When waves land on a beach, there is action: splashing, wetness, a cool splooshy sound. Then, there is inaction. This inaction between the splooshes is not failure, it is simply inaction. The next action will come when it is ready, and it will be a success, because waves are always successful.

An old man walked up to me
wearing a grey old man's hat,
a striped old man's sweater,
carrying a newspaper and an umbrella
both furled under one arm --
"do you know which, uh," he quavered,
"where Union Station is?"

and I smiled as I pointed, because I did know
"yep," I replied, "right over there."
He turned creakily, the old man,
"that's it, eh? right over there,"
looking at the vast marble building
which glowed in the sun
behind a dry fountain
flanked by lions.

I nodded, seated on a bench in the shade,
and as he walked off, I smiled again --
comforted by the thought
that this same conversation had surely occurred daily
in and near this very spot
since the old man was as young
as I must have been, the last time
that I sat on this bench in the shade.

(Written for MAAWG, but it applies to many efforts. It should be noted that this is not anybody's official statement; it's just me blathering.)

"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency." -- Daniel Hudson Burnham

There are many different ways to develop a plan. Some -- including what we're attempting here -- involve defining the problem we're trying to solve, before we try to solve it. Crazy, I know, yet it tends to be fairly effective not only for the kinds of issues we're dealing with in MAAWG, but also for the kinds of minds common to this industry.

For this technique to succeed, we also need to understand some of the possible results of our effort.