"The reason that everybody likes planning is that nobody has to do anything"
About this Quote
Planning is politics' safest performance: all posture, no sweat. Jerry Brown's line skewers a habit as old as government itself, but it lands because it reframes "planning" - usually sold as competence - as a form of socially approved procrastination. Everyone can applaud a blueprint. Nobody has to risk failure executing it.
The intent is half-jab, half warning. Brown isn't condemning foresight; he's calling out the incentives that make process feel like progress. Planning creates a comforting theater of control: meetings, timelines, glossy binders, consultant decks. It also distributes responsibility so widely that accountability evaporates. When results don't arrive, the plan can be revised, rebranded, or blamed on "changed circumstances". Action is messy; action produces losers; action creates headlines and enemies. Planning mostly produces consensus.
The subtext is managerial as much as it is political. In bureaucracies, planning is a career-proof activity: you can be diligent without being decisive. Brown, a politician with a reputation for austerity and skepticism toward grand schemes, is needling the technocratic faith that better design automatically yields better outcomes. It's a reminder that public problems rarely die from lack of ideas; they die from the costs of implementation - funding, tradeoffs, enforcement, patience.
Contextually, it fits an era when "policy" often becomes an identity marker and "having a plan" substitutes for demonstrating the power to carry it through. The line works because it weaponizes a truth most professionals recognize: the plan feels virtuous precisely because it postpones the moment you're judged.
The intent is half-jab, half warning. Brown isn't condemning foresight; he's calling out the incentives that make process feel like progress. Planning creates a comforting theater of control: meetings, timelines, glossy binders, consultant decks. It also distributes responsibility so widely that accountability evaporates. When results don't arrive, the plan can be revised, rebranded, or blamed on "changed circumstances". Action is messy; action produces losers; action creates headlines and enemies. Planning mostly produces consensus.
The subtext is managerial as much as it is political. In bureaucracies, planning is a career-proof activity: you can be diligent without being decisive. Brown, a politician with a reputation for austerity and skepticism toward grand schemes, is needling the technocratic faith that better design automatically yields better outcomes. It's a reminder that public problems rarely die from lack of ideas; they die from the costs of implementation - funding, tradeoffs, enforcement, patience.
Contextually, it fits an era when "policy" often becomes an identity marker and "having a plan" substitutes for demonstrating the power to carry it through. The line works because it weaponizes a truth most professionals recognize: the plan feels virtuous precisely because it postpones the moment you're judged.
Quote Details
| Topic | Management |
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