Excerpt from Chapter 3 "What's the Plan?"
Dreams come first. With the help of an operating plan, those dreams can become realities.
Making them come true requires two things: commitment and the plan itself. Commitment marries your dream to your mission in life; you are going to make your dream your mission. The German poet philosopher Johann Wolfgang Goethe made the most powerful statement about commitment I've ever run across:
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have otherwise occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man would have dreamed could have come his way.
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.
Decisiveness, according to Lee Iacocca, is the primary quality of a good manager. But without planning decisiveness is hamstrung. Now that we've begun, we need a campaign plan, consisting of general goals (strategy) and specific objectives (tactics). Like dreams, plans should contain deadlines but should not be governed by them.
Let's say your dream is to be a produced screenwriter. As long as you're moving generally in that direction, nothing can take the dream away. But the plan recognizes that dreams come true step by step, and it focuses on the first step: learning about, conceiving, writing, rewriting, and marketing the first novel.
A plan consists of goals reached by objectives to be accomplished within a specific time frame laid out on an agenda. Objectives and goals have deadlines. Dreams don't.
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