I’ve read about the inflexibilities of Gosplan while going through Red Plenty. These days I am reading Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner and it gives me an opportunity to examine inflexibilities in thinking on the western bloc side:
The price of bringing all the theatre and component service plans into harmony with each other, into one plan, was the total elimination of any flexibility in carrying it out.
Yes no flexibility at all in a military machine where the no plan survives first contact with the enemy is dated around the same time (1963). In this case the inflexibility was due to the lack of staff and computer time available to complete alternatives. This is similar to Gosplan’s problems: they had so many inputs to their models, that their planning for the current year was completing around October of said year.
Ambition in planning, lack of resources and definite inflexibility in taking another route because of already committed resources. Wow project management does not change at all, in any field and in any bloc.
I am 20% into the book and I am scared. It seems to me that we have survived out of pure luck.
(Random incoherent thoughts; I know.)
