Come with me on a journey, if you will, to Perfectville, a wonderful place, where everything goes to plan.

Always, All the time. No exceptions.

Everything goes exactly as you would expect it to, and you know about it in advance. There is no lottery, because gambling and risk don’t exist. They don’t need to. As everything is known in advance, there is no such thing as risk or uncertainty. And as there is no risk, there is no need for any reward.

It really is a truly magical wonderland – weddings never get spoiled by rain, trains always run on time, and you’re never caught out wearing the wrong trousers.

Work is planned. Budgets are planned. Outcomes are planned. Due dates are planned. Crops never get spoiled, accidents never happen and traffic jams are planned not to occur.

All problems are pre-solved. There are no problems that occur inside the window of planning. And as there are no problems that occur, there is no need for problem solvers anymore.

Project Managers.
Finance Managers.
Safety and Health Managers.
Risk Managers.
Project Controls.
Quality Managers.
Leadership.

All are now superfluous and redundant, as there is no longer any need to solve problems that no longer exist.
And as planners typically make up maybe 1 in every 20 people in the workforce, we can successfully let everybody else go, generating massive cost savings for the perfectly planned universe.

Have Certainty, if you want it, but you’ll be polishing up your resume.

Marvellous.
Except for one thing.

Nothing ever goes to plan. Ever. There is no place called Perfectville. Risk is fun and Sketchy is awesome.
Uncertainty is the only rule in the rule book.

Risky rewards activate chemicals in our brain pleasure centres, and solving problems is exciting.
Certainty is bad. Uncertainty is the ducks nuts.

So if nothing will ever go to plan, we have to scrap them the moment we started, and there is only the reality of uncertainty, rather than the fantasy of planning, why do we keep bothering with these pesky planners…