Plans and Blinders

Jason at the Signals v. Noise blog has an interesting post about how much he dislikes plans. I particularly like the point he makes about plans becoming “blinders.”

Opportunities are spontaneous, but when you’re sticking to your five year plan you don’t deviate. You’re putting the blinders on. “This is where we’re going because that’s what we said!” When you don’t have a plan you can pick up on an opportunity that comes along. You’re taking the blinders off. “This is where we’re going because it makes sense today.” I’d rather stroll into the future with my blinders off.

Of course it all depends on what you’re doing. Boeing probably needs a pretty stiff plan when building a new airplane. NASA needs to plan rocket launches many years in advance. If you want to be a doctor you’ll need a longer-term educational plan. But most businesses most of the time could benefit by just keeping their eyes open, being aware of what’s going on now, focusing on the basics that will be important to their customers today and tomorrow, and not looking too far ahead.

Comments

[Virgil Carter]

Hi Jamie. Welcome back--hope your time away was refreshing and restful. I'm wondering about the Signal & Blog post. Sounds a lot like conference jargon-speak to me.

I mean, if Boeing, Nasa, medical students, cancer patients, elementary school teachers and cross-country travelers all need plans, why don't business and associations? Of course, blind adherence to any plan is likely a mistake--there's an old military axiom that says, "No plan outlives the first shot". So there are limitations to plans. So what?

What am I missing?

[Jamie Notter]

Hi Virgil,

Yes, the post isn't earth-shattering. But I think there are things that we either include in our plans or think we need a plan for, when in fact we'd be more successful without the plan. I don't read that to mean abandoning all plans organizationally, but I would argue that we do too much planning, or include too many things in our plans. I think we should at least experiment with some kind of "reduced" planning and see what works.

[Virgil Carter]

I wonder how many associations have a "skunk works", incubator or other such structure and business process where an association can devote some resources to just throw new stuff up on the wall and see what sticks? We're in progress with such an approach, but still 6 months +/- away. Still take planning--just planning for stuff we've not necessarily done before.

I do like the idea of following one's creative urgings.