The justified attribution for the caption of this blog should go to Southwest Airlines founder Herb Kelleher, who once remarked: “We have a strategic plan. It’s called doing things.”
I am not discounting the need for planning here. That said, it does become a kind of rabbit hole where what is sought is the ideal time, the perfect situation, an in-depth analysis and the most conducive environment, before you get around to doing things, which in most cases does not happen because the planning for perfection is never the springboard for getting things done.
If you maintain a journal or a to do task list or your old project reports or business plans and you go back in time and look at them, a feeling of nostalgia does take over for a bit. Some of them are brilliant to say the least. But, when you introspect, you realise that most, if not all, have remained just on paper and you did not do anything as planned.
Your plans are like dopamine- it energises, excites and gets you invested and moving. That said, they are also like impediments wherein you get mired in the default of what is planned with no room for looking around corners and adapting to new situations or opportunities. Therefore Planning = Shackles ? Well, probably.
The game changers in the world, the ones who made significant dents in the universe, the people who created global brands, movements and organisations were everyday people- college dropouts, frustrated, angry employees, teenage rebels etc. Did they have a hard bound script and a plan in place? No way. What they had was the willingness to listen to the whispers of possibility and the gumption to embrace uncertainty, the chaos of the world. Now that sounds like a plan.
The map is certainly not the territory. And the greatest journeys, discoveries, adventures and inventions are rarely mapped.
So, whats your…plan?