“A good plan, violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”
– General George S. Patton, World War II General and 1912 US Olympian (did ya know that?)
Perfect is an illusion.
Planning is not about perfect. It’s about preparation. It’s about forethought and calculation.
A good plan typically won’t be based on 100% of what we need to know, because we typically can’t know 100% of what we need to know.
A perfect plan, if it even exists, often has the benefit of hindsight, which means it ain’t a plan at all, it’s a response or reaction. Responses and reactions are about yesterday. Plans are about what we do NEXT.
Since the perfect plan is a pipe dream, we ought to focus on building a good plan. How do we do that? We consider the facts we have, the experiences we’ve gained, the perspectives we’ve gathered, the perspectives of the people involved and the instincts we’re blessed with, and then we execute. Violently.
(Click below for my favorite Patton quote, as delivered by George C. Scott in his portrayal of the General in the movie that bears his name…)
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