Are you planning to win by failing to plan?
In this report we are going to talk about planning. The one thing that you need to know is
that if you fail to plan you are planning to win. This statement is probably going to have
you reading it a number of times because it seems as if it is turned upside down. Most
people assume that if you fail to plan you plan to fail. I want to tell you that this is not
entirely true especially in today’s highly robust market. If you have a planning impediment
then you need to keep reading this report because it will set you free.
The thing is, planning is designed for controlled environments. If you are creating
products you can actually plan to create products. If you have a product creation plan,
congratulations, it will probably work. You can control everything that is involved with
creating the product.
The same goes if you want to bake a cake. You get a plan and it will probably work because
you can control the environment. You can control the temperature, the ingredients and
the utensils that you use.
When it comes to making money from your business, things are different. Your business
is a contested environment and planning does not work in contested environments. It
requires strategy.
Think about playing chess. If you play chess or checkers, how often would
you win if before you sat down against your opponent, you actually
planned out what it is you are going to do to win the game? You
probably won’t win if you do this.
Why, because you have an opponent that’s contesting every single thing you’re doing.
Your plan is not going to work. What you need is strategy. What you need is to understand
that environment. What you need is to understand everything it is you’re working with.
What you need is to understand the strength of the pieces on the board relative to where
they’re placed on the board. What you need is strategy.
In essence, the very plan that you seek is probably the very thing that is destroying your
success. Most people tend to use plans as strait jackets and they venture out into a
contested environment where they find their plan doesn’t work. It is easy to blame the
plan. We followed the plan. The thing is, the plan is not going to work in a contested
environment.
The purpose of this report is to give you a method and a framework to work with that will
allow you to be extremely agile in contested environments. This will liberate you from
this whole idea that everything has to be planned out. The fact is you don’t have to plan
especially when it comes to contested environments.
If you understand the fact that planning has its role and, strategy has its role then all you
need to understand is how to respond strategically in contested, extremely rapid changing
environments. I have a framework that will allow you to do that and the success that you
seek will be the success that is yours.
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How do you see the difference between planning and strategy? What differences do you
see in your business? You need to take the time to look at your business to see how much
planning you have actually done, and what areas you have actually tried to take a plan
into a contested environment. Has this frustrated you? Did you get the results you were
expecting to get?
There is something that we actually call a mismatch. This is where someone says that if
you follow this particular plan and you do this you will get X amount of results. For the
most part this is not what will happen. There will be some variation on what they have
told you and you will not get what it is that’s proposed. The reason for this is that you
can’t script the market’s response. You can’t control all those different things that are
going on in the environment.
You can’t script the response so the chances of you getting what’s been proposed or
advertised are – slim to none for the most part. We call this a mismatch and this mismatch
creates disorientation in people. If people don’t know how to reorient themselves they
will end up going into a negative downward spiral where everything will just fall apart.
It’s time to evaluate what has gone on in your business up to this particular point. I want
you to think about the role of planning in your business and the role of strategy in your
business. Have you ever tried to execute a plan in an environment and it didn’t work? Do
you know why it didn’t work?
It’s time to build on what I have talked about so far. Do you remember the saying “The
ties that bind are the ties that blind”? I want to put a little twist on this and say, “The
plans that bind are the plans that blind.”
As an example of what I am trying to explain let’s say that there is a guy who was dating a
girl. They have an amazing relationship and he is totally in love with her. The girl breaks
up with the guy. You need to keep in mind that this is the world he knows and everything
in his world has been reduced down to this relationship because of all the time they have
spent together and the places they have been together. There are also all the people that
he met in his life through that particular relationship.
The moment she breaks up with him, his entire world crumbles. Everything seems to
be lost. There’s nothing else for him to live for. Now, despite the fact that this is a huge
world and that there are millions of women out there that have the potential to be in a
relationship with him, he doesn’t see it. His world shrunk. His entire universe was reduced
down to every single thing that was happening in that particular relationship.
In essence to the relationship, everything that had bound them together blinded him to
the universe that actually existed beyond that particular relationship. This guy feels like he
has nothing else to live for. He is completely depressed, completely lost and feeling that
the entire world is lost. He commits suicide because he feels as if there is nothing else to
live for. Now, of course suicides happen for all kinds of other reasons, but, that’s not the
point that I’m trying to talk about. This isn’t a conversation about suicide.
It’s the conversation about how we can become blinded by the things that we’re engaged
in. In the very popular Internet marketing sector, many people become blinded by the
plans that they’re exposed to. They think this is all there is and they miss out on some of
the other things that are out there.
Let’s look at things a little bit differently. Think about the 60’s. Think about the automobile
industry in the 60’s. It was completely different from where it is today. Think about one
of the companies that used to be one of the huge brands back then. They were called,
Plymouth. Where is Plymouth today? They don’t exist.
What about the airline industry? I think it was in the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s all the way up until the
60’s or the 70’s Pan American, was the “it” when it came down to air travel. Where is Pan
American today? They don’t exist.
What about some of the other companies, some of the companies that had huge brands
like, Polaroid and Howard Johnson and Oldsmobile and Maytag, Canada Dry and Gateway,
7-Up? All of them were toppled by transitions.
