To Plan, Or Not To Plan?

On a marketing listserve to which I belong, the subject of having, or not having, a marketing plan has been the subject of much discussion. In addition, a few of my clients over the years have asked my firm to prepare a marketing plan for them. I am not very comfortable with the request, perhaps because personally I hate planning (don't ask me what I'm doing a week from now, because I have no idea), and tend to favor inspired improvisation. In other words, the rationale that follows may be nothing more than my attempt to justify what is simply my own temperament. But here is what I had to say on the listserve:

The military theorist Von Clausewitz said of war that while planning is essential, all plans are useless. He meant, I think, that while it’s good to have some idea of what you are trying to do, it never turns out the way you thought it would.

Lawyers have a tendency to dither while indulging in endless analysis and planning. And since I am tuned into the military channel today for some reason, George Patton said, “a good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.”

With most of my clients an hour long phone call pretty much suffices to determine a marketing plan: What are your long term goals? What are your medium term goals? What are your immediate to-dos? In what priority? Voila — instant marketing plan.

An article in The Economist noted, “Preparation is an art, not a science, which makes planning for the future of a business more complicated. Strategic business planning went out of favor in the 1980s and 1990s because it got bogged down in the mathematics of detailed business plans that might or might not be implemented. Jack Welch, the leader of leaders during that period, set the tone by shutting General Electric's 200-strong planning department in 1983.”

Welch himself has written:

“Clausewitz summed up what it had all been about in his classic On War. Men could not reduce strategy to a formula. Detailed planning necessarily failed, due to the inevitable frictions encountered: chance events, imperfections in execution, and the independent will of the opposition. Instead, the human elements were paramount: leadership, morale, and the almost instinctive savvy of the best generals.

"The Prussian general staff, under the elder von Moltke, perfected these concepts in practice. They did not expect a plan of operations to survive beyond the first contact with the enemy. They set only the broadest of objectives and emphasized seizing unforeseen opportunities as they arose. Strategy was not a lengthy action plan. It was the evolution of a central idea through continually changing circumstances."

Comments

[Bob Kraft]

Hey Mark, are you just using the listserv as a place to put up first drafts of your blog posts? Didn't you sign some kind of exclusivity agreement when you joined the list...?

Bob

[Jim Reed]

I'm with Bob! But more to the point, what is the alternative if you don't have any plan-- just a chaotic mess where maybe things get done and maybe not? While I agree that you shouldn't spend an inordinate amount of time planning (as opposed to doing) and you sure as hell shouldn't be paralyzed into inaction by planning, how can you allocate the time necessary to get big projects done if you don't create a plan to chip away at it?

Jim Reed-- "Your Worst Nightmare, an Attorney Who Insists on Planning!" :-)

[Susan Cartier Liebel]

I'm with Jim. Goals and planning take dreams and make them more real with a time line for completion. But I appreciate there are personalities like yours which work best spontaneously because you are capable of thinking and implementing immediately...there is no lag time. (Confession: I'm exactly like this, too.!) But not everyone is like this. They need 'something'..not necessarily complex...but a customized road map unique to them and the way they work best to help them create their business. The other extreme is the person who plans and plans and plans and accomplishes nothing...not even a final plan because their real fear is actual implementation!