(There are at this writing 3 HCO Pol Ltrs of near date on this subject of targets. The area has never before been examined or written up as a philosophic subject.)

Plans are NOT targets.

All manner of plans can be drawn and can be okayed. But this does not authorize their execution. They are just plans. When and how they will be done and by whom has not been established, scheduled or authorized.

This is why planning sometimes gets a bad name.

You could plan to make a million dollars but if when, how and who were not set as targets of different types, it just wouldn’t happen. A brilliant plan is drawn as to how to convert Boston Harbor into a fuel tanker area. It could be on drawings with everything perfectly placed. One could even have models of it. Ten years go by and it has not been started much less completed. You have seen such plans. World’s fairs are full of them.

One could also have a plan which was targeted — who, when, how — and if the targets were poor or unreal, it would never be completed.

One can also have a plan which had no CONDITIONAL TARGET ahead of it and so no one really wanted it and it served no purpose really. It is unlikely it would ever be finished. Such a thing existed in Corfu. It was a half-completed Greek theater which had just been left that way. No one had asked the inhabitants if they wanted it or if it was needed. So even though very well planned and even partially targeted and half-completed, there it is — half-finished. And has remained that way.

A plan, by which is meant the drawing or scale modeling of some area, project or thing, is of course a vital necessity in any construction and construction fails without it. It can even be okayed as a plan.

But if it was not the result of findings of a conditional target (a survey of what’s needed or feasible) it will be useless or won’t fit in. And if no funds are allocated to it and no one is ordered to do it and if no scheduling of doing it exists, then, on each separate count it won’t ever be done.

One can define planning as the overall target system wherein all targets of all types are set. That would be complete planning.

To get a complete plan okayed one would have to show it as:

(a) A result of a conditional target (survey of what’s wanted and needed).

(b) The details of the thing itself, meaning a picture of it or its scope plus the ease or difficulty in doing it and with what persons or materials.

(c) Classification of it as vital or simply useful.

(d) The primary targets of it showing the organization needed to do it.

(e) The operating targets showing its scheduling (even if scheduled not with dates but days or weeks) and dove-tailing with other actions.

(f) Its cost and whether or not it will pay for itself or can be afforded or how much money it will make.

Complete planning would have to include the targets and the plan of the thing.

Thus, by redefining words and assigning labels to target types we can get a better grip on this.

A plan would be the design of the thing itself.

Complete planning would be all the targets plus the design.

Thus we see why some things don’t come off at all and why they often don’t get completed even when planned. The plan is not put forward in its target framework and so is unreal or doesn’t get done.

Also it’s a great way to lose or waste money.

Sometimes a conditional target fails to ask what obstacles or opposition would be encountered or what skills are available and so can go off the rails in that fashion.

The whole subject of plans, targets and target types is new in the realm of analyzed thought.

It is a subject to “get the feel of’ and “learn to think concerning” rather than a fully “canned” subject.

But if these points are grasped, then one sees the scope of the subject and can become quite brilliant and achieve things hitherto out of reach or never thought of before.