Here’s what happened, they got so caught up in the brand that they had and how fantastic
it was that they lost sight.
What happens is you have all these people in their corporate suits. They’re in the room
and they have their plan on how this thing should play out. They have their plan on how
it is they’re going to grow their market. The thing is, they are disconnected from the
different trends that are developing.
Guess what happened?
There were some transitions that happened in their marketplace as new players came in
and it started to change the game on them a little bit. Dell was one of them. Comp USA
sold a lot of computers but Dell started selling computers direct
What I’m saying is that the plans that bind are the plans that can actually blind you to all
the other things that are out there. What happens is that we go and we follow this rigid
planning process. We do it in isolation. We have our steps that we’re following, these stepby-
step plans. This is how they said it’s supposed to be done.
When you follow these step by step plans it can often lead to you being disconnected from
the different developing transitions that are happening in the marketplace. That plan can
become a strait jacket. If it actually becomes a strait jacket and we are desensitized to the
trends and to the transitions. That strait jacket turns into a corporate or company coffin
and then it’s all over.
There are real-life examples of how that’s actually happened. Actually one of them is
recent. I won’t go into too much detail, but, we’ll mention it. I’m looking to take you to a
place where, we’re going to open up some new perspectives. Let me give you an example
of what it is I mean by that.
If you were doing a presentation right now in front of a room of hundreds of people and
you had a blemish on your forehead, you would be the only person that can’t see the
blemish even though you’re the one that’s closest to it. The reason why, is because of your
perspective.
Sometimes we can be too close to a situation to be able to see the opportunities it offers
or even the dangers that it presents. Sometimes it takes an outside person to come in and
challenge our perspective and set us into a different place. In life, what we see depends
on where we’re sitting.
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What happened to these companies was that they didn’t adapt to those particular
transitions that were happening. This is not isolated to just big companies. It happens all
over the place. You do not have to be behind when it comes down to what’s happening in
whatever your space is. It doesn’t matter what your space is, whether it’s a big market or
a little market, a niche market or a whatever, it doesn’t matter.
There’s a way for us to be able to anticipate these transitions and play some double bets,
so that we’re here today and we also have a chance to win tomorrow, if any of them
actually play out.
What do we do about it?
One of the things is to understand patterns. When we understand certain patterns certain
things become predictable. For example, it is winter right now in the United States. We
all know that spring comes after winter and we can all predict when spring will arrive.
We know that summer comes after spring and then fall before going right back to winter.
This is a pattern and we can also say exactly when these particular transitions are going
to take place.
Sunrise is another thing that we can predict. We know when the sun is going to rise and
when the sun is going to set. Birthdays are the same, we know when we were born and
we know that we are going to go and transition to the next age.
These are very simple examples and it might not be that easy in business. We can however
look at previous transitions in business and using some vision and some creativity we can
anticipate some common transitions.
When we do this we can place some kind of double bet on today and tomorrow. In other
words, we can continue to do what it is that we’re doing based on our sensitivity to what’s
going on in the environment. We can also look at potential transitions, and place a double
bet.
One of the things you want to keep in mind, and the reason you want to do this is that if
your market evolves, and your business doesn’t, it is pretty much an open invitation to a
disaster. That’s exactly what happened with all those companies that disappeared. The
markets evolved and changed but their businesses didn’t.
You can allow yourself to be in the particular place where you’re not necessarily following
everybody, where you’re caught up in the herd. I believe that sometimes we have to
hustle from the herd. That’s what I mean by, united we fall, divided we stand. Sometimes
we have to actually separate ourselves from popular thinking, the mainstream thinking,
because we see something else that’s coming.
There are very few people who actually see the transitions. People tell them not to do it
that it is the wrong way to go. What actually happens is that these people get ahead of
the transition and they become a part of it. It becomes a huge industry and then everyone
else, the herd, comes in trying to jump on it. When this happens everyone is trying to
fight and compete. The people who get into these transitions at the very beginning are
the big winners.
The good news is that this is a skill that we can all develop. It is
something that all of us have access to and it is something that we
can start to develop and use right now. All you have to do is have
fun, be a visionary and be creative. There is really no right or
wrong way to do this because what we’re doing is just
playing out different scenarios.
What I want you to do is put off your plans on what you think you should be doing. I
want you to put off your strategies for the moment. A lot of the big companies that
disappeared had their plans and they had strategies. The thing is if your strategy is based
on something that has changed it won’t work.
You need to make sure that your planning phase or your strategic phase is based on
something that is real and something that is happening right now. It could be something
that could potentially happen either, in other words, anticipating different transitions.
How could your success today blind you to the coming dangers, which is what really
happened with all these different companies that were successful?
Sometimes that success becomes a blindfold. We get so caught up in our ego, so caught
up in our success that we just assumed that because it worked before it will work in the
future. We know what it is we’re doing, but, we’re so disconnected and desensitized to
the changes that are happening. We are disconnected to the trends and the mark of the
transitions. Every move that you make begins to be a move in isolation, that’s disconnected
from the real world. Even if you’re adapting it is wrong, because, you’re adapting to the
wrong things. You’re adapting to stuff that doesn’t exist.
So take some time and think about your business. Can you see transitions coming or are
you too caught up in the planning.
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