Works
- Discovery-Driven Planning, Harvard Business Review, 1995
In Tactics of Organizational Politics
Ideas
Discovery-driven planning. For new ventures, where outcomes cannot be projected with confidence, McGrath and MacMillan propose planning around assumptions. The plan starts from what success must look like (a reverse income statement), lists the assumptions that must hold for it, and sets checkpoints at which those assumptions are tested before larger commitments are made, with funding released as milestones are reached.
What it explains
McGrath and MacMillan explain why a request framed as a test of named assumptions, funded in stages, is easier to approve than a single large commitment. It lets decision-makers say yes while keeping the option to stop.