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> The problem isn't that people can't think strategically. The problem is that real life has a way of making your strategy obsolete. As Mike Tyson said: Every

> The problem isn't that people can't think strategically. The problem is that real life has a way of making your strategy obsolete. As Mike Tyson said: Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Having a team that communicates effectively and and is agile (in the normal sense of the word) and executes effectively is more important than strategy.

zabzonk 4y ago
Or alternatively: "No Plan Survives First Contact With the Enemy" https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/05/04/no-plan/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/05/04/no-plan/
- hef19898 4y ago
  Which doesn't mean you can afford to have no plan at all. Because: "Failing to plan means planning to fail".
  - mrhether 4y ago
    Such words ring true to everybody who has ever had a chance to experience failure. Proper time management is the key I would say and that's what it's good for and where it fails.
    - hef19898 4y ago
      I also like that one: Proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance, the 7P.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  "Plans are useless, but planning is essential." https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/18/planning/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/18/planning/
zmgsabst 4y ago
> Having a team that communicates effectively and and is agile (in the normal sense of the word) and executes effectively is more important than strategy. Hard disagree: Those things are important, but I’ve seen teams with those qualities spin or fail to produce impact because they don’t have a strategy. You need an objective and you need a plan to get there — “objectives and key results”. Communication and agility allow for tactical changes in completing that strategy, which are important, but having no strategy will go nowhere.
- ddek 4y ago
  I'd argue that having follow a doctrine of agility, communication and cooperation is in itself part of a strategy. It only solves part of the equation, though. Your overall strategy is incoherent if you pair these traits with a long-distance ivory tower goal setting. If you had a process to quickly identify and refine smaller (or sub) objectives you'd use the agility to its potential. Add in some mechanisms to minimise the artifacts of fast-paced agile engineering (e.g. tech debt, bloat), and you have a complete strategy.
mountainriver 4y ago
What’s more important than that is to update your strategy openly when new information arises
marginalia_nu 4y ago
> Having a team that communicates effectively and and is agile (in the normal sense of the word) and executes effectively is more important than strategy. Why is this necessary?
- LegitShady 4y ago
  So you can dodge if someone tries to punch you in the mouth I guess
hef19898 4y ago
Only that Tyson and others do have a game plan that accountsvfor the fact of being punched in the mouth.
oersted 4y ago
It's not an excuse not to have a plan. Strategy is dynamic and iterative. When you get punched in the mouth, you just adjust your plan based on new evidence, you don't throw it out the window. Besides, business and engineering are not like fights and battles. Sudden shocks are rare and split-second decisions are not often called for. In most cases new evidence comes gradually, there is time to validate it, digest it and re-tune expectations and strategy. Furthermore, always acting on the main immediate priority/bottleneck rarely leads to optimal speed. In computer science, this is called a greedy algorithm. They are indeed simpler to implement and tune (and to execute by teams), but rarely optimal. Real speed requires making predictions and adjusting them as more information becomes available, this is what planning is.
- dgb23 4y ago
  > When you get punched in the mouth, you just adjust your plan based on new evidence, you don't throw it out the window. I interpret the Mike Tyson quote differently than you. What he was saying that under high pressure you _will_ throw stuff out of the window, namely all the stuff that doesn't work under pressure, in difficult situations. This is why plans need to be simple. You need to be able to keep them in your head when shit hits the fan so you don't start flailing around like a headless chicken.
  - oersted 4y ago
    That is a good point about simple plans, I imagine it certainly applies to any challenge that plays out quickly in real-time. Even when it is not so, coordinating people to execute a plan is also hard, and predictions become much less reliable with over-complicated models of reality. Simplicity is definitely an important factor.
nisa 4y ago
> Having a team that communicates effectively and and is agile (in the normal sense of the word) and executes effectively is more important than strategy. Been part of a team that was very agile and executed quite effectively every day. We just put out fires caused by our bad code. It worked fine in some way every time but hours were wasted but everyone worked hard and gave their best. I guess a strategy in this context would be post-mortems and root-cause analysis and time for the devs to actually learn the frameworks they are abusing.

