Plan vs Path

Plans can create a falsely bounded reality — that is, by reducing reality to a set of discrete actions and steps, new information, new ideas, and new competitors are muffled or excluded. The plan defines reality, instead of reality defining the plan. The longer the plan takes to execute, the greater the risk of this plancentric blindness. At their worst, plans can backfire, damaging their adherents by trapping them in approaches that sounded good at the time, but have since been overcome by events.

I've always been a proponent of the path approach to innovation and execution. The path approach differs from the plan approach in key ways:

* The path approach requires the champion to remain centrally involved, while the plan invites the champion to disengage once the plan is documented.
* The path invites new information and ideas, sometimes forcing the team to scramble, while the plan isolates the team from these things.
* The path keeps people’s minds alive and alert, while a plan puts them to sleep while it railroads them into execution.
* The path allows creative solutions to emerge naturally, while the plan forces all the creativity to occur at inception, a very unlikely situation.

While some people intuitively understand the path approach, those who don’t can view it as a source of wasted effort and soft-headed thinking. There isn’t a lot of authority-based teaching confirming its value, and it’s not part of business school indoctrination. Despite these challenges, I think path work is precisely the opposite of wasteful and soft-headed — it makes people think more, you get better results, and while the effort may not be straightforward, it is usually more successful because it incorporates late-developing requirements and creative solutions.

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