Planner as in the ability to plan ahead, as defined by Merriam Webster:
You can choose from a variety of different fields:
Military - those that devised ingenious/brilliant strategies on the battlefields and/or long-term plans that were effectively carried out
Finance - for example, those that were able to build up a company from scratch and make it into a multinational corporate success
Media - those able to anticipate trends and like a chessmaster apply themselves to it
Sports - either individuals or team managers
Politics (tied in to media but still perhaps not quite the same) - able to manouever themselves into certain/specific position(s)
Ok these are just examples, ultimately you have to pick the field.
Tell me who do you think is the best planner (as in could design and engineer a plan and execute it to near perfection) of all time? Hell it could even be a thief for all I know.
Also, tell me what characteristics this person had/has that you think made them so successful.
One of the biggest success stories I can think of is that of Steve Wynn here in Las Vegas.
I dont have the numbers here, but he turned a small (1 or 2 million…possibly less than 1 million) inheritance into several billion dollars by first buying the rights to unused land on the Las Vegas strip, and later by building and buying casinos of his own.
The first major bundle he made was by using his inheritance to sign a long term lease on a lot of “dead land” next to the Ceasars Palace casino. When Ceasars wanted to expand into that area, they ended up paying Wynn more to take his name off of the 99 year lease than they paid to actually buy the land from its owner.
Now he’s one of the richest men ever, and not a whole lot of it can be attributed to “luck”. He directly controls an insane percentage of the wealth in this city, and owns half of the strip. His business decisions are also a major reason why the image of Vegas is being turned away from hookers and cheap souveneirs, and more toward resorts and luxury.
I’ll say Eisenhower, planning D Day. I’ve seen many shows about it, and the level of planning of the actual invasion, and also all of the diversions just boggles the mind.
For a military planner, I’d have to agree about Eisenhower. Not only did he have to manage a logistical nightmare, but he had to cope with world politics, commanding officers’ egos and a sometimes brilliant opponent.
For media (in the U.S.) I’d have to go with Roone Arledge. Sarnoff and Paley were pioneers. Arledge took an already existing medium, some new technology and a simple idea (viewers don’t just want to see an event, they want to see the people who make the event), revolutionized sports coverage and then turned around and did it again with news.
For sports, you can’t do much worse than Branch Rickey. He built baseball’s farm system and then bet that integrating the sport would have more positives than negatives. In second place, I’d put Pete Rozelle, who realized the power (and revenue) of television, and figured out that a league was much stronger than individual teams.
Walt Disney, Ray Kroc (McDonalds) and Kemmons Wilson (the man who founded Holiday Inns) all guessed correctly about postwar America’s desire to travel, but still want to know exactly what they’d get when they arrived.
And don’t forget Bill Gates’ business model: we own the technology, you can license it, but we want royalties.
Baseball:
Manager: A Tie between Casey Stengal and Joe Torre.
Executive: Branch Rickey.
Basketball
Coach: Phil Jackson. Yeah, you may say “But Jordan, Pippen, Rodman for Chicago; and Shaq and Kobe for LA made it easy for him.” But pick-up teams don’t work anymore in high-level basketball. Phil’s duty was to turn these volatile elements into harmonious and championship teams, and he more than succeeded .
Executive: Red Auerbach of the Celtics. His talent of picking winners after winners, and maintaining the players’ loyalty, while Boston won championship after championship was just amazing. (The dynasty unfortunately ended after the death of Len Bias and Reggie Lewis.)
In Media:
Walt Disney–By churning memorable cartoon characters, adapting folk tales, and hiring the best pop and orchestral music not done by John Williams, Disney created an multi-faceted empire that even the incompency of the latest CEOs couldn’t crumble.
Charles M. Schultz–whereas Disney made a lot of characters, and created different worlds, Charles Schultz made only one world, featuring a group of diverse kids and a highly imaginative dog. He created a world so vivid, we are still living in it after his death.
Baseball:
Manager: A Tie between Casey Stengal and Joe Torre.
Executive: Branch Rickey.
Basketball
Coach: Phil Jackson. Yeah, you may say “But Jordan, Pippen, Rodman for Chicago; and Shaq and Kobe for LA made it easy for him.” But pick-up teams don’t work anymore in high-level basketball. Phil’s duty was to turn these volatile elements into harmonious and championship teams, and he more than succeeded .
