Module 2 discussion
Planning vs. Doing
When your Course Developer was a boy, his mother had a
canned response to his various ridiculous requests (e.g., a pony, when we were
living in an apartment). She would smile
brightly and say, “Well, we’ll think about it.”
It took him years to discover that this actually meant, “We’ll think
about it for ten seconds whenever you mention it, but it is NOT going to
happen.”
This is a small instance of a larger truth. Although a good plan is essential to a good
project, planning can be an attractive alternative to actually doing
something. In Washington, as in
industry, it’s common to “study a problem to death.”
Can you describe an instance from your own experience? Did
planning take the place of doing something, did good planning result in doing
something successfully, or did inadequate planning result in a disaster? Explain.
