A short monologue by Mark McCurgo (hostleadership.com) reflecting on a major business mistake: attempting to plan everything in advance. He argues that in complex situations you need a clear endpoint but, critically, a concrete small first step that can be executed quickly without permission; that small step generates feedback and learning to guide further decisions.
Hi there. I'm Mark McCurgo from www.hostleadership.com. the biggest mistake I ever made in business was trying to figure everything out in advance. I'm a recovering physicist, and I should have known better, but actually, in a complex world, we cannot know the end of the journey when we begin with the first step. And I've spent so much time over the years trying to figure out things that were just impossible. And I've learned the key to success is, yes, you need an idea of the endpoint, but what you really need is a first step. And a great first step means something that's small enough to do in the next couple of days without permission from anybody else. I know that sounds small, but that's actually how things get going. A small next step, take you on the right way, and then you'll learn and you'll get feedback and you'll adjust. So don't try and figure it all out. Take a small next step.
