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A key line in this article: "We try to plan, and our plan gets us up to the storm. Once the storm hits, we really just react. We try to be nimble."
Knowing the limitations of planning and planning for them are an underrated aspect of planning.
Knowing the limitations of planning and planning for them are an underrated aspect of planning.
Mike Tyson famously said, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth," when asked how he was going to deal with his opponent's strategy.
The matching military maxim: "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."
The matching military maxim: "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."
The further out your plan extends, the more opportunities there will be for each of your assumptions to go astray. It's fine to plan for what seems like the most likely scenario... but bear in mind the odds will shift, and don't get locked into one trajectory early on.
Some of you know I'm helping my favorite local establishment open a bookstore. When we were agreeing on the operational parameters, the one change I asked for was to keep the budget breakdown fluid instead of having set ratios for stuff like new books vs used.
Because the ratio that makes sense when we're opening might not make sense in a few months.
I mean, that's really at. The act of planning encompasses considering your resources and your liabilities, judging the odds of different scenarios, weighing how you might respond, etc. All useful!
I have plans for the bookstore that extend as far out as three weeks from now, when it opens.
I have ideas for it beyond that.
The difference is that the plans are things I need to do to get it open. I don't yet know what I need to do afterwards.
I have ideas for it beyond that.
The difference is that the plans are things I need to do to get it open. I don't yet know what I need to do afterwards.
I guess that's a good sign for when you're reaching the limits of what you can do with a plan: when you get to the point where it seems less like something you can actually do and more like a Twitter "I would simply" meme.
When you start reaching the parts where you have to underpants gnome style "???" as necessary preconditions for definite, concrete steps later on.
Some of the biggest, highest profile big money flops of internet culture involved people making plans that extended past the ???s. People planning conventions and festivals based on the idea that the success of it would pay for it to have the things it needed to be so successful.
This is how you run a tabletop game, too.
...I had hoped the rest of the thread would make it clear, but when I say I don't know what I need to do after opening, I'm not saying I'm lost, scared, and floundering.
What happens after I open is I run the store.
What happens after I open is I run the store.
What I mean is, I don't know which aspects of that are going to be an uphill battle and which parts might be easier than I expected. I don't know what I don't know.
And for people helpfully suggesting bookstores I should look at... it's not that there's nothing to learn from other booksellers, but I'm fundamentally working with a different set of parameters here. My business model is more like a small gift shop attached to a place.
So that's what I've been looking at is gift shops. I have a friend who expanded and revamped the gift shop attached to a small museum and that's actually really close to what I'm doing. The Camel has always sold books and merchandise, we're just making a bigger deal out of it.
But compared to a standalone bookstore: I don't have the same budget or space for inventory so I've got to be clever with how I use those resources. It's not a standalone business so I only have to manage a small budget; most of the overhead is subsumed by the restaurant.
