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physically based and data-rich as weather (where chaos theory first was
postulated), then you certainly cannot predict people’s attitudes.

Even if you can identify or predict people’s attitudes, it’s not that helpful,
because behaviors don’t always follow attitudes.

Take smoking: Given the almost universal awareness of smoking’s risks since
the first Surgeon General’s report, the virtual disappearance of stars smoking on
television and in movies, and all the public condemnation and ridicule, smoking
should be way down. It’s not.

Take our eating habits: Health consciousness and the growing fear of
cholesterol should have made the American steak house extinct. But six steak
houses have opened in Minneapolis in the last four years, while not one has
closed.

Sane, smart people—almost all planners are both—would have predicted just
the opposite of these behaviors. Again, even if you can identify people’s
attitudes, you cannot predict the behavior that will follow.

So it seems that our efforts to plan are at the mercy of something that Einstein
warned of, years ago:

“The universe is not only queerer than we suppose. It’s queerer than we can
suppose.”

You never know. So don’t assume that you should. Plan for several possible
futures.

Fallacy: You Can Know What You Want

The second premise of planning—that you can know what you want in the future
—is slightly dubious, too. George Bernard Shaw hit it squarely when he wrote,
“There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is
to get it.”

Like almost everyone, I’ve always known what I wanted. Since 1962, it has
been to be the next Arnold Palmer, the next editor of Sports Illustrated, the next
F. Lee Bailey, the next David Ogilvy, and the next coach of the Minneapolis Cub
12 champions.

Businesses work the same way. They don’t like what they once wanted, so
they change their minds. Most want to get bigger, then realize that bigger often
means less profitable. A few companies yearn to be the very best, then realize
the market doesn’t appreciate the quality and won’t pay for it. Some companies
want to attack a niche, then learn that their competitors had good reasons for