We can all get very cynical about those trite life-affirming slogans that are spouted by “self-help gurus”.

If we had to design posters to hang in entrepreneurs’ offices – not something we would ever do, because we would recommend that most entrepreneurs should not have childish posters in their offices in the first place, but if we did – the slogan we would put on the obligatory photograph of the cute animal would be...

“It would not do to be afraid of trying anything ninety-nine times if there was a chance of succeeding at the hundredth.”

With its ponderous, old-fashioned phrasing, it can hardly be described as catchy – nor is the name of the man who wrote it. If you want to be remembered by History, it helps if you are not called Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck (pictured above).

Yet those few words contain two great truths. First, success against the odds is possible. Second, success against the odds usually involves enduring a lot of failure first. It is the second point that the “gurus” tend to ignore.

The real wisdom in von Lettow-Vorbeck’s words, however, is to be found in the sentence that he wrote next: “In following this principle, we did not do badly.”

Unlike most of the “gurus”, he actually lived what he wrote.

He was a man of remarkable tenacity. A relatively junior officer, he found himself as the Commander-in-Chief in German East Africa – modern Tanzania – at the outbreak of the First World War. For the next four years he fought a brilliant campaign against the far more numerous, better equipped, and better supplied forces of three Allied empires. For most of those four years he was cut off from all help, even from all news, from his homeland. Indeed, he fought on for a couple of days after the official end of the war because was he completely unaware of the Kaiser’s abdication and Germany’s surrender.

Although his campaign is still admired in military circles – particularly how he used his gift of improvisation to overcome incredible problems of supply and communications – it is all but forgotten by the general public today. A courageous man in every sense – seventeen years later, allegedly, he told Hitler to go **** himself – he was also, in many ways, a ruthless man and, of course, he fought on the losing side, so perhaps it is understandable if he is not cited as a role model.

Yet entrepreneurs in particular should at least acknowledge the truth of what he wrote and the enterprise of the actions that lay behind the words.

This blog entry is posted in conjunction with our Podcast # 123 – Making It Up!

Existence is an incomprehensible mix of chaos and order. Sometimes the emphasis seems to be on chaos, sometimes on order.

It is the chaos that makes it interesting – especially to the sort of people who become entrepreneurs. For us, few things are more horrible than the thought of a dull, predictable life. It is through the unpredictable that we make our fortunes – and sometimes lose them.

Even as we embrace the chaos, we fear it. Humans have a deep-seated psychological desire to control their lives. If life teaches anything, it teaches that such control is impossible. There is a lot of truth behind the joke, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans”.

The fact that control is therefore impossible only increases the desire for it. This explains the popularity of planning. It generates an artificial certainty that has nothing to do with real life but which in itself is very reassuring.

This is not to say planning is a bad idea. It is a necessary first step in the process of organisation, without which there can be no business.

However, there is a special version of the Law of Diminishing Returns that applies to planning. Advanced preparation is essential, but there is such a thing as being over-prepared.

In particular, as planning becomes more elaborate, the feeling of artificial certainty it engenders becomes all-encompassing. The organisation, and everyone involved in it, becomes wholly reliant on “The Plan”. This destroys all flexibility and initiative.

Even Vladimir Lenin, the founder of a state dedicated to the principle of “scientific” centralised planning, came to realise that this was a problem. After an initial period of the tightest possible regulation of the economy, he relaxed central controls a little and allowed a degree of private enterprise. People could use their initiative and adapt to changing circumstances. Predictably, there was a dramatic increase in general prosperity.

However, Josef Stalin, Lenin’s successor, reversed that policy. He had supported Lenin on economic grounds but, on attaining power himself, he had good political reasons to centralise control: he did not like the idea of people using their initiative.

His principal mechanism of economic control was a series of Five Year Plans. These spawned a host of imitators. Marxist regimes all over the world had their own Five Year Plans, on the basis that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but Stalin had some unlikely fans among those who claimed to be anti-Marxists. Adolf Hitler, for example, stole quite a few ideas from Stalin, mostly the bad ones, and added his own twist to them. He imposed a Four Year Plan on Germany – presumably on the assumption that his anti-Marxists ought to be more efficient than the Marxists and would therefore get the job done 25% quicker.

Centralised planning can be very efficient at dealing with relatively simple, routine tasks. When it focuses on a particular target, it may well achieve it. The problem is that, in focussing on those targets, it ignores everything else – and the everything else may be what really matters.

The world is a complex place, changing rapidly – and the rate of change is increasing all the time. Even the most efficient central planning will always lack the feel for what is happening on the ground, and the initiative and flexibility to adapt to it.

This applies to states and to individual businesses. The paradox of planning is that the best plans expect the unexpected, and adapt to it.