“To plan” is much more important than “the plan”. The outcome of planning is not a document, but the things we learned about our current state, goals and impediments; the preparations we made for a possible future in which some uncertain events happen; and the actions we took to get ready for action.
When, after ardous preparations, our plans look like long to-do lists, with the expected duration attached to each task, and an assumption that the future will unfold as the unimpeded delivery of item after item in perfect succession, we are just fooling ourselves and reducing our chances of success.
When we skip planning altogether because the future is uncertain, and we abandon any expectation of being prepared for risks we can foresee but not predict, we are choosing to reduce our chances of success too.
The ultimate aim of planning is increasing our chances of success with a relatively small effort investment. Abandoning after planning is also a form of success, as it costed us little to avoid a likely failure. Avoiding impossible endeavors is only one of the flavors in which successful abandoning comes. Another often overlooked flavor is to complete something doable, but which benefit is not worth the effort. Beware.
This is the second post in my planning series. You may also be interested in:
The Adaptive Executive 
3 thoughts on “The Outcome of Planning”