<\/p>\n
This is not meant to sound like ‘ What they didn’t teach you at Harvard Business School “.\u00a0 Though, worth understanding.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When Neil Armstrong<\/em><\/span> planted that flag on the moon in 1969, the world saw one giant leap. What they didn’t see? The 382,000 people who had already failed on paper. NASA<\/em><\/span> didn’t just plan the moon landing. They planned the planning. Then they planned what to plan before planning the planning.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Confused? Good. Let’s travel this journey together.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So, here’s the formula which is…not a formula. No seven steps to..no reframing..no pyramids..lets respect each others’ intelligence. Thats the least we can do.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Because the plan before the plan before the plan isn’t a system\u2014it’s a\u00a0shift in temporal architecture.<\/em><\/span> It’s learning to see your current actions not as endpoints but as setup sequences. It’s understanding that what you’re doing today isn’t the plot\u2014it’s setting up the character development for a scene that won’t happen until 2027.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Throwback time here:-<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Starbucks’ real innovation<\/em><\/span> wasn’t coffee. It was convincing landlords in the 1990s to give them corner locations with window space, even when they had no track record. The plan before the plan was real estate strategy disguised as a coffee business.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n WhatsApp’s genius<\/em><\/span> wasn’t the app. Before they wrote a single line of code, Jan Koum<\/em><\/span> and Brian Acton<\/em><\/span> spent years at Yahoo watching what NOT to do with messaging. Their plan before the plan was professional failure that became market intelligence.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Spotify<\/em><\/span> didn’t plan to compete with iTunes. Their plan before the plan was securing music licensing deals nobody thought possible by framing themselves as piracy-killers to the music industry, not iTunes-killers. They changed the opponent before the game began.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The legendary Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi<\/em><\/span> once arrived at his most famous duel… without his sword.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n His opponent, Sasaki Kojiro<\/em><\/span>, was already there, blade gleaming, confidence radiating. Musashi showed up late. Casually whittled a wooden sword from an oar on the boat ride over. And won.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But here’s what the history books misses the wood for the trees(or oar?): Musashi’s plan wasn’t “fight with wooden sword.” His plan before the plan was “arrive late enough to agitate Kojiro.” The plan before THAT plan was choosing the island location where he’d have access to an oar. The plan before THAT was building a reputation unpredictable enough that showing up swordless would destabilize rather than disqualify him.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Most people prepare for battle. Legends prepare the battlefield.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the Kerala backwaters, there’s a 73-year-old boatman named Krishnan who has never, not once in forty years, had an empty boat. Zero marketing. No website. Not even a painted sign.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n His secret?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Twenty years ago, he started learning the names of children in tourist families. Not the parents\u2014the children. He’d remember them year after year. “Is Sophia still playing violin?” “Did Rahul get into that engineering college?”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n His plan before the plan before the plan wasn’t customer service. It was\u00a0manufactured nostalgia.<\/em><\/span> He was planting memory trees whose shade he’d enjoy decades later.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Now parents plan their Kerala trips around Krishnan’s availability because their kids\u2014now adults\u2014insist on it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Most of us end up seeing the outcomes. That said, it is worth probing into the invisible architecture of everything<\/em><\/span>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You see a bakery. Fresh croissants. The aroma of butter and possibility. You think the plan was: make delicious bread, sell delicious bread<\/span>.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Wrong.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The REAL plan\u2014the one nobody sees\u2014started three years earlier when the baker stood in a Paris alley at 4 AM, not learning to bake, but learning which flour supplier delivered before dawn. The plan before the plan before the plan was discovering that the city’s water pH affected yeast behavior. It was befriending the landlord’s mother so he’d hold the property for six extra weeks while permits came through.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is what I call Pre-Strategic Positioning<\/em><\/span>\u2014the invisible scaffolding that makes “overnight success” possible after a decade of darkness.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Some people plan their work. Some work their plan. And then there are those who\u00a0plan the plan before the plan before the plan<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>\u2014 the rare breed who see the invisible scaffolding that holds strategy, serendipity, and soul together.