
Let's just call plans what they are: guesses  - peter123
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1805-lets-just-call-plans-what-they-are-guesses
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run4yourlives
Not really up to 37 Signals' standard. It seems they've confused a detailed,
rigid bible of a plan with being the only way to direct yourself. I think
they're doing this on purpose though.

As has been said, a plan is a statement of intent. It attempts to anticipate
what it can in an attempt to make choices easier when you are "in action". You
are doing it wrong both if you have no intent at all and if you attempt to
account for every conceivable scenario; if you do that, you never achieve your
intent ~ duh!.

Here is my plan to rent a movie this weekend:

1\. My objective is to secure a movie on DVD and watch it Friday night with my
wife, generally enjoying the night. (See - a goal, a method and a deadline.)

2\. I intend to do this by getting into my car and driving to the video store.
(This is a general statement of action. I don't bother anticipating whether
there is a roadblock on my street, or whether my car will start or not. That
would be over-planning, and as 37S suggests, stupid.) There will most likely
be things that will need to be adjusted, some big, some small.

3\. Assuming the original objective remains viable, I'll rent the dvd and
return home. (Note here that I am not aimlessly evaluating video stores,
romping off to best buy to upgrade to blueray, or stopping at starbucks for a
latte on my way to get the movie. The plan _allows me to frame the actions
within the realm of achieving the objectives!_ It helps me to make decisions.
I have assumed that the objective is valid for whatever reason. Your plan
helps you test that assumption, nothing more, nothing less.

Edit: Adding number 4: If, while carrying out my plan I find out that the
video store is on fire, or that my wife would rather go to the theatre instead
of renting, _I adapt_ to the changing reality. I do not stubbornly insist that
I follow my predefined plan. I incorporate the new variables into it. In
certain cases, this does in fact mean changing the objective. However, I
reassess the situation and re-plan from there.

Not having any plan is about as dumb as planning to the nth degree, IMO. Even
worse, I think 37S understands this perfectly.

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alanthonyc
Will I be the first one to quote Eisenhower? _"Plans are nothing, planning is
everything."_

The act of planning implies careful thought. "Guessing" implies a haphazard
attempt at divining the future. I'll stick with the former.

~~~
GHFigs
_The act of planning implies careful thought._

An educated guess is still a guess. The point is that no amount of planning
will guarantee a real outcome. A plan isn't any more real than a guess, and
the only difference is the degree of confidence, which thanks to optimism bias
may not even be justified by the data used to generate the plan.

This may feel good insofar as the point of planning is to reduce anxiety
(individual and institutional) about possible outcomes, but too much faith in
planning can mean both wasted time developing and false confidence in what is
essentially a guess. I agree with Jason that referring to these things as
guesses assigns them the appropriate status. As he says, there is nothing
wrong with guessing, just with overthinking and overvaluing them as though
they are something more concrete than they actually are.

The basic principle here is to favor constant feedback from the real world
over carefully thought out fantasies about what might happen. To adapt instead
of predict. It is a common pattern, seen in the OODA loop and manuver warfare,
in TPS and Lean, in Agile, XP, and Scrum. All of these incorporate a de-
emphasis on planning and favor adaptation to current circumstances.

~~~
alanthonyc
An "educated guess" is an _educated_ guess. As opposed to a guess based on
ignorance.

However, this isn't even the point. The purpose of creating the plan is not to
have a plan. The purpose of creating the plan is to go through the exercise of
planning. When he invaded Europe, he had a plan. I'm pretty sure that things
did not go according to it. I'm also pretty sure no one would argue that it
was still a good idea to have one.

Planning doesn't just make you "feel good", it better prepares you for the
possible situations that come up and allows you to react better to them.

There is nothing inherent in planning that precludes you from "gathering
feedback from the real world" or from adapting to circumstances.

" _Adapt instead of predict_ " - this is where our viewpoints diverge. You see
planing as a an exercise of prediction. I see it as preparation.

This is why you equate planning with guessing and I see it as getting ready
for what will happen next.