Executive: Red Auerbach of the Celtics. His talent of picking winners after winners, and maintaining the players’ loyalty, while Boston won championship after championship was just amazing. (The dynasty unfortunately ended after the death of Len Bias and Reggie Lewis.)
In Media:
Walt Disney–By churning memorable cartoon characters, adapting folk tales, and hiring the best pop and orchestral music not done by John Williams, Disney created an multi-faceted empire that even the incompency of the latest CEOs couldn’t crumble.
Charles M. Schultz–whereas Disney made a lot of characters, and created different worlds, Charles Schultz made only one world, featuring a group of diverse kids, wah-wah adults, and a highly imaginative dog. He created a world so vivid, we are still living in it after his death.
Oh by the way, Bill Gates is so lucky it’s unbelievable.
Steve Jobs, who created three very successful and different businesses from scratch: Apple, NeXT and Pixar, is the better planner among techies. If he had bill Gates’ luck and has his tens of billions, many of us would say, “yep, he deserved it.”
[QUOTE=capacitor]
Oh by the way, Bill Gates is so lucky it’s unbelievable.
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I don’t know if I would call Bill Gates lucky, I would call him shrewd. He knows when a technology is good, and he knows how to re-package it to make it look like it was HIS idea. He calls this process innovation.
One nominee would have to be George Goethals and the other engineers who successfully built the Panama Canal. This immense project was brought in ahead of schedule and under budget - probably the last U.S. government project that can make this claim. Almost a century later, much of the original infrastructure (lock gates, etc.) is still working perfectly. The main thing they did not foresee is the tremendous future increase in the size of ships - although the locks were built far larger than any ship in existence at the time they were planned, they are too small for the largest ships now.
I’m going to cheat and go with each group seperately, since it is hard to gauge how they compare in importance.
I don’t think you would be looking at a battlefield general here so much as a/set of logistics officers. I disagree with the application of Ike to this. There have been plenty of military campaigns that were more carefully planned and executed, and on much larger scale. If anything, Ike’s nomination would be in politics, for getting the Allies to work together through it all.
I give my medal for military genius to the Mongolians. They conquered an insane amount of territory and managed to rig it up so that their supply lines were never too long, by effectively absorbing captured civilizations. Most conquests happen in small steps, where you have to pause and enforce order. The Mongols let people pretty much alone, but ensured that they got supplies and tribute, effectively massing the largest land empire in history in an incredibly short timespan. Additionally, their tactics are still studied today. Ghengis, I salute you.
Screw the tech heads. They rode new technology and succeeded despite their actions, not because of them.
I’m looking more at the railroad barons. That is some hardcore business genius, and you can’t start much more from scratch than many of them did. Their ethics may be called into question until your face turns blue, but you can’t argue with their success.
I’m not sure how broad this group you are including. If pressed, I would be Euro-centric and say Martin Luther, who recognized that the Bible could be mass produced cheaply in German, and the Church would not be necessary as it had made itself. You could also include your Hearsts and stuff, whose media empires influenced national policy.
Hm. I’ll go out into left field and say Roger Penske. If you know who he is, you may agree or disagree, but the man was dominant for about 20 years, and he did it using his own self-built empire.
Hitler. I think this one is a no-brainer. He played Versailles like a harp, then for an encore he played the ethnic minority game beautifully. He hypnotized an entire nation to a degree never before seen, so much so that many left behind their humanity. The only argument you can make against this is that he ultimately failed, but you can’t deny how close he came. I can’t think of one other politician so idolized by his population - I don’t mean in a “we love the Queen” type way, I mean, IDOLIZED.
“Oh by the way, Bill Gates is so lucky it’s unbelievable.”
Brilliant people can make their own luck. What makes Bill Gates so great is the fact that he didn’t really develop new technologies…he planned better ways to implement ideas that others had.
Bill Gates became the richest man in the world from pure genius in planning and execution…not innovation or better products.
I find Steve Jobs to be inferior because he did the same things using Xerox PARC technology and was only partially successful and never leveraged Apple’s lead in the market.
Pffft, the sembankrschina wish. As I recall, it was a Saudi royal or some such. Some other foreign billionaires.
I believe a lot of it depends on how you count “wealth” - land, stocks, bonds, raw materials, cash on hand… don’t forget that Gates has lessened his role with the company, his stock value has plumetted, and he has donated HUGE sums of money to nonprofit orgs (well, HIS nonprofit orgs, but nonetheless), and for that reason alone, I can’t condemn him as many people have.
I’m a little bitter that no one has argued about mine yet.
