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Founded in 2002, the blog here continues to be a space of daily conversation about the science of mind and its implications and applications
The plan-path distinction is an interesting one. For many people, a plan is a fairly linear and determined line of action. A plan is something that's supposed to be based on accurate predictions. It's something we follow.
A path is something we follow if we have history with it. It's something we create if it's a new experience. Path making becomes more necessary and viable when we're navigating the new. And that's, for many of us, quite often. More and more, new is the norm.
There are two ways to organize situations where we unclear. We can move forward through opinions. Opinions are assumptions. They seductively give us an instant and persistent sense of certainty at the expense of curiosity and the space of new options that opens up with curiosity. If our uncertainty threshold is low, we try to stay in a certainty zone as much as possible.
The alternative option to certainty is clarity. Clarity is being clear on our questions, centered in the core questions about our knowns, unknowns, interests, and options. Clarity is clarity on and from our questions.
In clarity, we have opinions. We use them to inspire and shape new questions. This keeps us realistic and resilient as we organize the chaos.
When life is about the endless iterations from organizing chaos into clarity, it's not always apparent how much chaos or clarity anyone has at any moment in time.
We go about everyday human experience, similar to others in our world. We work and live. We do not obviously have more or less predictability or unpredictability than others. Everyone has their fair share, no matter how hard they "work" to create or sustain predictability.
What is evident to us when we create clarity through questions rather than opinions is that clarity is its own grace when unpredictability is one of life's essential principles. Seeking clarity is infinitely more sane and sustainable than striving for uninterrupted predictability.
Chaos is not necessarily dangerous, risky or cause for anxiety. It is simply an unorganized space of experience. We have no clear path to our interests. Even our interests might be unclear.
Chaos is the nature of many of life's problems, transitions, dilemmas, unpredictables. It's the nature of all things new: new projects and prospects, new connections and opportunities, new authors and artists.
Clarity is knowing our knowns, interests, options, and questions as we work on organizing any experience of chaos. It is not certainty, nor does it require predictability. As long as we have questions, and make questions core to our process, we will have unpredictables. We move forward and make great things happen anyway.
One way to get to clarity on interests is in the progression:
What should we do, explore, pursue?
What could we do, explore, pursue?
What must we do, explore, pursue?
As lenses, they reveal different nuances of options, and so, to new waves of questions.
When we approach planning as organizing chaos, chaos is the dynamic space of unorganized interests, knowns, unknowns and action options. Chaos is the nature of beginnings and change. It is the nature of moving forward along a plan. Plans shift and change at the rate new unknowns emerge unplanned.
The more people engaged in planning, the more unorganized interests, knowns, unknowns and action options. Planning facilitates and accelerates focus, coherence, traction, momentum and progress.
It's interesting to think of planning as organizing chaos. It's organizing the chaos of knowns and unknowns into action options. Other than events we would attribute mainly to luck, the quality of what we create reflects the quality of our planning going into it. Planning creates and leverages the conditions that make things possible. If we want more quality, velocity and impact in what we make possible, we need to improve how we plan. This applies to any category, scale and scope of planning.
Despair and discovery are the functional opposites of managing by hope. Despair is assuming, which is to say pretending, that things cannot get better and leads to inaction. If success is resisting risks, we operate in the illusion that inaction prevents risks.
Discovery is curiosity based learning, exploring, tinkering from our interests. People who regularly manage by discovery rather than hope believe that new options will propel us to a better future.
Thinking is seductive. We try to think our way into the best solution possible. Another option is tinkering our way into what works.
With thinking, we assume what will work in action. We assume the conditions our ideas will work in, what unpredictable opportunities and challenges we might encounter, what adjustments will be necessary and how they will perform in reality.
With tinkering, we work from actuals rather than assumptions. We learn our way into what works.
How often should we adapt plans?
If planning is question based, we refresh our plans, without necessarily editing our long view interests, every time we stumble on a new question, a new unknown, learning opportunity, or decision point.
Plans in organizations work when they are connected, vertically and horizontally. This means making them visible. And it means that interdependent functions and teams plan with each other's plans in mind. It's a culture of mindful planning.
What would luck look like? If we had good luck, what could happen? How could we create the conditions for our own good luck?
These add a whole other dimension to planning. It honors the reality that in anything, luck can significantly play into our potentials.
This is a useful question at any point in planning, particularly in beginning phases. It leads to actionable questions that make plans more realistic and responsive. We can optimally anticipate and be more prepared for unpredictable events and opportunties.
When planning is organizing chaos through questions, plans continuously evolve at the pace of our evolving questions. There is no point where we have a monolithic plan we can depend on not changing.
Plans that seem resistant to change are those based on assumptions and facts rather than questions.
We come together to share. We share ideas, asks, updates, questions, coordinating and learning. It doesn't make our coming together any more significant by calling them meetings, huddles, or work sessions.
Whether planned or spontaneous, five things matters: when they happen, who’s there, how people interact, how things get done and what happens as a result.
These are influenced by the expectations people have about coming together. These are expectations about planning, power and potential. The more aligned people are on these expectations, the more smooth and productive the process. Alignment can be spoken or unspoken. In less alignment, the process is awkward and less productive.
Do we think of plans as something to follow, adapt, or both?
Do we base plan actions more on our knowns, unknowns, or both?
There is a plethora of different planning contexts. Strategy, technology, capacity, startup, pivot, program and project plans. Optimally, we have one approach for any.
This is possible in a question based approach.
Working from a handful of meta-questions, planning is a process of organizing chaos. The meta-questions include:
What are we interested in creating?
What's clear (known)?
What's unclear (unknown)?
What could we do to answer these questions?
What's optimal timing for our interests and actions?
This model guides us through any kind, scale and scope of planning in anything from the most to least predictable contexts.
Leadership becomes a constraint when people on the team assume the leader knows more, cares more, has more control over unpredictables than people on the team. It's an assumption many people are socialized to unquestionably accept as reality. The same goes for anyone who tries to informally dominate or bully the team into any single assumptive perspective.
Good timing takes three things.
Identify all options
Get these visual to begin with. What could we do to make our interest more possible?
Sequence the options
See what logical order is implied in what's there to do
Coordinate everyone
Make sure multiple efforts are timed together for optimum momentum and timing
When we head into any planning opportunity, the chaos is apparent. Accelerating our way to organization and traction begins with identifying what's clear and unclear, identifying as many as possible and as often as possible. We translate knowns into actionable timing and unknowns into actionable questions .
