I think Eisenhower said something like, though it does not work, plan is essential. I am in software industry, and we programmers have been asked often the question: ‘what is our plan?’, ‘when is the deadline?’, and we do give a plan and estimated deadline, and most of the time, it won’t work.

People who are ignorant feel bad about it. In IT industry, people who work are less stupid, and usually the stupidest person gets to the top due to Dunning Kruger effect. So they don’t have intelligence to separate between plan and real world happenings. So if a plan fails or slips, the intelligent person who did the plan is put to a toss.

The world is complex. You don’t plan to brush your teeth, it happens, you don’t plan to breathe. You plan only when you are not sure, you plan only when you are not made up for the task, when you are unsure. That is you plan only when there is element(s) of uncertainty, or some difficulty.

It’s not intelligent for a person to take a plan as execution, instead it should be treated as communication. This is what a person is going to do. It might happen happen in the way planned, but there is a good chance that it won’t, the course might change, we might even scrub it.

A wise person sees plan, and pads it up with more resources, to take the shock(s) of reality, he also plans for failure.