When you look you see Hofstadter’s law around you everywhere, every day.
We all understand Murphy’s law, which accurately states that is something can go wrong it will, probably at the worst time. Murphy has a sibling, articulated by Douglas Hofstadter which states: ‘A task always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s law’.
Planning is a part of our lives. Some things are easy to plan, the consistent characteristic of these is that there are very few variables over which you do not have control. For example planning a trip to the supermarket, you can check what you need you control the time, the choice of supermarket, where you park, how you work the store, the choices you make between brands. Very few uncontrolled variables.
By contrast strategy is an exercise not just in predicting the future, but then making choices how best to deploy your resources in a way that enables you to shape the future to your benefit by exerting some influence over the range of variables over which you have no control.
Entirely different challenge, as there is never an explicit ‘right’ answer.
When we talk about strategic planning we are effectively mixing two incompatible factors. The uncertainty of the future and the forces over which we have no control, and the certainty of the resources we have to deploy, with uncertain outcomes.
Currently in this country we have a huge black hole called defence planning into which billions of taxpayers dollars are being poured, in the mistaken view that we are able to predict the future and therefore plan as if we could control the variables.
The better way is to have a robust strategy which enables flexibility in the way assets are deployed short term.
Projects tend to expand to fill a time available, while at the same time we habitually underestimate the time that is required to complete any given task, no matter how rigorous we are in the planning.
