Bikes: the ultimate plan

I was talking with a couple of my engineering brainaic friends last night before the Seattle Social Media event at the Seattle Art Museum. Our conversation ebbed and flowed and at one point my friends explained how their companies are all tied up in their undies over planning. Yes old school planning. The worse part they say is that hundreds of hours of work are continously discarded as plans routinely change and rarely do they become reality.

Hello? We need to bury the plans guys and gals. Bury them and get real.If you are still involved in ardous 3 and 5 year planning you’ve got it -WRONG.

Maybe you missed the memo; bikes are the new plans. Bikes. Period.

If you’re currently thinking about growing, creating, starting or building ANYTHING you need to rethink the ideation and birth stage. It’s not the plan that should get all your precious resources. Resource the idea to life so that it can get into a beta for real time feedback and experience, don’t plan it to death.

My plans have all been burned I only use bikes- now.

Bikes you ask? Yes metaphorically speaking I’ve gone from static, developed behind closed doors action and business plans to bikes; frameworks, models, platforms of transportation.

Transportation moves us. It transports us from here to there. Bikes do that as do models and frameworks. They encapsulate the big picture, the key drivers, key elements and the framework. But they don’t have every nut and bolt identified and a 50 year supply sitting in a warehouse somewhere. NO models and frameworks for action are open, a work in progress, collaborative and dynamically created to be a vehicle that will evolve and change.

Real time. You need to get your bike on the road, your action model and framework into the clients hands- I’ve never met a plan that survived a client or a team member. We want reality here- remember – not white tower, Pollyana delusions.

Bikes can be upgraded, you can switch out any part as the terrain or journey demands. Bikes are customizable; you can get fat chubby tires for stump jumping and lean anorexic ones for road racing. Upgrade your bike suspension and go from merely rolling along to becoming a trickster. ( An entire new niche and brand promise) Bikes are a lot more like the open platforms you and I and most consumers are on everyday; Google, Face Book, Twitter, Ning…Hello?

So if you are plotting ‘how’ to get where you want to go think dynamic, agile, open, customizable, flexible and think models and frameworks not plans. Think bikes. Think about getting on the road and modifying your ride as the terrain changes. Think about real time action and get a move on it.

The world has changed. Don’t plan- create a framework and a model and get on the road and see what happens!

Pam Hoelzle

425 218 5864