Great leaders understand the responsibility of doing things right, making sure they’re accomplishing the goals they’ve set out for themselves and their organizations. Doing things right is a core to success. However, if you focus too much on planning, and don’t get to work making things happen, you might miss the bigger opportunity.

General George S. Patton summed up this concept nicely when he said: “A good plan executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week.” Planning is a good thing and it’s always necessary. However, if you focus too much on planning you will never achieve the success you’re really looking for.

Steve Johnson – strategic product management coach and storyteller – wrote about the importance of getting things done in a recent post: “There’s doing it right, and there’s doing it perfectly. You want to focus on the former and not the latter.”

Take a look at how you plan, and then take a hard look at how you execute. If you focus more on the planning than the executing, make it a priority to change, to focus on the latter.

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The Product Management Perspective: Agile development has become an important software development methodology. While it doesn’t make sense for every product development group to use Agile, the idea of iterating between planning and development can (and should) be applied regardless. If writing a lengthy PRD makes sense, do it, but do it quickly and get it to development so they can start working on it. Don’t get caught up in having the “perfect PRD” – it doesn’t exist. Take time to plan, but get moving quickly. Your customers will be the beneficiaries.