Top Highlights

• In our minds, decisions are finite – the act of focussing on just one thing. The very etymology of ‘decide’ in Latin means to cut off something. Hailing from the same word family as regicide, suicide and homicide, decide literally means to kill off choices. The very opposite of planning, where we are full of options!
• So how do we set direction and achieve our goals in such a challenging landscape? Three strategies: • Believe, and prepare for the reality that all plans are subject to change • Plan to fail so every failure is a success • Have big goals – be happier to come up short against a big goal than fully achieve a small one.
• Our tendency is to assume best-case outcomes, and to only consult the case studies of other successes. It’s called reasoning by analogy – if it looks like project X it’ll work like project X.
• Plan: All plans are subject to change, so expect the unexpected. As we discussed earlier, a pre-mortem planning session is absolutely gold for this. It’s the second planning session you have, as the first assumes that everything will go right. The pre-mortem believes that everything will go wrong and decides what you’ll do when that happens.
• Purpose: Make sure your objectives are clear and concise; otherwise you’ll wander into ‘interesting but not relevant’ territory pretty quickly! • Observation: Spend your time making sure you’ve got the right problem statement – that you are not inferring what you see, but focusing on the facts. The right problem statement will make or break your ex...