7 Gameplan
Even the best strategy must eventually degenerate into a series of actions — Lembit Opik MP
You are now in minute seven. It’s time to sketch a very basic plan of how you would put your approach into action. You don’t need to specify again the mini-processes which you identified in Tactics. Rather, you want to do the ‘from here to there’ route map, at the National Atlas scale — not at the streetmap level. If you want an easy way to remember what you have been doing with Tactics — Embedding — Gameplan, you can think of Tactics as the basic principles of driving, the ‘what to do in what situation’. Embedding is the learning to drive the car, making those principles and techniques a habit. The Gameplan is the route you would follow to actually go somewhere.
The number of steps in your plan depends a little on what your approach is. In one minute you can scribble furiously and come up with a seventeen point plan. At the other — and more useful end — every plan must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. You should already sorted out the beginning and the end in Situation and Resolve, so you can write those down straight away. Then write down the minimum number of steps which logically take you from that start to that finish, following the approach that you dreamed up in Thinking. Remember that if you need to recruit Allies, this should be part of the plan, and if you need to set up an internal communication or training programme as Embedding, you should also include this.
Your initial plan is a best first guess. It may depend on factors outside your control (in fact, it will almost certainly depend on such factors). You may want to highlight these or asterisk them, but don’t worry about them. It’s also possible that you can only really plan the first phase, as its outcome will radically influence what you do next. Remember that you only have a minute — you will not include all eventualities.
Back to the villagers and the Samurai. There are actually three planning phases in the film. The villagers initial plan is to send out people to recruit hungry Samurai, who will then defeat the bandits. However, once Kambai agrees to take on the job, he makes his own plan to recruit Samurai, which he executes. On arrival in the village, the Samurai develop a plan which involves training the villagers, an initial foray to deal with the bandits at their hideout, and a ‘wall of spears’ into which they will lure the attackers. Each part of each of the plans meets with some success and some failure. The villagers’ initial plan is simplistic and over-optimistic. Kambai is more realistic about recruiting Samurai, but even he meets with a number of challenges which have to be overcome. The Samurai plan at the village meets with a number of setbacks, but is ultimately successful.