Planning less doing more
Great post from the boys over at SvN about planning. They’re talking mostly about software, but I think it totally applies to business as well.
Why do we spend so much time planning? Does preparation really help anything? Business plans, marketing plans, blah blah blah. Thing with plans is no matter how much you plan you don’t know what you don’t know. This is especially true when it comes to all things online.
According to RWW 5 years ago Ad Sense wasn’t around, web 2.0 hadn’t been invented, the top blog was Slashdot. By my recollection, 5 years ago Flickr was independent, big web companies were IPO-ing, and not having a mobile phone wasn’t unheard of. That’s all changed. So what about all those business plans that weren’t written 5 years ago?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think planning is all bad, I think you need to set some milestones and a general direction. But planning every detail so you don’t change or allow for flexibility as times change is just silly. When the world is changing at the rate it’s changing at you need to be able to change with it.
A plan might look great today, but tomorrow something might change the circumstances around the plan and it will look like crap. People need to plan less and do more.
That is very true. I think we need to achieve a middle-ground, where we have the clearly-set goals and direction of plans and the flexibility of no-plans.
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:29 pm