This is Not What I Expected!

Planning has lots of meanings. Often, planning is a bridge between intent and action. That means once we want to accomplish something, get somewhere, achieve a goal, make a number, change, transform, grow, shrink, acquire, dispose, win, or a myriad of end states, we spend time some effort wrestling with the how to (plan) achieve the aforementioned intent (vision). The vision is described with adjectives and nouns, but the plan needs verbs to have any useful meaning. If the vision is big and farther out than the budget, the plan is often called strategic. If the vision looks out as far as the budget, the plan is often called business. The vision creates the promise and the plan provides the confidence to achieve the promise. Planning is getting harder to do.

We measure the success of plans by the certainty of the results achieved by the execution described in the plan. Did we get what we expected? Yes is good and no is bad, usually. For the better part of the two decades leading up to a year ago, with the crash of Lehman Brothers, good planning was readily achievable and, when well executed, was well rewarded. It was achievable, because the economy and business “processes” were well behaved, that is, they followed the rules we learned from the past success.

There are many reasons why it is harder to plan and execute, but a clear one is the increased effect of different types of networks and the multiplied interdependencies we have. Our connected world is wonderful in more ways than I can imagine. We have global reach, instantaneous connectivity, email, teleconferencing, GPS, and ad infinitum. Everything around us happens faster and we can be better able to take advantage of business at the speed of light. We can as long as we are not in the dark. The resulting complexity of all our interconnectivity and data moving at the speed of light is that we have to pick ever more carefully what to look at and what not to look at.

Here is where the hard part comes. Planning what we do in the future is done with what we know about the past and what we guess about that future. What we guess about that future is heavily influenced by what we believe about what mattered (past tense). What we look at, measure, monitor, and interpret is limited by our technology and focus. If all the new connections and data moving at the speed of light change behaviors and our environment (new rules), then the execution we are doing may not work as we expect. If the networked interdependencies run into a big failure somewhere, the bad stuff can cascade toward and around us faster than we can react or respond. We can’t see coming what we’re not looking for. People that manage the electrical transmission lines, the grid, know this all too well. But there is lots of other behavior just like that; spread of disease, rumors, fashion, stock market swings, particularly when human panic and mob behavior are at play.

• How do we make decisions? What do we believe about tomorrow, next month, or next year? Why?
• When something important happens, how do we know it has? Are we good at making changes quickly?
• Are we “wired” personally and technologically for today’s environment? Do our behaviors and biases work at pushing what we see in the present into what fits our memory of the past? How does that affect our decisions about the future?
• Does uncertainty scare us, so that we play safe? How about the competition?

 “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” Voltaire (1694 – 1778)