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The first plan is what you scribble on a napkin. The second is what you polish for the PowerPoint. The third \u2014 the one before both \u2014 lives in your instinct, your madness, your hunger to make a dent before the world even knows a dent is needed.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Some food for torque here if you may:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When Steve Jobs<\/em><\/span> was meditating in India, barefoot and unbothered, that was the plan before the plan before the plan. The ashram before the Apple Store. The real estate of the mind entrenched well before retail real estate.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Before the Wright brothers<\/em><\/span> built their flying machine, they spent years watching birds over sand dunes. That was the pre-flight manual before the flight manual.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Closer home, before Ratan Tata<\/em> <\/span>dreamt of the Nano<\/em><\/span>, there was a soaked-in-a-rainy-street moment \u2014 him watching a family of four balance precariously on a scooter. That was the human empathy before the corporate blueprint.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Your timeline is not your lifeline. If your plan begins in Excel, it\u2019s probably already dead.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If it begins in emotion, curiosity, or chaos \u2014 you\u2019re in business.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The\u00a0Plan before the Plan before the Plan<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>is the space between intent and invention.<\/em><\/span> The boardroom that exists only in the mind. The audacity to say, \u201cLet\u2019s first feel before we figure.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So before you do your next quarterly forecast, your next rebrand, your next pitch, ask yourself:<\/p>\n What are you not yet seeing that\u2019s quietly forming? What\u2019s the story before the story?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n That\u2019s your real starting line. Everything after that \u2014 the slides, the slogans, the success \u2014 is just the sequel.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The biggest myth in boardrooms and bedrooms alike? That success begins with\u00a0the plan<\/span>.<\/em> Wrong. Success begins three floors below, in the subterranean basement of thought\u2014the plan before the plan before the plan. That invisible architecture no one ever applauds but everyone benefits from. The scaffolding beneath the blueprint. The warm-up before the overture. The rehearsal before the rehearsal.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Da Vinci\u2019s<\/em><\/span> notebooks weren\u2019t sketches for paintings alone. They were pre-sketches of sketches\u2014miniature rehearsals of imagination. That\u2019s why the Mona Lisa<\/em> <\/span>doesn\u2019t just smile, she smirks\u2014because behind her lies not a plan, but the plan before the plan before the plan.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Most strategy decks are choreographed to death. Logos, numbers, charts. But the companies that stand apart invest not in plans, but in the pre-plans. Apple\u2019s \u201cThink Different\u201d<\/em> <\/span><\/a>wasn\u2019t just advertising<\/em><\/span><\/a>\u2014it was pre-thinking. The ideation before innovation before execution.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Contrast that with Kodak<\/em><\/span>. Their plan<\/em><\/span> was solid: keep selling film. Their plan before that<\/em><\/span>? Fuzzy. Their plan before that before that<\/em><\/span>? Nonexistent. And so, they got trapped in their own Polaroid frame.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n That Michelin star dish<\/em><\/span>? The chef doesn\u2019t begin at the stove. She begins at the market. Correction: she begins at the farm. That TED talk<\/em><\/span> you admired? The rehearsals didn\u2019t begin at the mirror. They began at the \u201cWhat am I really trying to say?\u201d question. That viral reel<\/em><\/span>? It wasn\u2019t about trending sounds. It was about micro-observations the creator made months earlier, parked quietly in their Notes app.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So what would the takeaways be here:-<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Plans are public. Pre-plans are private<\/em><\/span>.<\/strong> The unseen layers make the seen sparkle. Reverse engineer backwards<\/em><\/span>.<\/strong> Don\u2019t just ask \u201cwhat\u2019s the plan?\u201d Ask, \u201cwhat\u2019s the plan before I even knew I needed a plan? Slow is strategic.<\/em><\/span>\u00a0Think of the\u00a0un-hurried intention<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>as the ultimate productivity hack<\/em><\/span>. Greatness is fractal.<\/em><\/span>\u00a0Like Russian dolls, inside every plan lies a smaller one, quieter, truer.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The best strategies don\u2019t begin with slides. They begin with silence. Execution is celebrated. Pre-execution is underrated. But that\u2019s where the real game lives. So, forget Plan A, B, C. Ask instead: What was the prelude?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is not meant to sound like ‘ What they didn’t teach you at Harvard Business School “.\u00a0 Though, worth understanding. When Neil Armstrong planted that flag on the moon in 1969, the world saw one giant leap. What they didn’t see? The 382,000 people who had already failed on paper. NASA didn’t … Continue reading “The Plan Before The Plan Before The Plan”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2353"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2354,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2353\/revisions\/2354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}