Ben Horowitz on Planning Quotes

"Planning is not a one-time event. It is a continuous process of adjustment and refinement."

"A great leader can see around corners. They plan for the obstacles that haven't appeared yet."

"In wartime, you don't have the luxury of consensus. You need a clear plan and the authority to execute it quickly."

"You must have a plan for the hard times. Anyone can lead when things are going well."

"The goal of planning is to reduce uncertainty, not to eliminate it."

"A plan is a hypothesis. You must be willing to test it and discard it if it doesn't work."

"A plan that ignores the competition is a plan for failure."

"Strategy is the art of concentrating your resources where they will have the most impact."

"The difference between a vision and a hallucination is that other people can see the vision. The plan makes it visible."

"If you don't have a plan, you're part of someone else's plan."

"If you don't plan for the culture you want, you will get the culture you deserve."

"You must be able to change your plan as the environment changes. Rigidity is the enemy of survival."

"If you are not planning for failure, you are not planning for reality."

"The first rule of startup planning is that your plan is wrong. The second rule is that you must have one anyway."

"The plan should always be focused on the customer. If the customer isn't in the plan, the plan is wrong."

"A leader's job is to define reality and give hope. The plan is the bridge between the two."

"A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow, especially when you are in the middle of a crisis."

"Strategy is about making choices. If you try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing to anyone."

"Planning allows you to take calculated risks rather than reckless ones."

"The hard thing isn't dreaming big; it's waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream turns into a nightmare."

"Execution is the ability to follow through on the plan when things get difficult."

"You can't plan for luck, but you can plan to be in a position to take advantage of it."

"In a startup, you are always planning for the next milestone. If you lose sight of that, you lose the company."

"Good plans start with the truth. If you lie to yourself about the state of your business, your plan is worthless."

"Planning is the process of thinking through the future so you are not surprised by it."

"Great companies are built on great plans that were executed with relentless discipline."

"The hardest part of planning is deciding what you are NOT going to do."

"The best plans are simple enough for everyone in the organization to understand and execute."

"The most important part of any plan is the logic behind it, not the numbers in the spreadsheet."

"A good product manager is the CEO of the product. They take full responsibility and measure themselves by the success of the product. They are responsible for the right product at the right time and all that entails."

"Peacetime CEO sets large, overarching goals and has a plan for how to achieve them. Wartime CEO has a paranoid obsession with the enemy and the immediate survival of the company."

"Build a culture that rewards the right behaviors. Planning is useless if the culture doesn't support the execution of that plan."

"Planning is about resource allocation. If you don't know where your people are going, you don't have a plan."