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Ged: Noise me. And here we are again. Welcome back to Card Cast. As always, I’m here with Milan Veka, and today we’re gonna talk about a, a new card, another card, a card we haven’t talked about. Shuffle that deck and let’s see what pops up.
Milan: We have a so structure, depth direction, and the cart was break shoulder. This car was inspired by a post. You know, there’s a LinkedIn post about talking about uselessness of planning. That triggered me a little bit because I’m a big believer of the saying that the plans are useless, but planning is [00:01:00] essential.
What do you think?
Ged: Well, I mean just just so I understand, was this central theme of the Post that there’s no point in planning, planning is just not worthwhile? Was that the central theme of the post?
Milan: Absolutely saying that you know, things change and no, no prediction ever holds, you know, in an early stage company. So setting them up is just it’s just a waste of time. So. One. Heck no. Three. Heck,
Ged: Yeah. I,
Milan: You know.
Ged: I, I’ve, I’ve heard that said before, as well as in know, planning’s useless. And particularly in the context of an early stage company where there’s so many variables and, and you. Or trying to find, you know, a viable business model. But I, I think that view misses the point. And I think the facts that whether you plan well, if, if you plan then acknowledge that the plan is ac actually [00:02:00] unlikely to, to, to roll out exactly as laid out in a plan. If you acknowledge that, that’s probably gonna be the case always. No to, to greater or a lesser degrees, you know, a plan is never perfect and know the, you know, you, you, you never actually, it never translates to reality. You know, down to the, down to the day, down to the hour, down to the minute. If you accept the plan is just a best guess at a point in time, then for me, plans and planning are absolutely vital.
They’re not, you know, they’re not negotiable. You have to have plans and planning, but you’ve gotta go into it.
Milan: I’m with
Ged: Hmm.
Milan: You. I am with you. But let me, let me play the devils advocate here for a second and say, okay, so if you know it’s not gonna be right, if you know it’s not gonna be, you know, what’s the point?
Ged: Well, even if it’s not completely right, it’s more right than not having a plan at all. That’s, that’s my perspective. You know, if the plan is 70, [00:03:00] 80% right. And you get to 70, 80% by the end of the timeframe that the plan is is rolling out for, you’ve got a lot more certainty than if you just had no plan whatsoever. ’cause you know, if you don’t have a plan, if you don’t have a direction, you can basically make any decision and you’ve got no idea whether or not you’ve ended up close to where you wanted to end up. Where, wherever, wherever that is, you know, if you don’t have a plan, all roads, no. They all road, all roads lead to Rome.
All roads lead to Rome.
Milan: Gr. Greg Crabtree said it beautifully that he who aims at nothing, hits it with amazing accuracy.
Ged: Yeah. So how can you say, you know, one month, three months, six months, 12 months down the track, whether or not you ended up where you wanted to. If you don’t have a plan, plans never translate to reality completely, that’s not the point. You’ve got far more chance of getting somewhere if you at least have a plan. That’s my take.
Milan: Yeah, a a and you know, there is a lot of [00:04:00] cards and podcast episodes that are touching this subject in one way or the other. Right? 20 mile March. Where did all the money go, right? The reactive versus proactive. Like you, you cannot create a future that you don’t imagine first,
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: Right? Then if you don’t do that, you just in for the right, right, and you are, Ima you might have imagined it wrong, but it’s a di but that is the point.
You do have a direction. And you do have a expectation of how the steps along the way are going to look like. So you know when you are on different path and whether you need to correct what you do or whether you need to correct where you are aiming, right? Because both of those, both of those could be valid based on the situation.
The, you know, the plan is not car in stone, it’s usually just a few inconvenience electrons in a system somewhere. So, you know, you [00:05:00] can move things in a different way. But the point is to having it and being deliberate. I am making a decision about what I, what I’m going to do tomorrow because this is my plan and this is where I want to go, or because I got this new information, which is telling me that I have to correct my plan.
Otherwise, you know, I am just a, again, I’m just in reactive mode. I’m just at the whim of, of reality, and I’m just relying on luck. The fact that maybe I’m going to improvise better than the other guy, but that’s not a strategy.
Ged: Yeah. One of the things I think is, is really important is, you know, is the notion that you should actually plan. You should start with the end in mind and then work back
Milan: Oh, absolutely.
Ged: You know? And that’s the opposite of what most people do. You know, they, they’ll say, okay, well this week I need to do this, and the week after that I need to do that, and then next month I need to do this. You know, and, you know, it might actually get you to where you want to get to. [00:06:00] But that’s probably more just good fortune rather than any, any real intent. So if you start with the end in mind and then bring the plan back towards today. Now, first of all. Understand whether or not it’s achievable and have we taken on too much?
