Nothing ever goes as planned
We don’t need to predict what’s going to happen. We just have to prepare.
We don’t need to predict what’s going to happen. We just have to prepare.
“With a ton of charts and a wondrous plan, he comes, behold, the Research Man. Give him four and twenty scholars, give him twenty thousand dollars, and in two months he’ll bring to view, the facts that you already knew.”
Nobody knows what happens next. No one’s predictions will be very accurate. We’ll look back and wonder how it wasn’t obvious, but nothing that seems obvious now is likely to be right.
Why do we put off marketing work we know we should be doing? The fact is, if we aren’t confident an action is going to create positive results, we won’t do it. We’ll procrastinate. We’ll avoid it. We’ll make excuses. It’s not because we’re lazy, it’s because we’re scared.
It’s easy to panic and imagine the worst-case scenarios for any project we embark on. And it’s just as easy to fantasize about the very best outcomes. But it’s a little more difficult, yet profoundly more important, to analyze the most likely best and worst cases.
A common mistake when things go wrong is to spend time thinking about how they could have gone. Or how we’d hoped things would turn out.
Everyone who knows me well knows there’s one rule I live by. They know it because I’m always saying it. So often it’s probably their least favorite phrase. But I’ll keep saying it: If this then that, and if that, then what?