Planning Is Everything (Or Putin’s Last Stand)

The 2017 political satire The Death of Stalin shows what happens when power not only corrupts but distorts the minds of the powerful so that brutality comes easily, as it did for Lavrentiy Beria, whom Stalin affectionately called his Himmler — Hitler’s architect of the Holocaust. Russian leaders have a real talent for letting power go to their heads. In Putin’s case, it seems to be the only talent he has — because he obviously can’t plan, and he clearly can’t manage.

Carey Smith | Founding Contrarian

Russian President Vladimir Putin has proven to the world that he’s crazy. But some madmen are good at business. Putin, on the other hand, would make a terrible CEO.

Putin’s reckless attack on Ukraine is a case study in what not to do — in diplomacy, and in business. It shows you what happens when a bad manager doesn’t have a plan yet proceeds to pull the trigger on a product — or in this case, a war — without any strategy whatsoever.

Like some entrepreneurs, Putin assumed there was no way he could fail. A decades-long complacency throughout his government and his top-down, emperor-has-no-clothes mentality allowed it to happen — encouraged it, in fact. If Russia were a business, it would be headed for Chapter 7. They’d be selling off Tatarstan and Khakassia to the highest bidder.

A lack of planning will doom any project — both in war and in business. When we partner with founders, we help them create careful plans and solid budgets — many have very little idea how to go about that. We research the founders’ designs, patents and markets, and we do the legwork in finding them the best people to hire. We also help locate and connect them with the right (American) manufacturers, and help them market their products. These steps can all take up a huge amount of a founder’s time and energy, with the result too often being rushed decisions and poor choices.

And once you make a poor choice, it can be very hard to recover. In Putin’s case, beyond the blood on his hands, he’s screwed his own people and trading partners, too, resigning the former to poverty by ruining any future chance Russia had for trade deals with the rest of the world. Europe counted on him for its oil supply, and where did that get them? How long will political leaders let that continue when its citizens are freezing this winter?

Bad companies and bad governments can survive for a while, but there’s at least some comfort in knowing that ultimately, they both crash and burn at the hands of leaders with an overabundance of confidence but no experience running organizations.

In Russia, it seems almost certain that Putin’s failure (and constant pissing in the faces of his military brass) will end in a coup, as it did for Beria at the end of “The Death of Stalin.”