What We Don’t Know Is More Important Than What We Do

In planning, there are two kinds of knowing: knowing what we already know and knowing what we don’t yet know.

Flawed planning focuses on what we already know. We try to rely on what we know to make our plan. Mostly, what we know appears in the assumptions of speculations, opinions, and predictions. We base our planning on these hoping that what we already know can direct us to the new results we want. We do a lot of hoping in flawed planning.

This is functionally impossible because what we already know cannot lead to new results. It can only repeat old results. Only what we don’t yet know can lead to new results. Flawless planning gets new results because it focuses on what we don’t yet know.

We describe what we don’t yet know in the form of new questions. Flawless planning is all about new questions because, if we want any kind of new results, what we don’t know is infinitely more important than what we do know.

New questions reflect things that are so far uncertain, unclear, or undecided. Our plan is a pathway of new questions. We move forward in being our best by working on the right questions at the right time.

Each new question becomes a new perspective. New perspectives reveal new options, making it possible to be our best in any planning context. Old questions cannot reveal new options because they are old perspectives.

There is an art to building new questions.

We can translate unpredictables into questions. We can translate the assumptions of speculations, opinions, and predictions into new questions. This is fairly simple since each represents something we actually don’t yet know.

We can translate general parent questions into more specific child questions. We can translate open-ended questions into closed-ended questions and closed-ended into open-ended. We can translate long range questions into short range questions and short range into long range.

The more new questions we build, the better new questions we discover. Every answer to new questions also raises new questions. While old questions limit our options of ideas, questions, and opportunities, new questions give us unlimited access to more options.

For those of us raised in the flawed planning model, being question based in our planning takes some getting used to. We’re so used to crafting and pivoting our plans based on what we already know, it seems illogical if not unreasonable to abandon what has become essentially a superstitious practice.

When people discover the power of new questions, they quickly realize that the abundance of uncertainties can be an unlimited source of new questions. We have no shortage of questions in any kind of planning. We just need to allow ourselves to make them the centerpiece of the process. Not having all the answers becomes a gift rather than a curse.

In flawed planning, uncertainty is a problem to be prevented and fixed. In question-based flawless planning, uncertainty is a golden asset and the key to getting new results through new questions.

This is the unique, wonder-full power of new questions.

For more about Flawless Planning, visit FlawlessPlanning.org