Planning as Hiding
"I need to have the perfect plan before I reach out."
A young executive. Sharp. Systems thinker. Wanted to map every stakeholder, every scenario, every possible objection before making a single move.
I asked him: when does the planning end?
Silence.
It doesn't. That's the point.
The planning is the avoidance. It feels like preparation. It looks like diligence. Your manager sees you working late on the strategy deck and thinks: committed. Your peers see the comprehensive stakeholder map and think: thorough.
Nobody sees what's actually happening. Including you.
Because the planning has become a very sophisticated form of protection. Against what? Against being wrong. Against being seen before you're ready. Against the terrifying possibility that you might act on incomplete information and discover that you don't, in fact, have it all figured out.
For a high performer, that's not a small fear. It's existential. Because "having it figured out" isn't a work habit — it's a load-bearing wall in their identity structure.
I see this pattern across industries, across levels, across cultures. The common thread isn't lack of courage. It's an excess of competence.
These leaders got here by being right more often than not. By seeing around corners. By anticipating. Their success was built on the strategy of knowing before acting.
And at a certain level, that strategy breaks. Because the terrain shifts from complicated to complex. From predictable to emergent. From problems you can solve to situations you can only navigate.
You never know when the wave comes. You can't predict outcomes in a complex system. All you can do is stay in motion, take responsibility, and change course when reality tells you something your plan didn't.
The young executive didn't need a better plan. He needed to notice what planning was doing for him.
Safety. A sense of control. The illusion that if the plan is perfect, the outcome will be too. And underneath all of that: the belief that being wrong would be catastrophic. That people would see through the competence to the uncertainty underneath.
Once he could see the planning as a strategy — not as professionalism, not as diligence, but as a protective pattern — he had a choice he didn't have before.
He could still plan. But now the planning was in service of the work. Not in service of the fear.
The difference between strategy and stalling? Strategy accepts that it will be wrong and moves anyway.
If you're waiting for clarity before you act — ask yourself: is this preparation, or is this a very sophisticated form of hiding?
The answer might change what you do this afternoon.
...