I love this sentiment from one of the directors of Shopify:

In summary of that video, Robert Ashe says that as Shopify grew, he noticed the team spending more and more time on formal process, making plans about how to succeed, until the time spent planning exceeded the time spent delivering. It “felt” successful to plan that way, but it slowed the company down significantly.

It’s easy to feel like planning future work is the same as doing work. But that feeling can be the thief of success.

That said, a prolific USA leader once repeated a phrase he learned in the military that went: “plans are worthless, but planning is everything”. This has resonated with me, and I think it does a concise job of holding the conundrum from the video above.

We need to spend time planning. Without it, our execution will likely be haphazard or even destructive. But plans themselves hold no value. Plans inform work. And the plans should be made and discarded as quickly as the work requires. In the end, we’re left only with the product of our execution.