Planning is an essential element of any business; however, planning gone awry causes paralysis by analysis. Ideally you spend about 10% - 15% of your time planning and 85% - 90% of your time doing. Plans are great for drafting that high level view and general flow of projects. You can’t plan for everything and if you do odds are you have spent more time planning than you have doing. Stuff doesn’t get done by writing great strategic plans, stuff gets done by doing.

There are probably a few project managers (perhaps even Craig Fitzpatrick) reading this going this guy is nuts, you need gant charts, pert charts and the whole process mapped out with all the interrelated tasks. That may work well in a mid and large corporate environment or bureaucracy; however, most start-ups don’t have dedicated project managers.

The “What about” or “Did you think about”

“What abouts” and “think abouts” are often dependant on the circumstances at the time in which they occur. Again, you can plan for a certain amount of stuff; however, to get something done you need to do. Your planning should reveal most of the major bumps in the road and you can plan for them. When you start doing new bumps occur and you need to deal with them. The best example I can think of to illustrate this is a home renovation. You make your plan you start to do the work and then something unforeseen happens. No amount of “strategic planning” would have found this bump in the road. Planning finds the “known-known and known-unknowns” doing finds the “unknown-unknowns”. Often the true challenges lie in the “unknown-unknowns”.

If you want to get stuff done, get doing.

Cheers,
Ian Graham