The Annual Planning Ritual
Rituals and Incantations
I sometimes get invited to run a team planning days.
Planning is to team leaders what a horseshoe above the door is to a medieval European. It’s a symbolic gesture, a ritual, or a summoning. It’s a séance on an Excel Spreadsheet. A wish on a whiteboard.
Every leader I know accepts intellectually that we’re in deeply uncertain, ambiguous times. Long-range planning cycles rarely make sense in this environment, and yet we cling to planning like an anxious nun to prayer beads.
Heck, I do it too. My cute annual plans and intentions. The little goals dashboard I built. A few juicy KPIs here and there (just crossed 1,000 newsletter subs, by the way).
I don’t like empty rituals, so when I run a team planning day, I focus on the team rather than the planning. Still, the tenacious persistence of planning as a practice has been bugging me. Why do we still do it?
I reckon video games have the answer.
Video Game Brain
The year is 1991. I was the first kid at my school to get a computer.
I grew up working class so a computer really stretched the family budget. However, Dad needed one for his IT degree. That meant I got to play Commander Keen when all the other kids were stuck with cricket bats and lego sets. Suckers.
As I grew older, I got addicted. In 2004, I was playing World of Warcraft 12+ hours a day. I flunked out of first-year. It would’ve destroyed my relationship had my then-girlfriend not created a Night Elf huntress and become just as addicted as I was.
I’ve kicked the habit now (well, mostly). Decades of play made me realise that my addiction to gaming wasn’t just about immersion in fantasy worlds.
When I look at my relationship to gaming, I realise that three addictions underpin it — addictions that also underpin our need to plan.
Three Addictions
Video games provide what the philosopher C. Thi Nguyen calls “existential balm.” They’re a reprieve from the complexity, nuance, and judgment required to show up in daily life. They provide an opportunity to feel in control and have a clear sense of agency.
Just like planning.
Planning and video games each offer us three things that are deeply addictive to the human mind: A sense of certainty, a sense of control, and a coherent story in which we are the hero. The work of evolving our teams to cope with uncertainty is the work of giving up these addictions.
So, there’s the work. It simple, but not easy. Like any addiction, it begins with admitting we have a problem. And, like any addiction, we discover life is actually much better without it.
