Quotes About Planning

regret minimization framework

He smiled. "What?" she said. "I was just thinking." "Thinking what?" "Something Esperanza said to me yesterday," Myron said. "Men tracht und Gott lacht." "Is that German?" "Yiddish." "What does it mean?" "Man plans, God laughs." She repeated it. "I like that." "Me too," he said. He

The key was preparation. That was what separated the good from the great. The greats covered their tracks. The greats prepared for every eventuality.

Sometimes it seems to me the modern world can only be viewed as conspiracy. The Right tends to credit communism with planning race riots and campus disorders

A leader is paid to do three things: Get the job done and get it done well. Plan ahead—be proactive, not reactive. Exercise good, sound judgment in doing all of the above.

The best leaders in any enterprise see problems coming and stack the deck to prevent negative "what ifs" from happening. They also have contingency plans to take advantage of positive openings which occur in fleeting windows of time.

He must have smart, well-trained people to run day-to-day activities. He must check up on them and make sure the job is getting done while he stacks the deck for future success.

It's a key responsibility of the leader, in any field of endeavor (athletic team, military, or business) to assure the successful continuity or ability of his organization to carry on should he die or become incapacitated. It's his duty to plan for such a contingency out of loyalty to his people and, if in a business endeavor, loyalty to his customers and, clients.

When you have a plan put it into action instantly. Don't let it lie around and get stale and have other people start thinking about it themselves.

Hard work applied properly and intelligently, and thinking in an organized manner, must lead to success.

You can't look too far ahead. Do that and you'll lose sight of what you're doing and stumble. I'm not saying you should focus solely on the details right in front of you, mind you. You've got to look ahead a bit or else you'll bump into something. You've got to conform to the proper order and at the same time keep an eye out for what's ahead. That's critical, no matter what you're doing.

Effective strategy planners spread strategy reviews throughout the year rather than squeeze them into a two- or three-month window. This allows senior executives to focus on one issue at a time until they reach a decision or set of decisions.

Executives are doers; they execute. Knowledge is useless to executives until it has been translated into deeds. But before springing into action, the executive needs to plan his course. He needs to think about desired results, probable restraints, future revisions, check-in points, and implications for how he'll spend his time.

By embracing decision-focused planning, companies will almost certainly find that the quantity and quality of their decisions will improve.

One way to encourage innovation to flourish outside the normal planning cycles is to reserve pools of special funds for unexpected opportunities. That way, promising ideas do not have to wait for the next budget cycle, and innovators do not have to beg for funds from mainstream managers who are measured on current revenues and profits.

what should he do to make strategic planning drive more, better, and faster decisions? Like

More than anything else, this disconnect—between the way planning works and the way decision making happens—explains the frustration, if not outright antipathy, most executives feel toward strategic planning.

use the strategy development process to drive decision making.

The use of "war games" is a powerful antidote to the lack of thinking about competitors' reactions to proposed moves. 11.

The profit lure of mass production obviously has a place in the plans and strategy of business management, but it must always follow hard thinking about the customer.

Process Lessons • Tight controls strangle innovation. The planning, budgeting, and reviews applied to existing businesses will squeeze the life out of an innovation effort. • Companies should expect deviations from plan: If employees are rewarded simply for doing what they committed to do, rather than acting as circumstances would suggest, their employers will stifle and drive out innovation.

Business-unit managers should remain involved in corporate-level strategy planning that affects their units. But a focus on issues rather than business units better aligns strategy development with decision making and investment. Consider

Uhlaner put in place a Growth and Performance Planning Process that starts with agreement by Ballmer's leadership team on a set of strategic themes—major issues like PC market growth, the entertainment market, and security—that cross business-unit boundaries.

If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.