“No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.”
{Helmuth von Moltke}
I am a self-admitting and self-avowed starter of things. For good and bad, I have always been a catalyst. Once begun, the planning and sustaining need to belong to someone else, if what’s been started is going to survive.
What I know from my natural inclination to begin, and the reason I truly enjoy it, is that doing so informs me about what is actually possible, rather than what I might imagine to be possible.
My most visceral experience of this came on a cliff edge above the Pacific ocean. Strapped into a harness with my instructor, a large sail dragging on the ground behind us, I blurted out the question I was ill-equipped to answer: “How do we get up there anyway?”
“We have to walk off the edge of the cliff.”
Oh.
I had paid my money, signed all the forms, been provided with all of the safety instructions and equipment, and was accompanied by a guide. The planning was done and it was time for action.
The thing that mattered most – the relationship between ocean, wind and cliff – could only be harnessed by going out to meet it, by stepping off into the unknown.
Basil King said, “Go at it boldly, and you’ll find unexpected forces closing round you and coming to your aid.”
Of course, make plans. But plan just well enough to inspire a first action. Allow that action to inform you and teach you. Use that learning to revise the plan and as a catalyst for a next action. And then? Repeat, repeat, repeat.
DAVID BERRY is the author of “A More Daring Life: Finding Voice at the Crossroads of Change” and the founder of RULE13 Learning. He speaks and writes about the complexity of leading in a changing world.
