Few days ago, a friend of mine asked me an interesting question. ” When we have a particular plan, even with sophisticatedly tailored details and clearly promulgated objectives, is there any guarantee that the plan will work? “, he asked. What a very profound question! A question we face everyday, and yet, we might never reflect deeply about it.
Perhaps, we took it for granted, since we can easily provide typical answers: ‘Just stick with the plan, and everything will just be alright’. That was the answer I gave to my friend that time, but I keep questioning my own answer. I’m not saying it is a wrong answer. For what it’s worth, a plan is a plan. A plan is enormously invaluable for its own value as a plan: to guide ourselves to do what we believe we need to do next.
Thus, whether the plan will work out or not is a little bit different context. It is about implementation. It is about a process or sequence of actions initially guided by ‘the plan’. Along the way, this process becomes intuitively guided by our belief on how the plan should be carried out. The latter part is where people start to differ with each other in implementing the same plan.
Most people said that it is about different perceptions and different interpretations. I would say that it lies deeper than just cognitive processes. It is about what we believe we can do, and that determines what we believe we should do. What I believe I can do is very likely to be different to what you believe you can do.
So, even with a very astute plan, how can we provide a guarantee that a plan will work out just fine by itself?
the Change Strategist 