David Heinemeier Hansson: Follow Your Instinct

I recently had a conversation on email with REWORK co-author and 37signals partner David Heinemeier Hansson. That will be the subject of one of my columns for BNET.com later this month, but in the meantime here's an extra in the shape of a question I asked David about planning:


Ian: "I know you guys don’t like long-term plans. But you’ve decided to design your business in a certain way. What guided that process – just raw instinct or something more strategic?"


David: "We rely heavily on instinct. An instinct that has been developed and formed from a decade in business. Some times careful analysis is helpful, but often times you're just trying to justify what your instinct is already telling you. Why not follow that straight from the get go."

Give Up On The Guesswork

I finally got my hands on a copy of 'Rework' this week, the new book by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals, that I've talked about on this blog before. On Saturday at SXSW, Jason gave a great little talk about the themes in the book; I went and said hi afterwards, telling him about 'Unplan Your Business'. I took some time out yesterday afternoon to get out of the convention center and dive into the book; here's an extract from the chapter 'Planning Is Guessing':

"Give up on the guesswork. Decide what you're going to do this week, not this year. Figure out the nest most important thing and do that. Make decisions right before you do something, not far in advance. It's OK to wing it..... Working without a plan may seem scary. But blindly following a plan that has no relationship with reality is even scarier".

37signals: Long-Term Business Planning Is A Fantasy

I’m looking forward to getting hold of Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson’s book ‘Rework’. It’s clear that Jason and David share my thinking on ‘Unplan Your Business’ and some of my ideas on work and business from 'Juggle! Rethink Work, Reclaim Your Life'.

Their company 37signals agrees that organisational obsession with long term planning is futile. Here’s an extract from a great post on the 37signals blog by Matt from last May explaining why:

"Why don’t we just call plans what they really are: guesses. Unless you’re a fortune teller, long-term business planning is a fantasy. There are just too many factors that are out of your hands: market conditions, competitors, customers, the economy, etc. Writing a plan makes you feel in control of things you can’t actually control.

In fact, you might as well change the name of your business plans to business guesses, your financial plans to financial guesses, and your strategic planning to strategic guesses. Do that and you’ll probably start putting a lot less weight into those things".

37signals have created a great little video to promote the book. I love it; it could have been one of ours for ‘Unplan Your Business’! Check it out here:

REWORK: The new business book from 37signals

I'm looking forward to reading Jason Fried and David Hansson's book REWORK, that's published in March. I was excited to learn that Mike Rohde has done the illustrations; I'm a big fan of Mike's work since I discovered his ‘Sketch Notes’ he drew for SXSW last year. Mike's written a guest post on the 37signals blog about how he approached this illustration project.

Here’s Mike’s illustration ‘Planning Is Guessing’. I love it - this is very much at the heart of #Unplan.

This illustration is reproduced with thanks to 37signals and Mike Rohde