Don’t Plan. Prepare!

My View

Organizational health author and speaker Patrick Lencioni published a podcast earlier this year titled “Plan is a Four Letter Word.” So that title caught my attention. How does someone who coaches leaders to develop organizations that are healthy for their employees and communities as well as their bottom lines say that planning is somehow not a positive strategy?

So, of course, I listened. Turns out, I agree with Lencioni. In fact, I have been saying the same thing for years.

Here is the heart of the matter. In a world of constant and exponential rates of change in a multitude of arenas (check out Thank You for Being Late by Thomas Friedman), one would think that planning is the way to be successful, to stay in front of the change. But the reality is that we can’t plan for the future because it is changing so fast. We just cannot know what is going to happen in six months or a year, let alone five years down the road.