Falling Out of Love With Your Plan

If you’re in a leadership role, you have to be a planner.

As much as I insist on the importance of being adaptable, nimble and responsive to the moment, the reality is leaders have to be able to structure the work of their teams. But thanks to the Marine Corps, I can pinpoint the moment I internalized the importance of keeping our plans grounded in the reality that our environment – and the challenges we’re trying to conquer – are constantly evolving.

That evolution holds no regard for our egos.

In the summer of 2007 I was a 22 year old officer candidate, going through Officer Candidate School (OCS) in Quantico, Virginia. And for those unfamiliar with USMC Officer selection processes, OCS is NOT a boot camp for officers. Rather, it’s a 10 week evaluation process.

Yes, we learn some basic drill and military disciplines. But over those weeks we only learn a small fraction of the basic military knowledge we’ll later need. The rest comes later, at the next school. In fact, we internalize only enough to be prepared for the evaluations specific to OCS along the way. While some of those are traditional tests, the real question OCS seeks to answer is this: will the Officer candidates in training be able to adapt in the midst of chaos. They are testing our mental plasticity in tandem with our grit. And those tests are not on paper.

At several points in the training schedule, we and our classmates are given an opportunity to lead our peers through tactical problems. These can be small – like a four man team navigating a physical obstacle/puzzle type problem with only a few resources in front of them (and a very short deadline). Or they can be larger, like leading an assault on an enemy position in a simulated battle.

But along that entire spectrum, the instructors aren’t looking for whether you win or lose. They’re looking to see how you react when you fail or your plan falls apart.

No matter how well you seem to be doing in the moment, the instructors always seem to have some trick up their sleeves to unravel your plan. And that’s the point of just about every exercise. They are looking to see if – when everything you’ve invested in falls apart – you have the guts to throw away your plan and lead your Marines in the chaos of the moment.

None of us has this ability perfected. But the evaluation process of OCS helps identify whether you’ve got the basic building blocks to grow that skill set. It’s the follow-on training that helps you put those blocks together.

I remember when I failed in one of the early exercises. It was one of those obstacle/puzzle scenarios and my team was coming up short. I had the play clock in my head and was trying to force a solution that just wasn’t working. More importantly, I wasn’t recognizing that reality appropriately in the moment and reacting fast enough to change my own performance. It was humbling.

I could see exactly what I wanted accomplished. But in the moment I was failing to communicate, and micromanaging instead of reworking the plan in the reality of the moment. That day, one of the instructors introduced me to a Marine mantra that’s stuck with me: “you have to be willing to fall out of love with your plan.”

As leaders, we take our ideas seriously. When we’re doing leadership the right way, we own those ideas – for their successes and their failures. But far too often, we fail to recognize when we’ve fallen in love with our own vision, and ignore opportunities to let our teams help us work the problem.

There are absolutely times when we will be the only person with the vision and will to attack a problem – and we’ll have to either drag our teams along or earn their buy-in through our own sweat equity. But more often than not, we should be strategically pulling our heads out of the playbook and putting our eyes back on the field. Building touch-points into our work – dedicated opportunities to see what’s really happening with our vision – is a skillset that can help us break the cycle. And our teams – the real experts doing the work – need to be a valued part of that process.

Now, at almost 37 years old, I can say I’m still working on this. I still fall in love with my plans…a lot. But I’ve also taught myself to cue in like this from time to time. I’ve got a long way to go, but I’m definitely more likely today to fall out of love with a plan than I was back then. And for that, I’m really grateful to a staff sergeant who had the right words for me at just the right time.

But what should I expect? That’s what staff sergeants do.