Trash the plans?

Planning is one of those words in the English language that has a variety of meanings and applications. Think of the word painting, for instance,  and what comes to mind?

We just read a blog post in the Christian Science Monitor by Brink Lindsey headlined "An entrepreneur's plan: Trash the plans and dive right in."  Mr. Lindsey rightly points out the potentuially stifling aspects of planning on an early-stage business with a new idea. He writes:

"...entrepreneurs grasp intuitively the central insight of the great economist F. A. Hayek: that capitalism is a process of discovery. Hayek saw that socialist central planning, then at the height of intellectual fashion, was doomed to founder on the unpredictability of the future ... Entrepreneurs are Hayekians at the micro level. They don't want to sit back and plan, they want to dive in and discover and learn. They want to experiment: to see what works and what doesn't, to build on the successes and leave the failures behind."

No argument there, as long as the particular notion of planning is what we would call a formal process resulting in a book full of analyses, charts, graphs and to-do lists. It is not unusual for entrepreneurs in the current environment, expecially those seeking capital, to have a polished plan on the shelf before they have a viable product to sell.

Addressing the subject of what planning is all about, General Dwight Eisenhower  pointed out, "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." In his sense, planning is a discipline, a framework, a thought process. In the real world, its hard to do anything without it.

We like to think of a plan as a process that begins with a theory. a framework of ideas that help us understand a technology, a marketplace, a financial market, or the like.  Like its original Greek root,   the word theory literally means "contemplation."  As it is with any good theory,  a plan should provide great flexibility as new data and insights change one's view of the theory -- or the assumptions supporting it.

In the end, planning helps reduce the risk and increases the odds of success of any undertaking, entrepreneurial or otherewise.  As Winston Churchill told the hand-wringers on the eve of war: "Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning."