When I was working in the corporate world I led a new product development team.  During the course of developing a product for an “unnamed” customer we had a new Program Manager (PM) named Gary, assigned to our team.  I had known Gary, from a previous life when I was working as a software consultant many years ago.

I brought Gary up to speed as to where we were and what the plan of execution was. After giving the lay of the land to PM-Gary he asked me a question that almost every PM asks, “What’s your backup plan?”.

“Backup plans are for losers”, is what I told him.

I almost laughed at the shocked look on his face. I doubt anyone ever said that to him before.  I will tell you that I stand behind my statement. As I explained to Gary, if I didn’t think my plan was going to succeed I wouldn’t be executing that plan. My goal was and is success and failure is not an option.  My advice is,  “Plan for success.  Don’t plan for failure”.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, how you envision your goal is how you will execute it.  If you have a backup plan, you are giving yourself an option to fail and you will most likely fail.  If you envision success, you’re on the path to success.  This is not to sound Pollyanna about progress.  Projects and plans will fail.  Course corrections (pivots as they are called) will occur.  In many cases the plan will radically alter during the course of execution.  However, no matter what happens, your mindset needs to be success.

Gary had my statement “Backup plans are for losers” written on the top of his office whiteboard.  It was still up there when I left the company.