When I was working at TCI in my first marketing job, the new Chief Marketing Officer, fresh from P&G,
flew our entire marketing department out to Denver for a one-day summit. What he shared that day –
about the relationship between planning and execution – has influenced more of my business decisions
than almost anything else I’ve learned.
He began his presentation with an idea. He was going to build brand loyalty and upsell current
subscribers to broadband and premium digital products by using the cable system’s own cross-channel
inventory — advertising directly to current customers across the 30+ basic cable channels, rather than
using that inventory solely for outside advertisers. With roughly 60% of U.S. households subscribing to
cable at the time, and operators like TCI running over 1.5 million 30-second spots per year, it was a
significant asset that could have powerful impact.
There was skepticism in the room. Why would we market to people who are already customers? Who
would manage the program? Why was that a priority when our goals were to get new customers?
Where was the data to suggest this was a good idea? The questions were fair and not surprising. But
the questione that silenced the room came from a well respected V.P. who had earned her position
through smarts and relentless execution. “I understand the idea,” she said. “It may even make sense.
But I don’t hear a well-thought-out plan. When we leave here today some of us will be excited, some
skeptical, most somewhere in between. But none of us know exactly how you’re going to get this done.”
“I understand,” the CMO answered. “And it’s a great question. So, I had a mentor at Procter & Gamble
who, if he had only taught me this one thing, I would be forever grateful. And that’s seventy percent
planning and one hundred percent execution. We are at the seventy percent point on this project right
now. That’s why I brought you all to Denver. Today we start the execution. This is step one.”
There are moments for all of us when we see ourselves in a new light. When something we have
intuited about ourselves but never named earned a definition. When something we’ve perhaps thought
as a weakness turns out to be a strength. That’s me. I thought to myself. He’s describing me. Here was a
CMO recruited from one of the most respected marketing organizations in the country, with credentials
that as a young marketer I could only aspire to. And he was giving a name to my practice. More, it was
something his own mentor had passed down to him. There’s a logic to this after all.
Why Seventy Percent
Eisenhower said it very plainly in one of his most famous quotes: “Plans are useless, but planning is
indispensable.” So here’s the truth in that. By the time you’ve finished planning, the world has moved.
A competitor cuts prices. New technology shifts the landscape. The market takes a hit and your target
customers no longer have disposable income. A key vendor closes. Someone on your team leaves. An
election changes the regulatory environment. A trade dispute raises your costs.
None of these are black swan events. They’re just the normal friction of operating in a real environment.
You can’t plan for all of them. So the question before you push go isn’t whether your plan is complete —
it’s what level of readiness is sufficient to move forward.
The advertising industry worked this out empirically decades ago. The reach and frequency model
established that you needed to reach 60–70% of your target audience with enough repetition to drive
meaningful results and that beyond that threshold, additional investment produced sharply diminishing
returns. The curve flattens. More time, money, and effort yield less and less. You see versions of this
pattern across many domains: manufacturing throughput, herd immunity, biological systems. Getting
from 70% to 100% almost always costs far more than getting from 0% to 70%, and the marginal gain
rarely justifies it.
The Only True Measure
No amount of planning can tell you whether your product, program, or initiative will be successful.
Focus groups help. Pilots help. Case studies help. But they are proxies, informative but not predictive.
The only true measure is actual market response: how real users and customers respond to what you
have to offer.
The market quickly tells you what you got right, what you missed, whether to push forward, adjust, or
stop. That feedback loop only opens when you begin.
The case for 70% planning isn’t a case for recklessness. It’s a case for moving when you have enough
critical mass to execute well, while staying flexible enough to respond to what you learn. The question
before you press “Go” isn’t “Is this plan complete?” It’s “Can we implement at a high level, evaluate
rigorously, and adapt as we go?”
One Hundred Percent Execution
I’ve focused on the 70% because that’s the harder sell. The 100% execution part sounds obvious but the
shift it requires may not be. Once you stop holding yourself and your team accountable for a perfect
plan and start holding everyone accountable for making things happen at the earliest moment they can,
the culture changes. Progress, which planning can only stimulate, becomes real.
I’ve thought about that day in Denver many times. The skeptical VP asked exactly the right question. The
CMO gave exactly the right answer. Interestingly, it was not because he had everything figured out, but
because he understood that waiting until he did would have cost more than it saved.
Seventy percent planning. One hundred percent execution. I’ve tested that formula across many
different situations over many years. It has its risks. Most worthwhile things do.