Tom Fishburne: Waterfall Planning

Tom Fishburne learned how to draw cartoons at Harvard Business School by doodling on the backs of business cases and publishing in the school paper. Tom lives and draws near San Francisco and now speaks at campuses, companies, and conferences on marketing, cartooning, and how to spread business ideas.

Tom’s just written a great post on unplanning. You can read the post in full on his site here; meantime here’s an excerpt:

“We need to accept that there will be risk and uncertainty in any worthwhile plan. We don't make that risk go away by crunching the spreadsheet yet another time. Instead, once we plan what we know, we should set the plan aside. Apply that time, energy, and focus on coming up with bigger ideas and making things happen. Place a few audacious unpredictable bets. Minimize the risk by maximizing the upside”.

Tom illustrated the post with a great cartoon which I have reposted with his permission above.