The Rule of Chesterton’s Fence

IT is very normal to have a situation where a strategic plan is developed by one group of people and implemented by another.

In fact, my most common consulting assignments involve reviewing strategic plans other people have put together.
Most of the time, those people are not in the room or in the employ of the organisation.

That is not a problem. In these instances, I must find a way of respecting the work done, while still critically assessing the quality of the work to improve the plan where possible.

This is where the rule of Chesterton’s fence comes in.

The rule of Chesterton’s fence states that you should not remove something until you understand why it was erected in the first place.

It comes from an age-old farming practice to not remove a fence on a new piece of land until you have discovered what the fence was erected to keep out or keep in.

In other words, do not implement drastic reforms of reconstructing or deconstructing strategic decisions without first understanding the underlying reasoning and rationale that informed them.

Even if you do not agree with the strategic objective or direction, you cannot automatically assume that the decision was ill advised unless you first uncover the reason that informed it.

Once you do so, you will be better informed to revise because you will focus your discussions on the underlying factors that led to that decision as opposed to that decision in isolation.

We are often required to implement a strategic plan we had no part in planning or preparing.

This is not a problem, particularly if the fundamentals of the plan are well informed and the planning process and assumptions used to arrive to certain decisions are made clear.

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