7th September, 2021

The heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson is oftentimes quoted as saying:

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

And so it is, metaphorically at the very least. My last recording (Day 154) was on a Wednesday morning. Shortly after I stopped that recording, my wife called to say that our daughter was being sent home from nursery. The little one (my daughter, that is) was displaying a persistent cough and the nursery staff didn’t want to take the chance that it could be COVID. And this was entirely fair - it wouldn’t be the first time it had happened, and it wouldn’t be the first time the nursery, as a business, felt the looming repetition of lockdown.

In any case, Wednesday’s original plan was scrapped. My wife picked up our daughter from nursery, I booked a PCR test for the same afternoon, and I then went home to be with my family. No more recordings like this until today (the following Tuesday, on Day 157). I carried out the PCR test on my daughter. It was even more uncomfortably invasive than I’d heard…and I wasn’t the one having the swab scraped across my tonsils and nostrils!

Over the next three work days, I stayed at home to be with my family as much as possible. And make sure my wife didn’t go insane! It was all unexpected, unplanned, uncontrolled. Therein, is the message for today:

There is a very important difference between plans and strategies.

My fellowship plan was decoratively constructed on the infamous Gantt Chart. Colour-coded spreadsheet cells signaled my ability to think and execute ambitious research over the long term (4-7 years in this case). But as any seasoned and swaggeringly cynical manager - in academia or not - is likely to tell you, Gantt charts are almost entirely theoretical. Reality won’t play out exactly as planned when you chose the colours to fill in your spreadsheet cells and label tasks against your future team members.

Gantt charts are art…but they are not the art of war.

The static picture of a Gantt chart does not reflect the dynamic reality of how plans have to change int he wake of uncontrolled events. As a leader, there is a great challenge in being ever-aware that the Gantt chart and To-Do list is merely Plan A. The leader sees the strategy that includes Plans B-Z. In other words, you have to consider how to keep moving forward towards the goal, even if it isn’t in the straight line you originally envisaged on paper.

What paths will you take towards your goal when the first one is blocked?

If you have a question for Marc, upload an audio recording for it to be featured on a later Q&A episode!