Plans rarely work out a hundred percent as expected. Time and again, there is usually the need to make instant adjustments or changes in the plan due to unforeseen circumstances. Knowing exactly what to change to achieve the expected outcome is where the value of planning comes into play.

A plan can simply be seen as a sequence of assumptions about future expected activities and event. This is why plans rarely come off without a hindrance.

We can’t know the future hundred percent; we can only assume.  In the process of executing the plan, it’s either there is a change in the environment which affects the market forces or the activities performed were insufficient or defective which always presents the need to make changes on the fly.

Here’s what Dwight D. Eisenhower said about plans “In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

Mike Tyson putting it in another way, says, “Everyone has a plan until I punch them in the nose.”

Field Marshal Helmuth Karl Bernhard, puts it this way, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.”

Making a plan more detailed does not increase the chances that the plan itself is viable, workable, practicable and valid, nor does it give us any greater degree of control. It doesn’t’.

Then, why do you need to have a plan first before implementation or execution?

Answer: The value is not in the plan. The value is in the planning. More essentially, your ability to instantly adjust, to achieve the desired outcome is greatly improved when you have a plan, and as well as know the different plugs in the plan.

Knowing how all the pieces in the plan are interconnected and which levers drive specific results is the key to knowing what to adjust when things get off course or delayed.

Therefore, the value of planning is knowing the pieces that hold the plan together and the function of each, which is gotten from the process of planning.

It is not good enough to have a plan, but knowing the in and out of a plan to make decisions on the fly.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: [Excerpts] The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham.