Seven Planning Pitfalls: I

Making plans for projects, campaigns, developments, complex events, or other collaborative activities is a collaborative activity in itself. A common experience of plans, sadly, is their inadequacy, even when we invest significant resources in developing them. Indeed, it's often said that "…no plan survives first contact…" with the enemy if in a military context, or with reality in a project management context.

But the planning activity has a reputation perhaps worse than it deserves. Planning a complex undertaking is difficult to do well because of unpredictable changes in the context, or incomplete or inaccurate information about that context, or incomplete or inaccurate information about the undertaking itself. That much is understood and expected. But much of what's wrong with our plans is a direct result of the way we think about making plans. Our human limitations manifest themselves in plan deficiencies.

In these next posts, I "plan" to construct a short catalog of seven observations about how plan deficiencies arise from the way we think, or the way we go about developing plans. This first part addresses how we use our experience and preferences and our knowledge of past mistakes to develop plans.

We make better plans for things we know, or favor, or can imagine

When we make plans, we rely on experience, preference, and imagination. That's why our plans exhibit three kinds of biases. First, plans tend to anticipate better those events or conditions that have occurred in the past. In military conventional wisdom, as the saying goes, we tend to plan to re-fight the last battle or the last war.

A second source of bias in our plans arises from our preferences or preconceptions. We tend to search for reasons that justify or coincide with our preferences or preconceived notions. We tend also to avoid searching for reasons why our preferences or preconceived notions about our plan might be mistaken. In this way, the data generated by our research tends to confirm our preferences and preconceptions. The pattern is so prevalent that psychologists have given it a name: confirmation bias. [Nickerson 1998]

The third source of Much of what's wrong with our
plans is a direct result of the way
we think about making plansbias in our plans is a cognitive bias known as the Availability Heuristic. [Tversky 1973] We're using the Availability Heuristic when we determine the relevance of a phenomenon by sensing the difficulty of imagining or understanding the string of events that contribute to its development. So if we have difficulty imagining a phenomenon, or if we have difficulty imagining the conditions that bring it about, we regard it as less than likely, and we tend not to address it effectively in our plans.

We lack adequate information about failures

When we make plans and choose approaches, we tend to focus on what has worked for us or for others in the past. We invest effort in understanding why a particular method is reliable, or why an approach is recommended. We try to be knowledgeable about "best practices." Usually, whatever we draw upon does need tailoring, but we use it as guidance nevertheless.

We pay much less attention to failures. Finding information about "worst practices" or "less-than-best practices" or even "ok practices" is next to impossible. Failures are often buried quietly. We have difficulty consulting people of our own organizations who led past efforts that failed, because they are often terminated, blocked from promotion, reassigned, or departed from the organization. Other organizations rarely publish results of investigations into their own failures, even when they do publish stories of their successes. These are some of the reasons why our understanding of failures is much less thorough than is our understanding of successes. In some cases, there are past failures of which current planners are completely unaware, even when the causes of those failures might be relevant to the planning task at hand.

Our relative ignorance about failures might be a contributing factor when we repeat our own errors or the errors of others. We follow this pattern so often that psychologists have given it a name: survivorship bias. [Elton 1996] Survivorship bias is our tendency, when making plans or decisions, to pay too much attention to past events that we regard as successes, and too little attention to past events that we regard as failures.

But failures have more to offer than mere patterns to avoid. If we truly understand a particular failure, sometimes we can identify those attributes of a failed approach that account for the failure and which could be adjusted. Occasionally these insights can lead to solutions for new problems that might be very valuable indeed.

In Part II, I'll examine the effects of factors external to the planning process, and which are therefore beyond the control of the planning team.  Next in this series  Top    Next Issue

Are your projects always (or almost always) late and over budget? Are your project teams plagued by turnover, burnout, and high defect rates? Turn your culture around. Read 52 Tips for Leaders of Project-Oriented Organizations, filled with tips and techniques for organizational leaders. Order Now!

Footnotes

Your comments are welcome

About Point Lookout

Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.

Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.

Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.

Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.

Related articles

More articles on Cognitive Biases at Work:

Scope Creep and the Planning Fallacy

Much is known about scope creep, but it nevertheless occurs with such alarming frequency that in some organizations, it's a certainty. Perhaps what keeps us from controlling it better is that its causes can't be addressed with management methodology. Its causes might be, in part, psychological.

Wishful Significance: II

When we're beset by seemingly unresolvable problems, we sometimes conclude that "wishful thinking" was the cause. Wishful thinking can result from errors in assessing the significance of our observations. Here's a second group of causes of erroneous assessment of significance.

The Planning Fallacy and Self-Interest

A well-known cognitive bias, the planning fallacy, accounts for many unrealistic estimates of project cost and schedule. Overruns are common. But another cognitive bias, and organizational politics, combine with the planning fallacy to make a bad situation even worse.

Neglect of Probability

Neglect of Probability is a cognitive bias that leads to poor decisions. The risk of poor decisions is elevated when we must select an option from a set in which some have outstandingly preferable possible outcomes with low probabilities of occurring.

Seven Planning Pitfalls: III

We usually attribute departures from plan to poor execution, or to "poor planning." But one cause of plan ineffectiveness is the way we think when we set about devising plans. Three cognitive biases that can play roles are the so-called Magical Number 7, the Ambiguity Effect, and the Planning Fallacy.

See also Cognitive Biases at Work and Project Management for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming May 19: Pre-Decision Discussions: Reasoning

When we meet to resolve issues related to upcoming decisions, we sometimes rely on reasoning to help find solutions. Contributions to these discussions generally use mixtures of deductive, inductive, and abductive reasoning. How do they differ, and what are their strengths and risks? Available here and by RSS on May 19.

And on May 26: Even "Isolated Incidents" Can Be Bullying

Many organizations have anti-bullying policies that address only repeated patterns of interpersonal aggression. Such definitions expose the organization and its people to the harmful effects of "isolated incidents" of interpersonal aggression, because even isolated incidents can be bullying. Available here and by RSS on May 26.

Coaching services

I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenKyrpMiqBnnUUPnWHner@ChacgEbnSaDGlMyKFJgtoCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.

Get the ebook!

Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:

• Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, )
• Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, )
• Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, )
• Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, )
• Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, )
• Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, )

Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500-1000 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info

Public seminars

The Power Affect: How We Express Our Personal Power

Many people who possess real organizational power have a characteristic demeanor. It's the way they project their presence. I call this the power affect. Some people — call them power pretenders — adopt the power affect well before they attain significant organizational power. Unfortunately for their colleagues, and for their organizations, power pretenders can attain organizational power out of proportion to their merit or abilities. Understanding the power affect is therefore important for anyone who aims to attain power, or anyone who works with power pretenders. Read more about this program.

• A recording of a program presented June 29, 2017, Monthly Webinar, sponsored by Technobility Webinar Series. PMI members can earn 1.0 Category 'A' PDU by viewing this program. View this program now.
   
• A recording of a program presented June 29, 2017, Monthly Webinar, sponsored by Technobility Webinar Series. PMI members can earn 1.0 Category 'A' PDU by viewing this program. View this program now.
   

Bullet Points: Mastery or Madness?

Decision-makers in modern organizations commonly demand briefings in the form of bullet points or a series of series of bullet points. But this form of presentation has limited value for complex decisions. We need something more. We actually need to think. Briefers who combine the bullet-point format with a variety of persuasion techniques can mislead decision-makers, guiding them into making poor decisions. Read more about this program.

• A recording of a program presented June 24, 2020, Monthly Webinar, sponsored by Technobility Webinar Series. PMI members can earn 1.0 Category 'A' PDU by viewing this program. View this program now.
   
• A recording of a program presented June 24, 2020, Monthly Webinar, sponsored by Technobility Webinar Series. PMI members can earn 1.0 Category 'A' PDU by viewing this program. View this program now.