zabzonk 4y ago

Or alternatively: "No Plan Survives First Contact With the Enemy" https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/05/04/no-plan/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/05/04/no-plan/

hef19898 4y ago
Which doesn't mean you can afford to have no plan at all. Because: "Failing to plan means planning to fail".
- mrhether 4y ago
  Such words ring true to everybody who has ever had a chance to experience failure. Proper time management is the key I would say and that's what it's good for and where it fails.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    I also like that one: Proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance, the 7P.
pfdietz 4y ago
"Plans are useless, but planning is essential." https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/18/planning/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/18/planning/

zmgsabst 4y ago

> Having a team that communicates effectively and and is agile (in the normal sense of the word) and executes effectively is more important than strategy. Hard disagree: Those things are important, but I’ve seen teams with those qualities spin or fail to produce impact because they don’t have a strategy. You need an objective and you need a plan to get there — “objectives and key results”. Communication and agility allow for tactical changes in completing that strategy, which are important, but having no strategy will go nowhere.

ddek 4y ago
I'd argue that having follow a doctrine of agility, communication and cooperation is in itself part of a strategy. It only solves part of the equation, though. Your overall strategy is incoherent if you pair these traits with a long-distance ivory tower goal setting. If you had a process to quickly identify and refine smaller (or sub) objectives you'd use the agility to its potential. Add in some mechanisms to minimise the artifacts of fast-paced agile engineering (e.g. tech debt, bloat), and you have a complete strategy.

mountainriver 4y ago

What’s more important than that is to update your strategy openly when new information arises

marginalia_nu 4y ago

> Having a team that communicates effectively and and is agile (in the normal sense of the word) and executes effectively is more important than strategy. Why is this necessary?

LegitShady 4y ago
So you can dodge if someone tries to punch you in the mouth I guess

hef19898 4y ago

Only that Tyson and others do have a game plan that accountsvfor the fact of being punched in the mouth.

oersted 4y ago

It's not an excuse not to have a plan. Strategy is dynamic and iterative. When you get punched in the mouth, you just adjust your plan based on new evidence, you don't throw it out the window. Besides, business and engineering are not like fights and battles. Sudden shocks are rare and split-second decisions are not often called for. In most cases new evidence comes gradually, there is time to validate it, digest it and re-tune expectations and strategy. Furthermore, always acting on the main immediate priority/bottleneck rarely leads to optimal speed. In computer science, this is called a greedy algorithm. They are indeed simpler to implement and tune (and to execute by teams), but rarely optimal. Real speed requires making predictions and adjusting them as more information becomes available, this is what planning is.

dgb23 4y ago
> When you get punched in the mouth, you just adjust your plan based on new evidence, you don't throw it out the window. I interpret the Mike Tyson quote differently than you. What he was saying that under high pressure you _will_ throw stuff out of the window, namely all the stuff that doesn't work under pressure, in difficult situations. This is why plans need to be simple. You need to be able to keep them in your head when shit hits the fan so you don't start flailing around like a headless chicken.
- oersted 4y ago
  That is a good point about simple plans, I imagine it certainly applies to any challenge that plays out quickly in real-time. Even when it is not so, coordinating people to execute a plan is also hard, and predictions become much less reliable with over-complicated models of reality. Simplicity is definitely an important factor.

nisa 4y ago

> Having a team that communicates effectively and and is agile (in the normal sense of the word) and executes effectively is more important than strategy. Been part of a team that was very agile and executed quite effectively every day. We just put out fires caused by our bad code. It worked fine in some way every time but hours were wasted but everyone worked hard and gave their best. I guess a strategy in this context would be post-mortems and root-cause analysis and time for the devs to actually learn the frameworks they are abusing.