THE POWER of PLANNING, 2.

"The most important part of an attack is the planning." - Jarod Kintz

"Have you ever been in this situation?" Asked Gino Blefari, "You rush out the door because you’re late for a morning meeting. Didn’t bother to take your time and verify, if you had all the materials you needed for the meeting. Halfway into the meeting, it hits you. You had forgotten something vital. So you drive all the way back home to get it. You’re now even later than you were to begin with. If you’d taken just a few minutes to look around and check before running out the door, you could’ve saved yourself some time and trouble."

He then illustrated a very insightful narrative that drives the point home with riveting precision. He said, "A group of American car executives visited a Japanese automobile assembly line. They watched the cars go through the assembly line, which all seemed routine, but were confused by the process at the end of the line when the doors were put on the hinges of the cars. The Japanese process seemed to be missing a critical part. In the United States, a worker was hired to tap the edges of the car
door with a rubber mallet to make sure that they fit perfectly. The Japanese assembly line, however, had no such worker or machine to ensure that the door fit. Puzzled, the American executives asked the nearest Japanese worker how they made sure that the doors fit perfectly. The man replied, "We make sure it fits when we design it."

Not, only was the Japanese process more efficient, but Japanese car doors last longer and are more structurally sound in accidents compared to American doors. Why? It’s simple: the Japanese engineered the outcome they wanted from the beginning of the process.

Whether the Japanese or the American way, the choice is yours. Dwight D. Eisenhower said, "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." Steve Maraboli, adds, "If you don’t know exactly where you’re going, how will you know when you get there?" Especially, if you understand that your biggest enemies are, "the unknowns" and "assumptions"