Quotes About Planning

The cost estimate of the prospectus turned out to be a best possible outcome based on the unlikely assumption that everything would go according to plan with no delays, no changes in performance specifications, no management problems, no problems with contractual arrangements or new technologies or geology, no major conflicts, no political promises not kept, and so on.

When delivery fails, efforts to figure out why tend to focus exclusively on delivery. That's understandable, but it's a mistake, because the root cause of why delivery fails often lies outside delivery, in forecasting, years before delivery was even begun.

Projects are not goals in themselves. Projects are how goals are achieved. People don't build skyscrapers

Exhaustive planning that enables swift delivery, narrowing the time window that black swans can crash through, is an effective means of mitigating this risk. Finishing is the ultimate form of black swan prevention; after a project is done, it can't blow up, at least not as regards delivery.

Good planning that sweeps away ignorance will indeed reveal difficulties ahead, but that is no reason to quit and walk away.

First, you can't build a nuclear power plant quickly, run it for a while, see what works and what doesn't, then change the design to incorporate the lessons learned.

To go back to where I started in the previous chapter: When planning, remember the Latin word experiri, the origin of the English words experiment and experience. Whenever possible, planning should maximize experience, both frozen and unfrozen.

A good plan, as I said, is one that maximizes experience or experimentation; a great plan is one that does both. And the best plan? That's one that maximizes experience and experimentation—and is drafted and delivered by a project leader and team with phronesis.

You can plan events, but if they go according to your plan they are not events.

There aren't enough people who care about the future. They are too busy worrying about today and what they can grab now

The plans that I made when horizontal are working out now that I'm vertical.

Hamsters like to stash food for the future.

In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.

If there is one thing that marks families with money over the long term it is this: delayed gratification.

Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.

Before you start making disciples in the church, count the cost; don't start unless you plan to finish.

What will you do today so tomorrow becomes the legacy you wanted to leave?

Despite several millennia of building best business practices, despite all the analysis and planning, and forced discipline and structure, what makes us human will never be cleaved from how work gets done.

So many people tell themselves that they are working for their kids — they just blindly assume that earning more money will benefit their kids. But until you stop to think about the numbers, you can't know whether sacrificing your time to earn more money will result in a net benefit for your children.

a plan to spend a huge portion of your wealth during the last few weeks of life makes no sense. It's totally irrational.

Many of us make plans for our retirement years to enjoy a secure future. If a trip to Europe is planned, we investigate thoroughly before departure—yet we pay little or no attention to our eternity. Why are so many willing to gamble with something of such significance and about which they have so little information?

Every accountable child of God needs to set goals, short- and long-range goals. A man who is pressing forward to accomplish worthy goals can soon put despondency under his feet, and once a goal is accomplished, others can be set up.

Dream on it. Let your mind take you to places you would like to go, and then think about it and plan it and celebrate the possibilities. And don't listen to anyone who doesn't know how to dream.

Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers's Centre Georges Pompidou of 1971-1977 - the true prototype of the modern museum as popular architectural spectacle - wound up costing so much more than planned that the French government solved the shortfall by cutting support for several regional museums.