The famous quote from one of President Eisenhower's speeches was, "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything." What does that exactly mean?
I'm intrigued by stories that do comparison between meticulous technocratic detail plans on a project versus one that is sort of winging it but make it with just the focus of the end goal in mind. Which one wins out?
I remember hearing the story between the Sydney Opera House, which was hailed as one of the most detailed planned projects to be devised in Australia, but became the world's gross example of one that failed to even remotely go as planned with something like a 1400% cost overruns and took over a decade to finish beyond the planned completion date.
The opposite supposedly happened with the Sydney Harbor Bridge, which finished early and underbudget. With the Harbor Bridge, the story goes that the project manager just asked what the budget was and when do you want it to be completed by and that was, they went with. While I'm sure there is much more to the story, but the Sydney Opera House was planned in great detail with day-by-day, exact materials needed, move times, man hours per job function and all the way to the last bolt and nut, but the Harbor Bridge not nearly as much detailing planning went into that project.
It is something we call the planning fallacy. We, as humans, have no real way to predict the future and the future is inherently unpredictable. So why is planning necessary if things normally don’t go according to plans? Planning is basically a map towards an outcome, and that is the best we can strive for.
Plans can be very liner, like going from point A to B, or have contingencies with many outcomes. Or it may even be emergency planning, which you hope never actually happens, but still have plans just in case. Whatever it is, you are seeking a desired outcome with your plans. The act of planning just puts your mind in motion to start to move forward, that is why we hear quotes about "planning" is the essential ingredient, not actually the plan itself. But the real goal of any plan is to get to X of that treasure map of success.
Planning starts your journey, but just be careful of planning each and every footstep as it is really unnecessary, because it will never happen in that way. Know where you are and where you need to go, let the journey take you there.
