Ged: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Cardcast, the podcast where Milan and I chat about different topics, topics we pick at random from a pack of cards like these. A pack of cards that Milan has conceived of and designed.
So let’s shuffle that pack and let’s see what pops out today
Milan: And we have a spade card the trip from LA to New York. This
Ged: Where did this card come from?
Milan: It was just a quick inspiration. You know, I think it was a round table and our colleague and fellow coach, Peter Oxley, mentioned this story or this analogy. I think we were talking about prioritization, right?
And the, and the planning, and then understanding everything that needs to come. Like, how do you set up the priorities? Like, you know, we, we, we know that we… You know, let’s say we’re doing a kickoff, right? Have some idea of, you know, what a three hack is and we- where we’re heading. But then, okay, what is it that we are actually doing this first quarter, right? We haven’t map up swim lanes yet. We don’t have our differentiators, right? We, we don’t have the strategic framework [00:01:00] within which to say, “This is exactly what needs to happen this quarter.” Right? So how do we get there? And he used the analogy of saying, “Well, you know, you don’t need to know every step on the way. Maybe just the fact that you need to drive east is a good starting point.” Right? Or knowing where you’re going to spend your first night, knowing that in that hotel, that hotel has a decent Wi-Fi, and from there, you’re going to plan the rest of the way because you didn’t lose the day. Instead of sitting here until you have all that plan, you can be in the right direction.
Maybe it’s not going to be 100% the best possible point to be, but is it going to get… Be good enough? Is it the right return on your time to get you, you know, closer to your destination or whatever it may be? And I thought that that analogy was actually pretty pretty clear, so I used it several times ever since.
And look, one of the big, of, you know, what we use in Metronomics is the concept of good enough, [00:02:00] right?
Ged: Yeah
Milan: Is what we’ve done today, is this conversation good enough to unblock us, to make sure that we, we can do a next step with a high level of confidence that it’s taking us to the right g- right direction? That’s all there is to it, right? We’re trying to avoid analysis paralysis. We’re trying to… Sometimes we have to choose between two bad options, right? But all we need is the, “Okay, we are heading in that direction. There are two highways, and it probably doesn’t matter that much which one we are taking because they’re going to converge in two days anyway. Let’s go.” Right? Instead of, instead of waiting and trying to figure out, like, where we are going to be on a day seven and what kind of decision we will have to make there. But we don’t know what the weather’s gonna be. We don’t know what’s… You know, we won’t know how the car is going to perform, how many kilometers we’re going to…
Oh, sorry, we’re going from LA to New York, so how many miles, you know, did we did we make i-in the previous days? But that’s… It’s irrelevant from the point of view of where we are now when we are embarking on the journey, and we need to [00:03:00] make a decision to, to in the right direction. So again, the analogy of the trip seemed to work pretty well. Used it a few times ever since, and you know, all credit goes to Peter Oxley who, who introduced me to it
Ged: I actually had a conversation last night with a CEO where he was, he was challenging me on some of the, you know, the concepts we use around, you know, the three HAG, the, you know, the one HAG and the Q HAG and, and and he said, “Well, you know, I don’t, I don’t agree with that approach because you can’t plan three years out.”
And I said, “Well, we’re not, we’re not planning three years out. No, we’re, we’re setting a goal three years.” Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yes.
Milan: He disagrees?
Ged: Yeah, he did. Yeah, but, but, but… Oh, that– sorry, that was the last one. That was the last one. Yeah. And, and I said, “Well, look you know, yeah, you’re absolutely right. You don’t– we don’t plan, plan three years out.
No, we, we set a goal three years out and we set another goal one year out and then we don’t even plan for the year. [00:04:00] We only plan for the next 90 days, the next 13 weeks, the race of the quarter.” You know, so we can make changes as we go, but because we haven’t invested time in planning a year or even three quarters out, you know, we get to do that f-fresh at the turn of the quarter. And He wasn’t listening to me at all. And he said, “I still don’t believe you can… You have to plan three years out.”
Milan: Thing
Ged: And I said, “Well, no, you, you don’t. That’s the point. We don’t.” We put a stake in the ground, and then we work out quarter by quarter how we’re gonna get there, which means that any decision is never more than three months old. And you can sort of feel you know what’s gonna happen in the next quarter, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s gonna happen over the year. But because we’re planning in the moment, just as we come to the next quarter, we can take the most suitable route. And then if we find ourselves going south and we’re heading from LA to New York, we might wanna adjust a little bit.
We might wanna adjust more towards the east and [00:05:00] the north. But we can make those decisions in the moment with all the information we have to hand rather than information we had a year ago, two years ago, even three years ago
Milan: The reality is we don’t know what’s going to happen this Tuesday, right?
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: Anything can change. We can make some qualified predictions. We can make some, some good guesses, but the reality is that whatever ch- plan we are going to put in place, whatever the timeframe is, it will be always pressure tested by this annoying thing called reality, right?
Ged: Yeah
Milan: So we did the we did the… Another c- a card from the CEO game on planning, right? It was the plan or… To plan or not to plan episode, I think, and it’s the same thing, right? The, People are confusing the act of planning with the, with the ar- what’s the word? With the The
Ged: Help me out here
Milan: Sometimes it escapes you. Yeah, [00:06:00] e-e-exactly. With the product of the planning process, which is the plan, right? Somebody said, know, “Plans are useless. Planning is essential.” And that, that, that’s what we’re talking about here, right? It’s, it’s really, we have to go through the exercise to figure out, you know, the, w- if, if for no other reason, is to find out and understand what is it that we don’t know. What are
Ged: Mm-hmm. Yeah
Milan: Is it that we need to, what is it that we need to fill, But ultimately, again, if I use the analogy, do we have enough gas? Do we know the right direction? We know where we’re gonna sleep the first night? Knowing that we will be that, that much closer to the destination to make the right plan for the following day. That’s
Ged: Yeah
Milan: To get going. We don’t need to know everything until the last, last moment
Ged: Absolutely. And it’s being comfortable with that lack of knowledge. You know, if you’re going east or northeast, then you’re probably heading in the right direction
