Stop Planning, Start Doing
In the last two days, I saw one of the companies I work for cede the chance to pioneer legal precedent to a third-rate competitor and lose every bit of their leverage that had been designed to take a stake in a decently well-known startup. Their lawyers and staff spent too much time worrying and planning and holding meetings and then back to back headlines made it all irrelevant.
My attitude the whole time had pretty much been “I think you should just say fuck it, do it and see what happens.”
The fundamental rule of the internet is essentially this: Just doing it is cheaper than deciding about doing it. Or, it’s better to try stuff and get it wrong, then talk about it first and get it 100% right.
What good internet theorists are realizing (I like Shirky and Robb) is that web economics don’t necessarily change how businesses succeed but have more impact in how they fail. A site that allows groups to form is revolutionary in the sense that it drastically lowers the costs of attempting to start and group and failing. In decentralized terrorism, it’s that executing an attack and missing most of the time is actually more efficient than planning them thoroughly and always getting it right. In other words, the way people have grown up thinking about things is wrong – it’s just way too slow and it inflates the costs of mistakes.
It’s all very interesting, right? but I think there is an even bigger picture. If you apply this life as a whole, it means to stop deliberating and start making decisions.
When you’re looking for a parking space for example, take the first one you see instead of driving around for a closer one. By the time one opens up, you could have walked most of the way there. The cost of being wrong is very low, the benefits of ending up with a better spot aren’t very high. My assistant (who is great) drives me insane because he asks these extra questions to find out exactly what I want instead of trying and getting it wrong. Instincts, as he’s thankfully starting to realize, don’t come from explanations. They come from positive and negative reinforcement. And that, comes from doing.
Think about the resources you’d free up for solutions if you didn’t plan your actions under the cloud of knowing you’d always have to justify your decisions after the fact. I’m guessing you’d make gutsier decisions. You can give that freedom to yourself. I’m lucky because people have given me that luxury. Now, the economics are starting to pull that weight too.
Fuck the sychophants telling you that everything you post is great, THIS is the best thing you’ve written in a while. I like how it relates to the strategy paradox.
I think you’re leading in the direction of this guy with this line of thought:
http://books.google.ie/books?id=QaRAoNp_h7gC&dq=gary+klein+intuition
I don’t get it. How can ten hours’ progress in the wrong direction without planning be preferable to five hours of planning and five hours of progress in the right direction?
NASA used to have this philosophy in the early sixties: Build a little, fly a little. They went from nothing to the Moon in 10 years.
Then they spent 30 years planning the Space Station and it’s still not finished…
You nailed it, Ryan. Great post.
I don’t know about that. It’s just putting your stakes on lady luck. You can’t trust empiricism to bust you out because sometimes, the volume of your output never reaches levels capable of stabilizing the bell curve.
Careful planning has its place.
It’s preferable because the costs of failure are incredibly low. You try 5 different things, four fail, and then one turns out to be a success. So you refine the one that successful.
By even bothering to plan you raise the costs of failure. At least that’s my understanding from what I’ve read.
While I generally agree, I think you also left out the “instinct” portion of this. If you’ve got an innate sense of the right direction to go it’s fairly easy to start making decisions- unfortunately most don’t have this, or it has been schooled out of them.
The point, I think, is to surround yourself with a group that doesn’t suffer from such an ailment.
“Do or do not. There is no try.” -Yoda
That is very sound advice, especially on the parking, Ryan.
There is a supreme fallacy in the parking analogy. Whether you spend an hour finding a parking spot or take the spot a mile away, you are going to get where you are going. Planning decreases risk, but wastes time. That’s where cost-benefit analysis comes in. You have to decide whether or not the lower risk is worth the time. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s not. If you are planning for the wrong reasons (as you alluded to), then that’s actually a flaw. Planning though, not always just saying “fuck it”, is not innately wrong. If the scenario you presented had gone south after you told them to say “fuck it,” you’d feel pretty bad, and I’m sure it would have a negative affect on you professionally.
The problem is that most people are predictable; any unplanned action or event causes them anxiety. Leaders are people who are spontaneous, thrive on change, and are able to take risks. People follow them because these leaders embody what they wish they could become.
Yes, Ryan, this is a compliment.
This is awesome. Literally.
I like what you’re saying but it walks a razor’s edge next to the (specious, I think) “quantity over quality” argument.
“Pulling the trigger” more often doesn’t have to come at the cost of quality. It’s about picking the quantity/quality maximization point and not overshooting it by doing unnecessary measurements until you lose the window of opportunity. This is what Josh is talking about.
So maybe liquidity is a better word. As long as you don’t overcommit resources during the planning phase–and as long as you always have multiple projects in both phases, planning and execution–your worst case scenario is that you botched it, learned something and now have more time to pursue your other goals.
I believe you’re right in thinking the optimal amount of time spent planning is decreasing. The terrorist example is apt: improvisation and opportunism fly under the radar where big strikes might be exposed from sheer number of moving parts.
But remember also that the most destructive terrorist attacks are highly organized. I still think error is a greater force of change than design, but every once in a while it pays to scheme big.
Also, don’t forget the 34th rule of the internet: if it exists, there’s porn of it.
“I don’t get it. How can ten hours’ progress in the wrong direction without planning be preferable to five hours of planning and five hours of progress in the right direction?”
It’s only worse if you don’t learn something from the ten hours progress in the wrong direction.
“some business bets in which one wins big but infrequently, yet loses small but frequently, are worth making if others are suckers for them and if you have the personal and intellectual stamina.”
-Nassim Taleb
I mean, “fail early, fail fast” isn’t a novel concept. It’s basically the mantra of any serious start-up entrepreneur.
I suppose one caveat that should accompany this method is that you must also constantly adapt and shift your plan in accordance with what is happening in front of you. I think that’s one of Robert Greene’s Laws of Power, though I can’t recall the number.
This reminds me of what happened with Friendster when Myspace and Facebook came along. Friendster never expanded much beyond its initial user base while it suffered under poor management decisions. So while MS and FB grabbed huge market share, F wound up twisting in the wind. Nowadays it still does well in a few overseas markets, but it goes to show that even if you’re the first to something, without adaptation you’re as good as obsolete. Who uses Friendster nowadays?
The owner of the company I work for has a great quote: “If we’re not moving forward, we’re falling behind.” It sounds simple enough, but it reflects a deep understand of the necessity of ceaseless adaptation to the “Doing” part of the equation. It’s the reason his company is doing phenomenally well while almost everyone else in the same industry in my area is languishing.
Another great post, Ryan. Thanks for making me think.