At The Basic School, where the Marine Corps trains its new officers, a handout on decision making teaches “The 70% Solution.” It says: “We must learn to accept uncertainty and execute quickly with an imperfect plan.”
It warns: “We must guard against waiting for a perfect sight picture, which may never come, leading to inaction.” The reason it gives: “We are competing in time with the enemy.”
In 1960 the Food and Drug Administration hired Frances Kelsey to review applications for new drugs. One of her first files was an application for thalidomide. Kelsey refused it because the safety evidence was “more anecdotal than clinical.” The company resubmitted it again and again and complained to her superiors. They backed her.
Reports of birth defects then came from Europe. In August 1962 President Kennedy gave Kelsey the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service. The Kefauver-Harris Amendments of the same year required manufacturers to “prove the effectiveness of drug products before they go on the market.”
Here the country honored the official who refused to act before the evidence was in.
In his inaugural address on January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy listed the tasks ahead of the country. Then he said: “All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”
The motto of California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo is Discere Faciendo, “Learn by Doing.” The university was founded in 1901. The motto appeared on campus in 1930. The earlier slogan was “Earn while you learn.”
The school’s first director, Leroy Anderson, wrote that “all instruction should be as largely as possible through the medium of actual performance by the pupils themselves.”
In 1982 Tom Peters and Robert Waterman published In Search of Excellence. They listed eight attributes of excellent companies. The first was “A bias for action.” A report in the Christian Science Monitor that December summed up the authors’ view: “Experimenting and acting on an idea is much better than being paralyzed by proposals or fear of change.”
In a note for a later edition, the authors explained the phrase: “In its simplest terms, this says ‘get out there and try something.'” They added: “Just as you don’t learn anything in science without experimenting, you don’t learn anything in business without trying, failing, and trying again.”
In Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones learns that the Ark has been loaded onto a truck to Cairo, guarded by a convoy. He says he is going after it. His friend Sallah asks: “How?” Indy answers: “I don’t know. I’m making this up as I go.”
Bill Walsh, head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, wrote down the opening plays of each game in advance. The list grew “from the first five, to first 10, and finally First 15.” According to Lowell Cohn, who wrote a book about Walsh, the reason was “purely diagnostic.” Walsh “would test the defense in various ways.”
The script was not a plan to follow at any cost. Quarterback Steve Young said “it wasn’t a cause for alarm that we didn’t run through the First 15.” NFL teams still script their opening plays. Kansas City Chiefs coordinator Matt Nagy says the script helps them “understand maybe what [the defense is] going to do.”
On March 9, 1933, Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it the same day. Many members of Congress had no chance to read it. Only one copy was available on the floor of the House.
In a fireside chat on May 7, 1933, Roosevelt described his method in baseball terms: “I have no expectation of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average, not only for myself but for the team.” He added: “I do not deny that we may make mistakes of procedure as we carry out the policy.”
In his first 100 days, Congress passed 15 major bills. The first 100 days became a benchmark for measuring the early success of a president.
Wing it. To wing it is to do something without preparing first.
Fly by the seat of your pants. The person decides as things happen, without a plan.
We’ll figure it out as we go. The start comes first, and the details come later.
Make it up as you go along. The plan is created while the work is done.
Course-correct. To course-correct is to change direction during a project, not after it.
Call an audible. To call an audible is to change the plan at the last moment. The phrase comes from football. There the quarterback changes the play at the line.
Throw it at the wall and see what sticks. The team tries many things and keeps what works.
Ship it. The work is released now, as it is.
In 2000 the information technology company EDS ran a television ad called “Airplane.” A construction crew builds an airplane while it flies. One worker says: “Some people like to climb mountains. I like to build planes. In the air.” The text on the screen reads: “In a sense this is what we do. We build your digital business even while you’re up and running.”
The agency Fallon made the ad. The phrase “building the plane while flying it” is now a common business cliché for work that starts before the plan is finished.