We do it because we did it

Most of next year's plan is this year's plan with the dates changed. Nobody decided that. It is what happens when nobody decides.

I have sat in planning season on four different sides of the table, and the pattern holds in all of them. The template opens. Last year's lines are in it. The National Day promotion is there because it was there. The agency retainer is there because it was there. The channel split is last year's split, nudged. The launch is in March because launches are in March. Somewhere in the document is a slide called "what we learned", and none of it made it into the numbers.

None of this is laziness. Planning under time pressure runs on defaults, and defaults are what the organisation already knows how to do. Changing a line means defending it, and defending it means someone has to have an opinion in a meeting, and the meeting is on Thursday.

So the default wins, and it wins wearing the costume of a decision. The plan is signed. Everyone believes they chose it.

The test is simple and slightly brutal. Take any line in the plan and ask who decided it, and when. If the answer is a name and a date, it is a decision. If the answer is "it has always been in there", it is a default, and a default has not been checked against the world since the day it was first written, which may have been years ago by someone who has since left.

Most plans are perhaps a fifth decisions and four fifths defaults. That is fine, as long as you know which fifth is which, because the defaults are where the money quietly leaks, year after year, with nobody's name on them.

The plan is not what you decided. It is what you did not get around to deciding, signed.