Good Planning is NOT Detailed Planning

 If you pan back, planning is really about setting expectations - you're trying to predict the future

Expectations aren’t actually all that closely tied to accuracy - they’re about good communication.

So lets talk about dates on timelines. If you promise something will be done by a date and it’s not - that’s bad communication. If however you promise a rough date, and you’re roughly accurate in delivering it, that’s good communication and great expectation management. Apply this concept across the entire project and you’re headed in the right direction

Is this something that everyone does? No, but they really should. The reality is that the vast majority of projects fail - and a lot of this has to do with people trying to meet expectations that we’re never realistic in the first place. Setting high level expectations is a big win for 3 reasons:

1. It's more realistic and therefore you are demonstrating competence by sticking to a high-level plan

2. It gives you room to move - and having room to move gives you power to correct things before people know there was ever a problem and keep confidence high

3. It keeps the conversation aligned to what really matters. I.e. day-to-day, it rarely matters if you're a week behind as long as you make up the difference by the time the key date comes around.

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