QuoteProject
Today, if someone showed me a five-year plan, I'd toss out the pages detailing Years Three, Four and Five as pure fantasy Anyone who thinks he or she can evaluate business conditions five years from now, flunks.
Mark Mccormack
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Planning long-term can be unrealistic due to unforeseen changes in business conditions.

Mark McCormack emphasizes the unpredictability of future business conditions, suggesting that rigid long-term planning is often futile. He argues that anyone who believes they can accurately predict the state of their business or the market five years ahead is disregarding the dynamic nature of the environment they've chosen to operate within.

Themes

PlanningBusinessUncertaintyFutureStrategyAdaptability

In practice

Example use cases

In a business seminar discussing strategic planning.

Similar quotes

Accounting is the language of business.
Warren BuffettRead
The game business reinvents itself every five years.
Nolan BushnellRead
It is very difficult to get people to focus on the most important things when you're in boom times.
Jeff BezosRead
I think I've realized that business and being polite [don't] match. You can be fair, but me being polite was not me being fair to myself.
Beyonce KnowlesRead
In a world where companies increasingly know about their business in real time, it makes no sense that public reporting mostly follows the old quarterly schedule. Companies sit on vital information until reporting day, at which point the market goes crazy.
James SurowieckiRead
If one engineer at a startup tries Slack and says, 'I hate it. I am not going to use this,' that's it for us. We won't get evaluated.
Stewart ButterfieldRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.