by Sam Culper III
This is just a quick note to remind everyone of why we plan and why we write things down. In class and elsewhere on the net in regards to a few of my articles, I hear a lot of responses like this: Oh, I’m just going to play it by ear. Planning takes too much time and I have to spend too much time thinking about things. I’m a pretty intuitive person so I’m just going to go with my gut. I can read people/make quick decisions when they count so I think I’ll be okay.
This line of thinking goes back to illusory superiority. Humans tend to overestimate their abilities and fool themselves into thinking they are more skilled than they are. We all know the sayings, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” and “Proper prior planning prevents poor performance,” and “Perfect practice makes perfect.”
When planning for Operations Security (OPSEC), or identifying our Early Warning Indicators, or planning for elicitation to gather intelligence information from human sources, we may need hours’ worth of planning for something that could take as little as thirty minutes or an hour. The more complex the environment and mission, the more planning and attention to detail it requires.
Hey! The link to read “more” of Sam Culper’s article doesn’t work.
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