What do I mean by that? Given a goal which you do not have domain knowledge or previous experience related to executing it how do you maximize the chances of choosing a sequence of actions to succeed at that goal—to give some sundry examples:
A. running a bakery as a profitable business—with no prior baking or management experience,
B. writing a plugin for GIMP using Python—with no prior python knowledge, no prior knowledge of GIMP’s APIs or standards for plugins,
C. filming a three car chase sequence for a action movie—with no prior knowledge of the local laws or which permits are required to close down stretches of road from the public, nor any knowledge of how stunt drivers choreograph such sequences.
Maybe the examples I’ve given are too vague—they’re just examples—so imagine a charitable version which is much more specific. Hold it in your mind. Now assuming you don’t have the domain expertise, don’t know how to execute them yet: how would you plan to achieve it?
What skills would be transferable for the planning stages of all three examples? Skills not traits. Sure “curiosity” “cautious optimism” “creativity” “pragmatism”—yeah yeah yeah - what skills would produce better plans that aren’t execution skills themselves. So obviously—baking, coding, stunt-drivinig are not general planning skills.
”Research skills?” Okay, a little vague, but sure. What else? ”Cognitive Flexibility?”—as in that when presented with new information from their research they are willing to abandon previously held parts of the plan. ”Self Awareness?”—not sure if that’s a trait or a skill. I suspect that challenging your own assumptions and specifying the degree of confidence you have in any given bit of knowledge or expectation is a skill.
What skills would be transferable for the planning stages of all three examples?
The baseline planning skill is having a start-to-end plan at all as opposed to winging it or only thinking ahead in an ad hoc manner. One step beyond this is writing the plan down, perhaps as a checklist. You can use the written copy to keep track of where you are, refine the plan, and simply to not forget it.
A step beyond, which seems rarer and less automatic for people than the previous, is to employ any kind of what they call a “work breakdown structure”: a systematic mapping from higher-level steps (“find out the legal requirements for filming a car chase”) to lower-level steps (“ask indie filmmaker chat what legal firm they recommend”).
How to be a good planner?
What do I mean by that? Given a goal which you do not have domain knowledge or previous experience related to executing it how do you maximize the chances of choosing a sequence of actions to succeed at that goal—to give some sundry examples:
A. running a bakery as a profitable business—with no prior baking or management experience,
B. writing a plugin for GIMP using Python—with no prior python knowledge, no prior knowledge of GIMP’s APIs or standards for plugins,
C. filming a three car chase sequence for a action movie—with no prior knowledge of the local laws or which permits are required to close down stretches of road from the public, nor any knowledge of how stunt drivers choreograph such sequences.
Maybe the examples I’ve given are too vague—they’re just examples—so imagine a charitable version which is much more specific. Hold it in your mind. Now assuming you don’t have the domain expertise, don’t know how to execute them yet: how would you plan to achieve it?
What skills would be transferable for the planning stages of all three examples? Skills not traits. Sure “curiosity” “cautious optimism” “creativity” “pragmatism”—yeah yeah yeah - what skills would produce better plans that aren’t execution skills themselves. So obviously—baking, coding, stunt-drivinig are not general planning skills.
”Research skills?” Okay, a little vague, but sure. What else?
”Cognitive Flexibility?”—as in that when presented with new information from their research they are willing to abandon previously held parts of the plan.
”Self Awareness?”—not sure if that’s a trait or a skill. I suspect that challenging your own assumptions and specifying the degree of confidence you have in any given bit of knowledge or expectation is a skill.
What makes someone a good planner?
The baseline planning skill is having a start-to-end plan at all as opposed to winging it or only thinking ahead in an ad hoc manner. One step beyond this is writing the plan down, perhaps as a checklist. You can use the written copy to keep track of where you are, refine the plan, and simply to not forget it.
A step beyond, which seems rarer and less automatic for people than the previous, is to employ any kind of what they call a “work breakdown structure”: a systematic mapping from higher-level steps (“find out the legal requirements for filming a car chase”) to lower-level steps (“ask indie filmmaker chat what legal firm they recommend”).