Good Enough Is the Default in Business Planning
I learned a ton in the military, and not all of it stuck. But here's a framework even my crayon-eating friends would agree with: the five-paragraph order, SMEAC.
It keeps everyone on the same page during operations, and the same structure works for a business plan or an agent prompt.
The Five Paragraph Order
Situation — the problem set, what's happening, what changed. Market conditions, competitive landscape, the constraints defining the box.
Mission — the five Ws and the task: who, what, when, where, why. The outcome you're driving toward, named clearly.
Execution — how the work gets done, the sequence, the fallback when the first sequence breaks. The actual plan, plus the plan B.
Admin and Logistics — the support layer: people, platforms, access, budgets. Ops and finance, who supplies what.
Command and Signal — ownership and feedback: who leads, who reports, when check-ins happen. Decision authority, cadence, the signal loop when something breaks.
Fuzzy Plans, Mediocre Results
Business planning is usually low stakes, so "good enough" becomes the default.
You ship a fuzzy plan, get a mediocre result, call it iteration.
The military stakes were higher, so the planning loop got tighter. Higher stakes tighten the planning loop. The best military minds aren't trained to follow scripts — they're trained to control chaos, and SMEAC is one of the tools that makes that possible.
What Carries Over
SMEAC is one of the many things that carries over to the work I do now. I've written before about thinking in functions as another piece of that carryover. The same discipline shows up in how we evaluate businesses at CT Capital, unglamorous industries reward operators who plan tight and execute clean.
Few mistakes, stated goals, clear boundaries. That's the discipline SMEAC builds.
