Which do you want to use? Good enough plans or perfect plans?

/ mkessenburg

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

Use good enough plans, not perfect plans! 

Why? Because good enough plans get you flourishing (instead of waiting for the perfect plan—aka stagnating). Because good enough plans are helpful resources that allow you to get started, to take thoughtful action, to complete reasonable experiments that help you learn, make progress, and then improve your plan. And because perfect plans don’t actually exist this side of heaven:

“A Good Enough Plan is distinct from the perfect plan, which is an elusive, fantastical creature that has never actually been spotted in the wild. Search for the perfect plan has slowed down many a sentimental operator with dreams of perfectionistic glory” (Move Fast and Fix Things, p. 87).

Photo by Vadim Bogulov on Unsplash

What are the characteristics of a good enough plan? For me, a “good” good enough plan is clear enough to get started and to stay out of trouble, easy to create (I find that using a Q/A format, first-person, and a length of 1-2 pages really helps), and documented and accessible—Google Docs works well.

What do good enough plans actually look like? Here are 12 examples of good enough plans:

  1. Christ-Centered Purpose Statements Plan
  2. Curriculum Plan (blog post)
  3. Expected Student Outcomes Assessment Plan (blog post)
  4. Financial Health Plan
  5. Get Flourishing Framework
  6. Governance Plan
  7. Help Students Grow Strong in the Lord (blog post)
  8. Personalized Flourishing Plan (blog post)
  9. Organizational Culture Map (blog post)
  10. School Improvement Framework
  11. Student Assessment Data Usage Plan
  12. Well-Being Culture Plan (blog post)

What are the benefits of using good enough plans? I’ve found that using good enough plans helps me use 3 mindsets (growth, open, and promotion), is less stressful, and helps me get started faster—I take action more quickly so I get results more quickly.

Here are some blog posts on planning:

  1. How do you feel about planning?
  2. We can flourish without a plan, right?
  3. If your international Christian school has no intentional, documented plan for well-being, how do you feel?
  4. International Christian school leaders, why should you stop using a professional development plan?
  5. International Christian school leaders, how do you feel about implementing a separate action plan on getting flourishing?
  6. Leaders, what types of thinking do you use for resource planning and management?

What about you? How do you feel about using good enough plans instead of perfect plans? What are the characteristics of a good enough plan? What benefits might you experience from using good enough plans?

Get flourishing!

Michael