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Planning is for doing

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Re: Planning is for doing

#51

Post by layer8 »

YokoZar wrote: post #24
erikpukinskis wrote: post #20

The author is suggesting replacing a bad plan (everyone discuss each intersection) with another bad plan (just drive however you like). (And as an aside, stopping at each intersection to discuss is not ideal, but at least no one is going to die.) Anyway, I’m unconvinced. Most of the planning failures I’ve seen came about because people were bad at planning, not because they were talking too much. I’ve seen the opposi…

>The author is suggesting replacing a bad plan (everyone discuss each intersection) with another bad plan (just drive however you like). The author is suggesting replacing it with the normal rules of the road, which are as close to not planning as possible (following basic heuristics like go on green). The example in the parable didn't have "unjust" stop signs or traffic lights for a reason.

Actually, I would say that coming up with the rules constitutes planning, whereas negotiating who drives first each time constitutes a comparative lack of planning (and of rules). To me the parable rather demonstrates a case where planning (to decide actual rules) would be worth the extra time, because it saves time each time the rules are applied. The parable thus didn’t work for me, although I largely agree with the conclusion.

Re: Planning is for doing

#52

Post by closeparen »

My organization has this disease bad. It’s awful. It’s so ingrained that our official leveling competencies stop recognizing differences in execution skills (coding, debugging, etc) after 2-4 years into a career. All growth from there on out is planning, design, vision, influence, leadership.

This design might have made sense in a world with voracious hiring of junior talent to do the execution. But hiring has slowed and had shifted towards more senior roles even before it slowed. So we are awash in grand plans and perpetually short of resources to execute them. Those who do get stuck executing plans are of lower than average skill, since the competent implementers are promoted to planning. So even if you can get resources for your grand plan, chances are it will be executed badly.

Re: Planning is for doing

#53

Post by mathgorges »

Cerium wrote: post #12
infogulch wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite when making long term decisions is "Do we need to make the decision between these choices now , or can we proceed keeping all the choices open and make the decision later?" Sometimes there's a belabored debate between two choices and answering this question can reveal that the choices don't have to branch right now, that they have (or could have) a shared 'path prefix', enabling us to make the choice late…

The optimal time to make a decision is the moment before it hits the critical path. Where I work we make this actionable by saying to defer decisions and pull forward unknowns.

100% agree with this. You never know what you’ll know in the future :)

The phrase “delay the decision to the last responsible moment” is my favorite mantra about this.

Re: Planning is for doing

#54

Post by Cerium »

mathgorges wrote: post #53
Cerium wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The optimal time to make a decision is the moment before it hits the critical path. Where I work we make this actionable by saying to defer decisions and pull forward unknowns.

100% agree with this. You never know what you’ll know in the future :) The phrase “delay the decision to the last responsible moment” is my favorite mantra about this.

Oh, I like that phrasing. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Planning is for doing

#55

Post by leaflets2 »

navane wrote: post #31

"None of these take into account the needs of the drivers, so should characterize them as unjust. For example, one driver might be late to catch their flight (costing them hundreds of dollars), while another might be on a leisurely cruise around town with no particular destination." I don't know how to put this into words, but I hate that "doing nothing" is equated by being worth less, or less urgent, or having less…

> Your emergency is not my urgency

It'd also always give right of way to people who postpone doing things until the last minute (so that they're always in a hurry ... Hmm I feel a bit guilty).

Which isn't the best incentives to build society on

Re: Planning is for doing

#56

Post by leaflets2 »

anotherevan wrote: post #42
pirate787 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roundabouts are superior to traffic lights but take more space. In low traffic areas, four way stops are best as they take less room than roundabouts.

Actually I think traffic lights are better for very busy and/or very large intersections. But roundabouts are superior to four way stop sign intersections in every way. They don't even need to be all that large.

If you web search for roundabouts, you'll notice that they're safer,

eg around 90% reduction in injury crashes is mentioned.

One website:

https://iowadot.gov/traffic/roundabouts/BENEFITS-OF-GOING-IN...

Re: Planning is for doing

#57

Post by mikewarot »

anotherevan wrote: post #9

The driving parable reminded me of my one and only time driving in the USA. The thing that absolutely did my head in was the intersections with four-way stop signs. There was no clear indication of who had right of way which I would have thought would cause a lot of collisions. It just seemed like the biggest bully goes first. Give me roundabouts any day.

There are a few roundabouts near my house in the Chicago Suburbs. There are stop signs at all the entrances.

Re: Planning is for doing

#58

Post by anotherevan »

mikewarot wrote: post #57
anotherevan wrote: post #9

The driving parable reminded me of my one and only time driving in the USA. The thing that absolutely did my head in was the intersections with four-way stop signs. There was no clear indication of who had right of way which I would have thought would cause a lot of collisions. It just seemed like the biggest bully goes first. Give me roundabouts any day.

There are a few roundabouts near my house in the Chicago Suburbs. There are stop signs at all the entrances.

Facepalm.

Re: Planning is for doing

#59

Post by I_complete_me »

hef19898 wrote: post #33
pqwEfkvjs wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No plan survives contact with the enemy. I've also heard a variation like "It is certain that the plan will fail, however, without the plan everything fails."

Or "Failing to plan means planning to fail".

When Mike Tyson was asked by a reporter whether he was worried about Evander Holyfield and his fight plan he answered; “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Re: Planning is for doing

#60

Post by ElevenLathe »

zwkrt wrote: post #38
ElevenLathe wrote: post #3

I work in crisis management, sometimes on tense, hours-long outage calls. Very often, engineers or others on the call will say things like "It would be nice to run test $x before we move forward." It basically always pays to ask a counter-question like "Will we want to change our action in some way based on the result of this test?" Often the answer is no, so we can skip doing the test and get to remediation faster.…

I completely agree with the sentiment of this post for the purposes of solving business problems, and more generally for making rational decisions in one's life. I find it intriguing though, because I think a way of rephrasing your argument is that one should make sure that all of one's questions and approaches should be instrumental toward a goal. In every-day life, the only kind of person who truly takes this appro…

I think we always take some of it home. You can try all you like to keep your work and private lives separate but there will always be some spillover. Plus, no matter what you do, there is always in theory some dollar value attached even to your free time, or some limitation on the amount of time off you can take, which means that you really do have to be goal-oriented about taking a vacation, spending time with family and friends, practicing an instrument, etc. If you're not, it might not happen at all.

I don't know what the answer is but I agree that market-worship is bad and makes all of us involved in market-driven work (i.e. basically everyone) a little less compassionate.

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