“If you want to know how to get started, just do something!”
Or, as M. Bartok Wolfe always told me, “Action is Action.”
When you are getting something started — anything, really — action takes precedence. It’s not about thinking or planning: it’s about doing something.
At least. it’s sometimes like that. In an ongoing business, it’s best to simply do something. Get it started. Get a contract. Sell the vaporware. Get money coming in.
It’s like the same in a lot of our lives: in starting that novel, in learning how to play the piano, in making dinner: just get started. Do something!
Warren Kinston says that this is clear. In his classic of management science, Strengthening the Management Culture, he says the the first step of organizing work is to Do Something! Be pragmatic! Look for the low-hanging fruit. Get something done. Move! Take action!
But maybe not in everything?
I’ve been reading various works by Bent Flyvbjerg, famous for actually collecting data on “large “mega-projects” to see what works, what doesn’t. His statistics show something different: for large projects, you are better off “doing something” called planning.
(He has a entirely accessible pop press book, written with Dan Gardner, How Big Things Get Done, that even has an audiobook version.)
You do all types of planning to ensure that the plan can actually work. You test soils. You create models. You run scenarios. You look at the past, hence his database of how well prior projects met their objectives.
Then, when you are ready to act, act fast.
Flyvbjerg calls it “Think slow, then act fast”: spend time planning but when it comes time to act, act with alacrity. Get moving! Don’t dally!
I’ve been wondering about how these two things match up. I know that Kinston is right about management. If you are starting a new team, the first thing is to get moving! Get those low-hanging fruit! Don’t ask who should do what — just look around and do what needs doing.
This is what the old SEI Capability Management Model (CMM) described as Level 1: your team actually does do something (like ship a product, complete a consulting project, mow some lawns), but you have no idea how you did it. And let’s not get started about quality! But you keep moving, everyone doing everything, whatever is in front of them.
Then, after awhile, you find that something slipped. “Who was supposed to do this!?” Turns out, there isn’t anyone who is supposed to do this.
If the boss is smart, they do the hard work to define the work and assign it. They usually aren’t: they can’t get out of the low-hanging fruit and the organization never matures. Everyone just stays in crisis mode.
Which might be another reason why Toyota could publish their organizaitonal secrets (“The Toyota Way!”) with no worries that someone could replicate it and beat them at their own game. Or, “Nobody Ever Gets Credit for Fixing Problems That Never Happened“.
(See how I did that? Gratuitious Repenning and Sterman reference!)
So, Kinston’s right. But I also know that Flyvbjerg is correct. Is it that Flyvbjerg’s principle is good on Projects (limited life, single line) while Kinston is talking about ongoing business concerns? That feels true, and it fits how each describes their work, but I’m flailing to find the underlying reason.
Flyvbjerg says that one of the reasons why projects fail is that politicians want to “put a hole in the ground” so that they can put the sunk-cost fallacy in play. This feels like the “Simple Pragmatism” of Kinston’s SMC spiral. They want to get started (“just do something!”) and this works in much of their lives, so they deploy it in a situation where that thinking is poorly suited.
It feels close but somehow not entirely right. What am I missing?