(Heck, maybe he's talking specifically about those "business plans" that VCs
supposedly are always asking for but supposedly never read.)

~~~
GHFigs
_As opposed to a guess based on ignorance._

Nobody is arguing for ignorance. That's not an argument made in either the
original post or in mine. The thesis is that what people call planning is
usually guessing and should be treated as such, not that making informed
decisions is bad, not that guessing is bad, and not that planning is bad.

You say planning is preparation, but preparation for what? You are necessarily
making predictions about what will happen in the future and what the
appropriate course of action will be. The ideas are inseparable. Again: not
that this is bad, but it is still guesswork--still map, not territory--and
should be de-emphasized relative to dealing with the territory itself.

How much you devote to it depends on the costs associated with speculating on
a course of action. Is this time spent planning going to save more time of
work? Are the consequences of these possible situations worth the effort
expended to prepare for them? If you're (say) coordinating hundreds of
thousands of people to invade Europe, the cost of speculating and preparing is
dwarfed by the cost of changing course to react to new developments. On the
other end, especially when it's an individual or a small business, sometimes
the cost of speculating on a course of action is higher than the cost of just
putting it into practice.

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ErrantX
Bad, bad, bad plan. Sometimes i wonder if 37signals exist in In the real world
:)

If I go to my boss with a "5 year strategy guess" he will fire me. On the spot
- and this is a guy who doesn't do corporate crap either.

Guess implies a level of ignorance in your data. Plan implies less ignorance
and more _consideration_.

~~~
run4yourlives
I would submit though that a 5 year plan that is anything more than a couple
of paragraphs of intent is in fact a waste of time.

~~~
ErrantX
Entirely depends what your planning. I've only written one 5 year plan
admittedly but it was 4 pages long - and will guideline the project for that
time.

~~~
run4yourlives
If your project is 5 years long, it's really a series of smaller projects.

There isn't much that can be anticipated 5 years down the line, but I'm
willing to hear any examples that you have.

~~~
ErrantX
We've never been a big fan of "splitting things up" (I know others are)
because it tends to over complicate matters :)

Examples - they should be obvious. 5 years isnt a great long time in some
industries (Operating systems perhaps, Chip manufacturing etc etc.). Our
example is case management software - it's a good 5 year plan, Im sure it will
work with little modification (18 months in things are going nicely).

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GiraffeNecktie
I'm afraid I don't see the point of this (very brief) blog post. A good "plan"
is not simply a wild ass guess at how the future will unfold. It also covers,
directly or indirectly, the past (industry trends, experience of the
participants etc) and the present (competitive landscape, financial and other
assets etc). Even when addressing the future, a good plan will be informed by
envisioning a diverse range of possibilities that may or may not unfold.

And of course, a plan is not really a roadmap so much as it is a way of
marshalling resources (money, courage, etc) to begin a journey into the
unknown.

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mynameishere
Guesses have to do with probabilities, plans with intentions. So, no real
connection. I've never seen a good blog post at 37signals, but this is the
dumbest so far.

~~~
kirse
37Signals seems to me like the edgy anti-conformist artsy kid who tries to be
creative by doing the opposite of what is usually done. That or they try to be
uselessly introspective, like the plaques in front of the majority of the
meaningless metal "sculptures" you find in cities.

Another example: [http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1555-learning-from-
failur...](http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1555-learning-from-failure-is-
overrated)

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mattwdelong
Well, what we do know is that a plan is based on predicates. For x to occur, y
must also occur. The trouble is that in the future, certain things just cannot
happen; that is when we need to become agile. We must adjust our planning to
correlate with our current surroundings - essentially you cannot force things
that just won't happen and if you do the result is an unrealistic forecast.

With that being said, you must know where you want to go - but we cannot
define how we are going to get there. Because in the end, it`s not
particularly important how we got there, just that we get there.

"Drive to arrive"

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Elepsis
I think that focusing on the plan vs. guess argument is missing the point of
the blog post. The argument they are making, at least to me, seems rather to
be about avoiding the all-too-common analysis paralysis.

Like they write in the post, if you are spending all your time worrying about
whether your plan is perfect or not, you aren't going to get to the point of
actually _doing_ anything. If you find yourself in that situation, taking a
step back and realizing that many times a plan is nothing more than a guess
could remove that barrier to productivity.

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imgabe
If you're making predictions about what other people are going to do, call it
a guess. If you're making predictions about what you are going to do, it
should be a plan.

~~~
rimantas
Yeah, if you are in the business that does not depend on the market and other
people, you can plan. Otherwise you are just guessing.

------
bena
Failing to plan is planning to fail.

