Although his campaigns did not always go as he had wanted, nothing could stop Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) from planning them all meticulously. It was this comprehensive planning and the associated thorough thinking through of every conceivable scenario that made his numerous victories possible.
Napoleon was held in high regard as a general and commander. His troops deeply revered him, and his adversaries tried to emulate him. He made full use of the possibilities offered by techniques of war and brilliantly incorporated them into his plans: quick marches, surprising concentrations of troops at strategically decisive places, and the systematic use of artillery were just some factors behind his success.
Great commanders have always lavished attention on the thorough preparation and planning of their campaigns. This applied just as much to Caesar as to Frederick the Great or Sunzi (Sun Tzu), who in The Art of War advises making meticulous plans before taking action. Frederick the Great’s Military Instructions, Written by the King of Prussia, for the Generals of His Army was the first coherent treatise on strategic theory and practice of the modern era, a document that Frederick wrote shortly after the Seven Years’ War and repeatedly revised up until his death in 1786. Most of his strategic principles were concerned with planning and organization.
The most important strategist of the modern era was the Prussian officer Carl von Clausewitz, whose book On War remains standard reading for cadets even in today’s military academies. Strongly influenced by Kant and other German philosophers of the Enlightenment, Clausewitz applied methods like critical argumentation to war. In so doing, he linked the theory and practice of war and set about explaining the psychological and moral aspects of war. He wrote: “Once it has been determined, from the political conditions, what a war is meant to achieve and what it can achieve, it is easy to chart the course. But great strength of character, as well as great lucidity and firmness of mind, is required in order to follow through steadily, to carry out the plan, and not to be thrown off course by thousands of diversions.”1 And according to Clausewitz, very few human beings have all these qualities.
One of the main reasons why it is difficult to stick faithfully to a plan is a phenomenon that Clausewitz calls friction: “Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war. . .. Countless minor incidents—the kind you can never really foresee—combine to lower the general level of performance, so that one always falls far short of the intended goal.”2
In other words, the innumerable, unforeseen minor troubles that constitute friction jeopardize implementation of the plan. Yet Clause-witz does not conclude from this that no plans should be made—on the contrary. One of his best pupils, Helmuth von Moltke, famous for being a skillful planner himself, wrote that no plan survives the first contact with the enemy.
The lesson that you, as a manager, can learn from this is to assume that any plan will change. Only if you always make meticulous plans and preparations for the situation facing you, always thinking through everything to its conclusion, including every conceivable scenario, will you be in a position to react flexibly in your thinking and adaptably in your implementation to all the imponderables that are bound to crop up.
Embrace the principle of viewing objectives, means, and measures together. This will open up the way for several things at once: First, you will gain a deeper understanding not only of a given problem as such, but also of your organization as a whole. Second, you will set more realistic objectives because the most important resources you need in order to attain your objective will have been taken into account from the outset. And third, you will increasingly think on a larger and more holistic scale—like a true entrepreneur.
The following should also be borne in mind: long-term planning is often treated merely as an uncritical continuation of current situations and trends—naturally with a positive outlook. Try a different approach by considering whether your present markets, products, services, and technologies might not end up looking very different in the future. If you believe they will, start allowing for this new future now. The future is taking shape today. After all, most aspects of any long-term plan are realized through a number of short-term decisions and plans. Turned around the other way, a correct short-term decision can be made only if it contributes toward a long-term plan. If, in the context of such thinking, you can succeed in regarding objectives, means, and measures together, you will have made a decisive step forward toward setting realistic future objectives that are genuinely attainable.
There is an extensively tried-and-tested method for steadily improving your decision-making and planning abilities: use feedback. Compare your original expectations when you made a decision and drew up a corresponding plan with the actual results achieved. To this end, at the outset you need to write down your decision, listing any intended measures, what you expect them to achieve, and the reasons that prompted you to take them. You can then compare these written records with the results. If you do this consistently, in time you will become a truly competent decision maker and also improve your ability to develop realistic plans.
What do you need to do to plan an imminent decision more meticulously?
Review your standards and aspire to more meticulous planning and preparation.