Guo Jia
Leave the baggage, march light
Speed is what is left after subtraction
Records of the Three Kingdoms, Book of Wei, Biography of Guo Jia
Everyone said a thousand-mile raid was too risky. He said the risk was not the distance but what you were carrying.
What actually happened?
In 207 Cao Cao wanted to march north against the Wuhuan, and his generals objected: with the army beyond the frontier, Liu Biao might send Liu Bei against the capital. Guo Jia judged that Liu Biao would only talk and would never trust Liu Bei with troops, and pressed for the campaign. At Yi county he raised something more urgent still. Speed is the essence of war; a thousand-mile raid with heavy baggage cannot seize the advantage. Leave it behind and march light day and night. Cao Cao did, went out by Lulong Pass, and broke the Wuhuan at White Wolf Mountain.
Speed is not running faster, it is carrying less
The pace of a long march is set by its slowest part, and the slowest part is always the baggage. The only way to be quick is to decide what not to bring. That is subtraction, and preparation is almost always addition.
Three months went into analytics, an admin console, permissions and every screen size, for a test meant to be quick. Which of those would still have answered the question?
Accept the price of travelling light before you go
Leaving the baggage means no supply and no line of retreat if it goes badly. Marching light is not free; it trades margin for error against speed. So the decision rests on one prior judgement: does this have to be fast, or can it be slow?
Dropping monitoring and the rollback plan to hit a date is allowed, as long as you know what you sold. Whoever thinks light costs nothing panics the first time.
Answer the fear everybody already has
He did not skirt the worry about the capital; he ruled on it first, and only then proposed the raid. Meeting the largest objection head on is what makes the rest of a plan movable at all.
Pitching something aggressive, put the thing the team is most afraid of on the first page: why it will not happen, and what you do if it does.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: something has to be fast and you are still finishing the preparation.
Ask first: which of these could be skipped and still give you the answer, and do you accept the cost of skipping them?
Where it goes wrong: treating light as free; walking around the risk the team is most worried about instead of ruling on it.
Lines to keep
Leave the baggage, march light, and come at them unlooked for.
Liu Biao is a talker, and knows he cannot control Liu Bei.
Same situation, other people are asking
I understand it completely and still don't move.I keep preparing instead of starting.I know what to do. I'm not doing it.I'm still getting everything ready and the window is closing.I keep not starting · all 8 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.