{"id":2991,"date":"2022-10-10T11:44:07","date_gmt":"2022-10-10T08:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hernefes.com\/the-world-of-planning-and-failed-plans\/"},"modified":"2023-05-21T13:00:44","modified_gmt":"2023-05-21T10:00:44","slug":"the-world-of-planning-and-failed-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hernefes.com\/en\/the-world-of-planning-and-failed-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"The World of Planning and Failed Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<iframe style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/1SNjfLIlWW7P3RNtF4bjUF?utm_source=generator\" width=\"330px\" height=\"80\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">The earliest photo I remember of my childhood is from when I was three years old: My brother was not yet born\u2026 I see my mother and myself on the top floor window sill of a four-story apartment building in Erenk\u00f6y. On the stage are the students of Erenk\u00f6y Girls\u2019 High School with the large patterned, pleated S\u00fcmerbank&nbsp;printed cotton&nbsp;fabric of the divan on which we are sitting, and the students of Erenk\u00f6y Girls\u2019 High School with their navy blue&nbsp;jumpers&nbsp;passing by on the street, their hair carefully braided on both sides, and the notebooks they carry against their chests. The year is late \u201974. It could have been early \u201975. Everything I remember is like a scene from the movies Ertem E\u011filmez made in those years\u2026 My mother is speaking: \u201cMy daughter will grow up like these sisters and go to school. Come on, my beautiful daughter, drink your milk now.\u201d A cup of milk in&nbsp;her&nbsp;hand that I resisted to drink, dreams about&nbsp;her&nbsp;daughter on&nbsp;her&nbsp;tongue\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">The next photo is the proud school pose I gave to my father on our flowery balcony. Since I waited until I was seven years old to be sent to school, I was bigger than my peers, and therefore I proudly put on my black apron, which would look out of place on me for five years, and smiled at the lens with missing teeth. With my hair in a ponytail on both sides and a pointed \u201cboy\u2019s\u201d collar that I insisted on wearing instead of the elaborate white lace collar my mother knitted for me because I thought it looked more \u201cserious\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">Every memory I have of school after that photo has been infused with my curiosity for planning, a curiosity guaranteed to have been inherited from my grandfather, who, despite being just a small-town&nbsp;artisan, made a yearly work plan for himself. \u201cFirst,&nbsp;I\u2019ll come back from school, then I\u2019ll do my one page U writing assignment,&nbsp;and&nbsp;then I can eat\u2026\u201d An instinct that I never knew at the time to be called time management, efficient work, planning, but which was carried by genes. The confidence of dividing time into small bites and knowing what to add to each bite. The study and&nbsp;timeplans&nbsp;I made for my friends while preparing for university seemed to contain the prophecy that an important part of my profession would be project management. Although the libertarian Aquarius in me sometimes tickled my more spontaneous and adventurous side, I chose to plan everything about my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">So much so that if life were not in the hands of a competent scriptwriter beyond our comprehension, I might be inclined to believe that there is something sovereign and slightly divine about planning that keeps all variables under control. Fortunately, it didn\u2019t. The sand castles of childhood were demolished and I witnessed my plans for life being ironically destroyed by an invisible hand. I found myself in the slightly reproachful attitude of Ata Demirer\u2019s na\u00efve \u00c7anakkale boy in the movie Eyvah Eyvah when he says to his prospective lover, \u201cI never make plans because they don\u2019t work.\u201d The disappointment of being betrayed by an obsessive childhood crush\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">As if these were not enough,\u00a0the term\u00a0VUCA, which started to be used to define the business world worldwide in the 2000s<a href=\"\/\/49F33EC0-4864-4EE8-A4F3-D04E311E3EA4#_ftn1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u00a0<sup>[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0underlined how volatile, chaotic and unpredictable business life is, and dropped a bomb under my business planning building. Trying to plan under ever-changing conditions has become as futile as trying to drain a bucket of water from a boat with a hole in the bottom.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">How meaningful was it to keep planning in a world where everything was changing so rapidly?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">Was it worth incurring so much labor cost for business plans and budgets that would not work anyway and would constantly change?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Wasn\u2019t the caravan already fixed&nbsp;up&nbsp;on the way?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">Fortunately, many businesspeople, loyal to their old habits,&nbsp;embraced&nbsp;the arguments to turn a violent disagreement with planning into a divorce. After I got over the initial shock, I chose to be the loyal lover who, despite all my betrayals, continued to look after my childhood sweetheart. Because over time, I realized that planning is not a static series of activities, but a lever that structures the mind, provides flexibility of movement, strengthens the link between the end goal and the present, and facilitates resilience in the face of setbacks. The world laid the groundwork for a new model called \u201cagile planning\u201d and helped me repair my damaged confidence in planning.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The bottom line, I think, is that in work and in life:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Plans change all the time. Change is inevitable. We make plans not so that they don\u2019t change, but to structure the mind and keep it clear.&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The important thing is not,&nbsp;not to make plans, but to have the flexibility and agility to change them.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>We must have a long-term goal, a course for the future in this life. Where do we want to go? Why do we want this? What does it mean for us? What are the right steps we should take today on this path?&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u201cFocusing on the moment, living in the moment\u201d, one of the most popular concepts of recent times, does not mean focusing only on the moment and being shortsighted, on the contrary, it requires analyzing the current context very well. Those who analyze well will make accurate, calculated and prudent predictions for the future. In short, living in the moment and making plans are not contradictory as one might think.&nbsp;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Remembering our ultimate goal is the easiest way to stay on the course when circumstances become difficult for us or change unpredictably. As long as we know the why, we can always find a way to change the how.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">By the time\u00a0Montaigne\u00a0said in the 16<sup>th<\/sup>\u00a0century,\u00a0\u201cIf a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable<s>,<\/s> America had probably not even been discovered for more than 50 years. Of course, today\u2019s technology, economic order and global competition could not be compared with those days, but fortunately, wisdom about the basics of life has no time record. In short, that girl sitting on the window sill of an Erenk\u00f6y apartment building in the 70s is still making plans. With the belief that planning is the fuel of survival and the knowledge that with planning you can be stronger and more flexible to meet life\u2019s surprises\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"applewebdata:\/\/49F33EC0-4864-4EE8-A4F3-D04E311E3EA4#_ftnref1\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">\n  <sup>[1]<\/sup><\/a> VUCA, an English acronym first used in 1987, stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. It was first proposed by the US military to describe the new security environment that emerged with the end of the Cold War. Then, with the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, the concept of VUCA was reintroduced by the US military. For the last 20 years, this concept has been embraced by business circles as the acronym that best describes a chaotic business world characterized by rapid change and associated uncertainties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The earliest photo I remember of my childhood is from when I was three years old: My brother was not yet born\u2026 I see&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":2610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[306,307,308],"class_list":["post-2991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-ebru-arslan-en","tag-planning","tag-vuca-en"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hernefes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/3F8BA29C-1597-4D5E-8836-F8FECEFA6FB2-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C2048&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernefes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernefes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernefes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernefes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernefes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2991"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hernefes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3781,"href":"https:\/\/hernefes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2991\/revisions\/3781"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernefes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernefes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernefes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernefes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}