Pattern: Strong Opinions, Loosely Held
Also known as: The Plan is the Plan Until it is Not; Plans are Nothing, Planning is Everything.
tl;dr
Context
Product managers regularly need to set direction and align everybody on the same goal. This requires investing a lot of time in quarterly or yearly planning sessions, resulting in countless documents and spreadsheets. This coordination ensures that separate teams understand their focus and work together towards common goals.
Problem
Any future-related planning is based on making decisions with limited information, supplemented by beliefs, instinct, and educated guesses from past experience. Despite thorough efforts, reality frequently diverges from initial assumptions. Unexpected customer escalations emerge demanding immediate attention. New market data reveals different user needs than anticipated. Technical explorations uncover constraints that challenge core assumptions.
When new information accumulates to a tipping point, continuing with the existing plan can lead to inferior outcomes. However, the effort invested in planning and progress made so far often create proportional resistance to change, making it difficult to acknowledge when a different path is needed.
Solution
Adopt the mindset of "Strong Opinions, Loosely Held." This means forming confident, well-considered plans based on the best available information, but remaining humble and open to adapting those plans when new evidence emerges.
As Dwight D. Eisenhower noted, "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything". The true value lies in the shared understanding built during planning. Teams align on the landscape, goals, and “why” by interpreting data together. This collective alignment forces everybody to look for the best path forwards and adjust course when circumstances change.
This diagram illustrates the evolution of plans facing new realities. Teams start with an initial direction (blue line) in a given environment. Having a conviction, a direction, and a plan is key. As work progresses, accumulated effort creates strong inertia to maintain course. When the environment shifts significantly, the original approach yields diminishing returns. At the tipping point, adapting to a new direction (green line) becomes the better course of action. This pattern emphasizes balancing decisiveness with intellectual humility and using new insights as the driving force to overcome the inertia of existing plans.
Consequences
That leads to the mindset that "The plan is the plan until it isn't". Adopting a culture where being open to change is a strength, not a weakness. It demonstrates prioritizing best possible outcome over protecting one's ego and reputation.
When this pattern is implemented, several benefits emerge:
Planning time reduces as people focus on key decisions rather than precision
Teams make better local decisions based on changing conditions, rather than blindly following preset plans
Reduce waste - as new information reveals a better path
As Mike Tyson famously said, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." In product management, the ability to change the plan is just as important as making one.