When the map is not the territory it represents…:

Plan life’s journey

By Lionel Wijesiri

The other day, I was having a discussion with a few of my subordinates about corporate planning and life planning. I explained to them that both have many similarities. One young executive asked me, “Unlike business planning where theories and formulae are involved, cannot I plan my life and live it from my heart?”

A very good question, I thought. I gave him my honest reply. “The answer is yes, of course, as long as you understand that life doesn’t always go according to plan or on our timeline or render the results we intended.”

Planning for old age is also part and parcel of life planning

Later in the evening, I gave further thought to his question. It is obvious that we are going through difficult times. Mainly, due to the current deteriorating global economic conditions, many of us now find ourselves working far longer than we ever thought we would or have fewer retirement resources than we thought we’d have or planned for. Most of us, particularly senior citizens, are not living the life we had planned and are at the point where there isn’t enough time to fine-tune and start over.

So much for the well-laid plan! Don’t get me wrong; I’m not against planning. Planning is good. Just don’t mistake the plan for the real thing. Or as Alfred Korzybski, the father of general semantics, said: “A map is not the territory it represents.” Or as this line in the Swedish army manual says, “If the terrain and the map do not agree, follow the terrain”.

Follow the terrain. That is the name of the game. The terrain, which is context, will tell you what will come next. If you’re in a deep valley, bisected by a river with a strong flowing current, something different is being asked of you than if you find yourself at the top of a mountain, or floating down a lazy stream in a pontoon boat.

How we get from one terrain to another is the journey of life. You can make and execute well-crafted plans and they may get you where you want to go. However, if you get blown off course, your plans will need to be modified or thrown out completely and a new course chartered.

Road plan

“Plan your work and work your plan.” These are the holy words of a belief system built on intuitive faith in an orderly universe. I do not share that faith. I do not believe that everything happens for a reason. Let me tell you why. Your thoughts about planning reflect your innermost beliefs about the workings of the universe. When you speak of planning, you unknowingly speak of religion and politics; you speak of how you believe the world works, and of the best way to fix it. I believe there is only one kind of planning: End-result planning.

A road plan is commonly known as ‘Plan A’. We give it that name when we’ve decided to abandon it because it isn’t working. Results are most often achieved through Plan B or C or D or K or Q or V.

Don’t let yourself be seduced by the promise of a miraculous process that leads to golden results. Yesterday’s perfect process becomes “the box” people are struggling to escape today. Focus on the result, not the process. I didn’t come up with this idea of result planning on my own.

Moment of truth

Life comes down to a few moments. One of those moments happened for me when I was 15 years old. That day, somebody gave me a copy of the Newsweek. One story caught my eye.

On October 27, 1966, Walt Disney described his vision for a 27,400 acre ‘Disney World’ in Florida. Walt had purchased 43 square miles of land surrounded by a swamp. His dream was literally twice the size of the island of Manhattan. I read how Walt delivered his three-page tutorial on result planning when it aired during his weekly television show, The Wonderful World of Disney.

In a subsequent interview, he said that the vision (meaning the result, and its purpose) was the only thing that had to be clear. The process must necessarily be one of ongoing improvisation.

He said: “The sketches and plans you will see today are simply a starting point: Our first, overall thinking about Disney World. Everything in this room may change time and time again as we move ahead, but the basic philosophy of what we’re planning for Disney World is going to remain very much as it is right now. We know what our goals are. We know what we hope to accomplish. And believe me, it’s the most exciting and challenging assignment we’ve ever tackled at Walt Disney Productions...”

Ten days after delivering this announcement, Walt learned that he had cancer and a very short time to live. On December 15, 1966, he died. However, the work of his life lives on.

Like in business planning, life cannot be planned by theories and formulae

The mind of Walt Disney spawned a colourful cast of unusual creatures; Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy and Pluto are some of the heavyweights. Bambi and Thumper, Tinker Bell and Tiger Lily are a few of the middleweights. Sergeant Tibbs and Pongo, Scuttle and Sebastian are among the lightweights.

Power of mind mapping

What can we learn from Walt Disney? In technical jargon, it is known as Mind Mapping. It is one of the oldest yet still effective techniques that can be taken into practice for planning your life. When you are thinking about your personal vision statement, it can be helpful to mind map out how you want your life to be, thinking about it from multiple perspectives.

I like to put together a statement of purpose that covers the areas of social, spiritual, physical health, family and relationships, career and business, finance and personal development.

However, what if you’re not sure what your future should look like? Here are some ideas you might like to think about: You can start from a character assessment of what you are good at and what you enjoy and how you can contribute the most, or you could start from imagining your ideal day in five years, or you could go from your dream chart of all the things you want in your life, or you could think about what you would like people to say about you by way of an eulogy, or you could combine all these things to come up with your vision for your purpose.

Where are you now?

So, the next thing to consider is where you are now. Of course, you need to have knowledge of both where you are starting from and where you are going to set appropriate milestones along the way, and have a way of measuring your progress, as well as a plan for achieving your goals.

Once you have both the starting and ending points, it’s pretty much a case of doing a gap analysis and working out the steps to get from the start to the finish, making sure that you have set achievable milestones with appropriate rewards along the way, and that you have in place what is known as an evidence procedure so that you know for certain when you have achieved your goal.

In many instances, you can make this even easier by working back from the goal and saying “what’s the step before the goal?” and “what’s the step before that”, and reverse engineering it back to where you are now.

Joseph Campbell, American mythologist, writer and lecturer said: “We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.” It’s a fine bit of advice.