Ben Horowitz on Planning Quotes

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

"A plan without accountability is just a wish."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The most important thing I learned as an entrepreneur is that you have to focus on the things you can control. Your plan should reflect that focus."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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."