3 ms·
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, y
by 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 agoThat 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.