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Let's just call plans what they are: guesses - (37signals) - The Diigo Meta page

www.37signals.com/...ll-plans-what-they-are-guesses - Cached - Annotated View

Joel Liu's personal annotations on this page

joel
Joel bookmarked on 2009-07-15 Plan PM team
  • There’s nothing wrong with guessing, dreaming, or predicting, but it’s not planning. Planning’s too definite a term for most things. We often use planning when we really mean guessing. And what we call it has a lot to do with how we think about it, do about it, and devote to it. I think companies often over think, over do, and over devote to planning.
  • Planning just leads to a work-in-progress plan whose success hinges on planning being a frequent activity and constantly changing. Planning is absolutely integral to success, whether you call it guessing or whatever (although the word dreaming seems a bit misleading).
  • Plans are nothing; planning is everything.
  • I fully agree. When things go according to “plan”, people are calm and don’t get bent out of shape but as soon as something different happens, people can sometimes go crazy (the hospital scene from the Dark Knight seems to fit here). I think that if more people were able to untrain themselves in thinking everything is a plan and that it’s just guesses based on a good and positive intentions, that there’d be a lot less stress and meetings sometimes.
  • Luis: more time spent on planning means gaining better understanding of the subject. And it often leads to significantly simpler (aka better) solution then the first obvious one. All of us sometimes need the time to think it really through.

This link has been bookmarked by 2 people and liked by 1 people. It was first bookmarked on 15 Jul 2009, by Joel Liu.

  • 15 Jul 09
    grahamperrin
    Graham Perrin

    Plan PM team unread 2009

    • There’s nothing wrong with guessing, dreaming, or predicting, but it’s not planning. Planning’s too definite a term for most things. We often use planning when we really mean guessing. And what we call it has a lot to do with how we think about it, do about it, and devote to it. I think companies often over think, over do, and over devote to planning.
    • Planning just leads to a work-in-progress plan whose success hinges on planning being a frequent activity and constantly changing. Planning is absolutely integral to success, whether you call it guessing or whatever (although the word dreaming seems a bit misleading).
    • 3 more annotations...
  • joel
    Joel Liu

    Plan PM team

    • There’s nothing wrong with guessing, dreaming, or predicting, but it’s not planning. Planning’s too definite a term for most things. We often use planning when we really mean guessing. And what we call it has a lot to do with how we think about it, do about it, and devote to it. I think companies often over think, over do, and over devote to planning.
    • Planning just leads to a work-in-progress plan whose success hinges on planning being a frequent activity and constantly changing. Planning is absolutely integral to success, whether you call it guessing or whatever (although the word dreaming seems a bit misleading).
    • 3 more annotations...

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