As Mike Tyson memorably said, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”. And he’s right – and not just about boxing; when circumstances change drastically, we need to change as well.
And what’s more: we will change: the question is whether we’re in control of that change or not. The best position to be in is not one where we’re prepared for all possible outcomes (which is painstaking, boring, frequently impossible – and also means that 99% of the work we do in planning scenarios becomes unusable and irrelevant). And by working that way: that irrelevancy is by design. That seems nuts to me.
Instead, the ideal scenario is to be adaptive, well-prepared, and with a cultivated ability to handle the unexpected. And, pushing this mindset one step further, we arrive at a seemingly perverse desire to welcome the glitches and the unexpected, and the ability to play with the circumstances, and even use them to our advantages. A flexibility that sees the advantages in the disadvantages, the strengths in weakness, and the opportunity in loss. An ability to shift with an ever-changing landscape.
An ability to roll, as it were, with the punches.
