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avoiding that niche all those years.
The very premises on which planning is based seem flawed from the

beginning.
Does this mean that you shouldn’t plan? Not at all. It does mean that

everyone involved in planning should start with three ideas:
First, accept the limitations of planning. Don’t assume that putting eight

smart people in a room with good data will automatically produce something.
Ford put eight smart planners in a room, and out popped the Edsel.

Second, don’t value planning for its result: the plan. The greatest value of the
plan is the process, the thinking that went into it.

Third, don’t plan your future. Plan your people. Outstanding people who fit
your basic broad vision will tend to make the right decisions along the way, not
by following a plan, but by using their skill.

Fallacy: Strategy Is King

Business once encouraged the view of strategy’s superiority to tactics by
throwing piles of money at it. Fifteen years ago, many with a Wharton MBA and
a lust for money and status tried to get into strategic planning. They’re still great
jobs if you can get them. But after Business Week in 1984 reviewed the history of
thirty-three major strategic plans, and found that nineteen had failed, the exalted
status of strategic planners was in trouble.

Many business textbooks reinforce this bias about strategy’s superiority. No
surprise. Professors write textbooks, and most professors think that working on
strategy sounds like a more dignified use of one’s gifts than toiling on tactics.

But in successful companies, tactics drive strategy as much or more than
strategy drives tactics. These companies do something and learn from it. It
changes their thinking. As Tom Cooper, the former COO of Access
Management, has observed, “Sometimes, the very first tactic you execute
changes your entire plan.”

For a vivid example of tactics shaping strategy, consider the Apple Macintosh
computer. The Macintosh was not the first iteration of the Macintosh product;
the Lisa was. Lisa bombed. But Lisa showed Apple what the market really
needed. Guy Kawasaki, Macintosh’s product manager, has admitted that
Macintosh evolved from an explicit strategy:

Ready, fire, aim.
Or, as Kawasaki expresses it, “Lead, take a shot, listen, respond, lead again.”