, on whatever is left. And because nobody chose which one, exhaustion chooses. It is whichever peak arrives when the team is most tired, which is almost always the one at the end, which is almost always the one worth most.

The August decision is which one to skip, on purpose, and to say so out loud. Or to do in its smallest honest version: one post, one offer, a licence filed and a sign in the window, no campaign. Decided now, written down, defended in the September meeting when someone asks why there is no National Day film.

A peak skipped on purpose can be defended. A peak done badly because nobody chose cannot, and in January the two look nothing alike: one is a line in the plan, the other is a line in the review.

The skipped peak is a decision. The botched one is a default.