Jan

14

On the subject of parenting, one aspect that has forcibly struck me (very forcibly in fact!) is the opportunity for personal development. I've found that my time management and organisational skills have improved hugely since becoming a father, not to mention patience. One specific aspect may be particularly interesting from a speculative/chess point of view, the need to constantly improvise new plans and adjust my 'fatherhood game' according to constantly changing situations. I don't think it works to go in with an overly dogmatic and detailed plan, instead I've found it better to improvise within the overall mission statement of fostering junior's development.

This is certainly highly analogous to chess in which multiple adjustments are vital. And I wonder if this is also the experience of speculator parents.

David Hillman writes:

This is certainly true in traditional business and strategic planning. Basically, one creates a mission and vision, sticks a stake in the ground out on the planning horizon, develops goals and objectives, creates action items to achieve them, and proceeds. Then, at specific points or at random, one reviews and analyses data, i.e., produces feedback, measures progress against benchmarks, uses that info to re-evalute one's plan, then adjusts accordingly.

From the onset, we know the initial plan is pretty much smoke and mirrors, a wish list, as it were, as none of us knows exactly what the future holds or if the plan will be successful as written. In fact, if we're smart, we expect it won't be. It's essentially a road map, and as we know, Rand McNally doesn't illustrate every pothole in the pavement or provide up-to-the-minute traffic and weather reports in its road atlases. We only know about those things when we buckle up and hit the road, then we adapt our route and driving as necessary. If we do this successfully, we reach our destination, but it may be by a different route or in a different time frame.

Much as I've never seen a kid that came an instruction manual, I've never seen a kid that came with a proforma [if they did, perhaps people would be more cautious in considering parenthood], but I'm kinda thinking that, like applying geophysical models to finance, the basic strategic planning framework is pretty much transferrable across enterprises and that would include parenting.


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