Is it actually realistic? Is it feasible to actually get to that point from where we are now where we want to get to in that timeframe? And, and you, like me, you probably introduced the notion of sprint lines in the first quarterly meeting. After a kickoff, you know, and I, I often get very mixed reactions to that.
You know, some people just go, oh, this is brilliant. I dunno, I can’t believe we haven’t done this before. And other people say, well, you know, what’s the point of doing it down to that level of detail? You know, it’s not gonna plan, it’s not gonna pan out like this. And again, they’re missing the point. You know, having a plan, even if it’s not perfect, even if it’s gonna change, is better than not having that plan. And when I roll out sprint lines, I find that the. Cu the customers, the clients that I [00:07:00] work with, get far better at achieving their goals by the end of the quarter or at the end of the timeframe. Have you had a similar experience or, or what is your experience?
Milan: One look, 100%, you know, sprint slides are so powerful because, you know, instead of being in the week 10 and seeing, oh. You know we have six weeks left to achieve what we said we would or in a, versus being in a week three and seeing, Hey, this is not really panning out the way we thought.
Something’s going on here. Let’s rethink the plan. Again, being proactive rather than reactive, being ahead of the game when you’re flying an airplane, right? They said, never point the airplane unless you’ve already been there in your mind.
Ged: Yeah.
Milan: Right. Otherwise the airplane is flying you. And I think it’s exactly the same thing with business. I would like to add one more thing to what you said because I was like it’s [00:08:00] reacted, you know with Dr. Benjamin Hardy’s teachings ran through my mind when you said about imagining the future first as the starting point, which I absolutely, wholeheartedly agree. I think what is also impor important is that becomes a filter.
Ged: Yes, yes.
Milan: ’cause then when you’re looking at an activity that you are doing or planning to do, is. Is this actually helping me to get there, or, I’m doing it only because we’ve always done it.
Ged: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And,
Milan: Right.
Ged: It’s not just a filter, it’s a magnet. It drags, it pulls towards
Milan: That. I love that.
Ged: The things that are gonna
Milan: I love it.
Ged: There. And it repels the things that are gonna get in the way of you getting there. That’s not useful, that’s not gonna help us get us to where we want to get to.
Milan: Yeah, I am. I might alienate some listeners, but I am not big into the whole concept of manifestation or how we or also known as wishful thinking.. The fact is that the plan acts as a magnet [00:09:00] because it provides that point of view that provides the ability to look at your activities with the lens of is it helping me to get there? Is absolutely true, and I think it’s somewhere deep in our psychology, right? Again, we cannot create what we don’t imagine first.
Ged: Yep. Yep. So plans, planning goals, there’s all these words that people use. How
Milan: Strategy. Don’t forget about that one. That
Ged: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Milan: There should be a card its own and it probably will be, but yeah,
Ged: So how, how do we distinguish those different terms so that, you know, we can at least get our understanding of those, those concepts across.
Milan: You know. This is so funny because yesterday, literally yesterday, is this recording? I’m in a meeting we are running a, a monthly session with a client of mine and we are preparing ourselves for annual that will be in three weeks. So we’re having sort of those discussions and think, you know, [00:10:00] our strategy is clear.
We’re going to hire 10 people. And I was like, stop right there. I saw in, you know, the split second. He knew already that I’m going to stop him. This is a very, very brilliant person. It’s like, this is the wrong way to think about it, isn’t it? I said, yep.
Ged: Yeah. That is not a
Milan: Right.
Ged: That’s a plan. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Milan: Not even, not even a plan. That’s one step of a plan,
Ged: Yeah. Yeah.
Milan: Right?
Like that. So, so let’s, let’s really talk about it, right? So, so planning is the process of imagining the future state. And breaking it down to what needs to be true and when in order for us to achieve it.
Ged: I’d agree with
Milan: Fair?
Ged: I’d agree with that.
Milan: Yeah. Just ad-libbing
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: Plan is the roadmap, the step by step. You know, Peter Oxley. You know, talks about it when, you know, I think we mentioned him in the, in the trip to LA plan or trip to New York, I think.
Right? It’s like, okay, first [00:11:00] you’re gonna go there, then we’re gonna go there, then we are gonna go there, then we are gonna go there. And if we are here by the then five, we know that we are progressing according to plan. Right? All good strategy. Will you take that one?
Ged: So strategy for me is, is an if we, if we take the Michael Porter definition, it’s what makes us unique in the market, in our
Milan: Is there any better one?
