Planning as pain relief

Everything has always been connected to everything else. Whatever happens in one area eventually (and often unpredictably) affects others.

Up to now, we could cope with the complexity by ignoring it. Our plans were sufficiently robust, and the pace of change relatively slow such that we could fool ourselves into thinking we were in control.

The system has caught up with us. It feels rather a though someone has taken “change” out of the slow cooker and popped it into the microwave.

Nothing has changed really, other than our awareness of the things we did not pay attention in the past making their presence felt.

It means we need different metrics. The stuff we have measured ourselves by (GDP, Growth, Market Share) we now understand to be a very small part of what we need to measure.

The future is only frightening if we measure it the way we used to, not by what matters.

Plans need to share the stage with a broader understanding of where they fit into the scheme of things.