Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable

Gene Mage

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable,” noted Dwight D. Eisenhower. As we watch the Iraqi conflict unfold on live television, that point is being brought home to us most graphically. Our military leaders have learned through bitter experience that you must plan in pencil. Once that first shot is fired the plans go out the window, and situational awareness, combined with operational flexibility, determines the outcome.

I believe one of the great lessons exemplified by Norman Schwarzkopf in the previous gulf war was that of the superiority of agility over centralized planning. In the business world, the principle has held equally true, particularly in the technology crash of the past three years. As one executive advised in a recent meeting, “You need to avoid office romance. I mean, don’t fall in love with your plans.”

The trap for us as leaders is when we invest our egos into a particular project or approach, and cling to that approach tenaciously even though our original assumptions have since become suspect. Killing a bad business, bad idea, or bad project takes extraordinary courage, especially when our name has been stamped upon it. Our identity gets tied up with the success or failure of the project, and frankly we could not imagine letting it go. Here are some ideas to help us avoid falling into this trap.

1. Admit that your ego is part of the equation. No one is completely objective. I noticed when I worked in product line marketing that the identity of the brand frequently assumed the identity of the product line manager. For example, if the Tide commercial featured two perky blondes dancing in the laundry room over whiter whites and brighter brights, you can be sure that the product line team consists of perky blondes who view the world as their dance-floor.
   
   There is nothing wrong with the brand becoming a personal expression of the manager’s ego to the extent that it builds a sense of responsibility for the success of the brand. The problem occurs when the perky blonde campaign no longer sells Tide, but the product line manager refuses to change it because it was “my” campaign.
   
   
2. Continually experiment, capture data, and adapt. What many companies are discovering today is that is cheaper and more effective to undertake probing actions into the market and assess the response. This is the messy, iterative process of engaging the market place in real time and seeing what happens.
   
   I have observed that research, or even “talking” with customers, only gets you so far. Unless there is money on the table, you do not get real data. Unless you make and ship product, you do not know how you will really do in a production environment. The market does not yield useful data to you unless you engage in commerce.
   
   
3. Avoid assuming “fixed” positions on the battlefield. While most of us studied France’s impotent Maginot line defensive against the Germans in world war two, far too many executives build Maginot manufacturing lines. The speed of information transfer in the contemporary business environment has shortened product life cycles so dramatically that it has become almost impossible to predict what you will need to be making more than a few months in advance. Serving this brave new world takes a totally different manufacturing approach based on modular, scalable capacity, reconfigurable tooling, and flexible space configurations.
   
   
4. Never be ashamed of a strategic retreat. In the American civil war, both sides spent a substantial part of the war in strategic retreats. It has been proven that you can sometimes inflict more damage on your enemy while moving backwards than forwards. Cutting your losses when the situation demands it is not cowardice or failure, but solid strategic thinking. It is as important to know when to get out of a business as it is when to get in.

Syndicated columnist Gene C. Mage is author of the book Managing for High Performance. For free information on management topics, contact Gene at www.makingitwork.com.

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