Ged: Absolutely. Yeah. But not just that. It is the things that you have to do or the things that you need to have are gonna position you so that you can be that. So it’s not just where
Milan: Exactly.
Ged: The
Milan: So.
Ged: To take. It’s also the things you have and the things that you need to be able to do that’s gonna get you to that position.
Milan: Exactly. Exactly. So if we unpack it, we’ll say, first comes the strategy, which is how are we going to achieve our overarching objectives? What is it that is [00:12:00] make us unique and uniquely positioned to achieve those outcomes? Right plan is. How are we going to execute on those activities that are going to help us achieve such set position?
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: Right? And planning is the process of figuring all that out,
Ged: Yep,
Milan: Starting with the strategy and working backwards or starting with the obviously purpose and objective, the foundations, right?
Ged: Yep.
Milan: And then work, working your way backwards from there..
Ged: So I
Milan: Confusing between them
Ged: Yep.
Milan: Is.
Ged: Yeah, and I think, you know, we, we both agree that, you know, the planning isn’t useless. It’s absolutely vital, but the plan has to then be executable. And if it’s not executable, then it’s not a viable plan, and you’re not gonna achieve the outcome, the goal, [00:13:00] that’s not gonna put you in a position where your strategy’s gonna come to life.
Milan: Remember who said the the wise’s words of being stubborn about the goal and flexible about the details.
Ged: Mm-hmm.
Milan: Right. I think that that sums it up as well. Like the plan is subject to change based on new information that is inevitably going to come along the way.
Ged: Which is why we don’t
Milan: Right.
Ged: Out in detail more than a quarter, because three months time the world could have changed. Now we, there may be a better way of getting to the outcome than what we’ve envisaged three months ago, or six months ago. So having those relatively short planning horizons means you can adjust, you can course correct. Now, you can plot a different path up the hill or the mountain still makes you get to the end point where you want to get to at the right time, at the right place, but bringing in what you know right [00:14:00] now rather than what you knew three months ago, six months, six months ago.
Milan: Well, if you listen this far you probably have something to add and we would love to hear from you. So, you know, subscribe or like, or make sure you’re getting this. And they are, they are conversations happening on LinkedIn or on these. Whatever channel you are getting this podcast from, we would love to hear from you and see what you think about whether to plan or not to plan.
Ged: Very Shakespearean.
Milan: Exactly
Ged: That’s a wrap.
Milan: Right. Yeah, I think so.
Ged: Okay. I’m gonna stop the recording. So we ended up with 14
Milan: No, not yet.
Ged: No.
Milan: No. We need to interrupt.
Ged: Need to need the intro, don’t we? Yeah. Mm-hmm. I’ve just looked at the card and I’ve realized that the fox has a rough, I hadn’t noticed that before. [00:15:00] Yeah. Okay. So there’s definitely a
Milan: Shakespearean Indeed. Yes.
Ged: Mm-hmm. Indeed. Mm-hmm. Okay. So intro
Milan: Okay.
Ged: Mm-hmm. To plan on, not to plan. That is the question. So we’re taking a bit of a Shakespearean slump to the card cast today, and in this card cast episode, do we talk about to plan or not to plan?
Milan: How to plan and why to plan, right? And what is the difference between plan and planning? Because people really, really confused the two. And yeah, I don’t think even Hamlet would have the right answer right away.
Ged: Yeah, and everyone infers different things from the language. So we spend some time just talking through plans, planning, strategy, goals to at least give our perspective. ’cause because these concepts are so overused. It’s probably better to define them [00:16:00] as part of the conversation, then you can at least understand where we are coming from.
That might give you the clarity. But in summary, we think planning is essential and we think plans are essential, but they’ve gotta be flexible and they’ve gotta be nimble, and you need to pivot if you need to. Okay, let me kill that.
Milan: That that gave me, that gave me an idea, which is.
Ged: Now if you’re enjoying this podcast, don’t forget to like and subscribe and hit that notification bell so you get informed of future episodes. I
Milan: Subscribe. If you like this, you’re so
Ged: Now, if you’re enjoying it.
Now if you’re enjoying this [00:17:00] podcast, don’t forget to hit like and subscribe. That was no good. I’m gonna do that again. Now, if you’re enjoying, actually I’ll do, I’ll leave a, I’ll leave a bit of shoulder now. If you’re enjoying this podcast, don’t forget to like, and subscribe and hit that notification bell so you get informed of future episodes.
Okay? Luke can work that out from there. I’m sure he is. He knows he knows what to do with that. He can drop the end at the right end.
Milan: Just drop him a note today. That’s what we are doing and
Ged: Hmm.
Milan: Take it
