Have you ever got this question? Like what is more important, planning vs execution?

You may say planning is necessary before the execution.

Or you may say implementation is more important than planning.

Also, many great plans in everyone’s lives remained in their minds.

Let’s dig into the topic more to understand it more.

Is Proper Planning Always Necessary? | Outcome My Friend and I Got

A few decades ago, the answer to this question was a straightforward yes. Planning was much more important than execution. If you had planned your strategy the best, succeeding is the only option for you.

With this thought, my friend and I believed that we should plan everything before we get our hands dirty in implementation. We are great planners. Whenever we come across something new which benefits our business, we consume that information. Then we make the best strategies. However, the outcome is not always what we assumed.

Do you know the reason? As you stayed till here, it is obvious. We failed in the implementation part.

Even now, we have great plans and also did proper planning before ten days. Moreover, we stuck to the plans to some extent. The outcome is also good, but it is not what we expected because of missing few elements.

That is the reason there is a saying on planning vs execution,

“The perfect plan, poorly executed, will fail. A lousy plan, well-executed, is often successful.”

Even now, sometimes, we focus on knowing everything before we even get started. It will result in analysis paralysis. Due to this, there will always be scope to understand something because unless we go to the execution, we can’t understand a few things completely.

Even if you go to the execution part focusing on the missing elements, you cannot give it the best shot. The result? Your plans fail

The same happened with us as well. From this, we can say that execution is more important than planning. 

You may ask me, why are there business plans and strategising at every stage, if execution is more important? Let’s focus on it in the next section.

Is Execution More Important than Planning?

In the previous section, you saw a well-executed lousy plan wins over a poorly executed perfect plan.

So, for brevity, let’s consider what happens if you focus on implementation more.

You are not concerned about knowing everything and have a response strategy like a robot. And your only question will be, how can I do this job well so that the outcome is rewarding?

Moreover, the best thing about this attitude is, execution will be better, and you will always get the desired outcome. However, there is a downside to this approach. You will face a lot of challenges. And the best part is, you can overcome them with the increased effort.

And, you might have observed that more than 90% of the startups fail in the long term. Even most of the companies that do well in their initial years fail. Can you guess the reason?

It is obvious. Execution is crucial at the beginning for the success of any endeavour. However, it can be beneficial only in the short term.

We know that the decisions we make putting the short term goals will affect us in the long term. It is true in every case and every sector, irrespective of what you do. Because it is universal.

But if you take your previous experiences and learnings while implementing at every stage, everything will be taken care of by itself.

My Personal Experience When I Considered Execution is More Important than Planning

All of us thrive to make even the first attempts the best. In that proceed we spend more energy on planning which in turn delays the action. Sometimes, it also leads to inaction. There are many times when I quit many things even before I got started just because I didn’t get some answers to the situations that may arise. My situation is also the same. But I started focusing more on the execution than planning. If you watch my first webinar where I launched my website, I planned something but looking at the size of the audience I delivered something else. But the output is good.

There is one more incident. People say my writings are good. But I am very bad at video making and all that stuff. Also, I should definitely create my video and publish it on my channel as a part of my internship at Digital Deepak. I didn’t let my imperfections stop me from publishing the video. And I went into the execution part and published a video on Depression. It is the first video on my channel and I didn’t come in front of the camera just because I wasn’t able to figure out the ways to make my face clear in the video. I want to share one more thing. I planned a webinar tomorrow (4th July 2021) at 9:00 pm but I haven’t got any slides ready yet.😅 But I don’t suggest this to anyone.🙈

Crux: Planning vs Execution

If you pay close attention, execution has benefits in the short term. You can understand how it benefited me when I chose execution. However, planning is beneficial in the long run.

Moreover, in the beginning, as we are unaware of the complete picture of anything, we understand better when we go to the implementation part.

However, if the first version of our idea is not good and the focus is on ways to make things work out in the short term, it is like taking drugs. It may suppress the problems then. Here, I would like to quote the famous lines in the movie Dr Strange, “The bill comes due. Always.“

It is true in every case. So, if you focus on strategies to make that work instead of focusing on improving the idea with proper planning, you face further challenges. Some can overcome by changing the approach while the majority run out of options and fail. People tell me they want to quit their job and ask me what else they could do. But you need to make a proper plan before doing so, as being on your own is a long term journey and planning is as important as execution to sustain the journey.

This blog post helps you to make decisions fast in your journey when you are thinking about planning vs execution.

Final Thoughts

Changing the approach is nothing but planning better. So, both planning and execution should go hand in hand. More emphasis should be on implementation in the initial steps. A little bit of planning is necessary before execution.  Worry not about the mistakes and commit as many mistakes as possible. Learn from them and improve your planning as you get started.

Even I changed the plans when I approach a new endeavour as I started seeing the ground reality.

I hope you found value in this post. Please share your thoughts by commenting below. It would mean the world to me.