Soft Openings Beat Perfect Plans

One phrase that has always bothered me is “build the plane while you’re flying it.” It sounds edgy. It sounds agile. It sounds like the kind of thing experienced leaders say when facing uncertainty.

The problem is that the phrase hides an important assumption. The plane already exists. The metaphor also collapses under its own logic. If you are truly building while flying, the plane never had wings to begin with, which means it was never flying in the first place. You cannot repair something that was never capable of operating. Nobody builds wings while flying. Nobody installs engines after takeoff. Nobody decides halfway through the flight that maybe flight controls would be useful.

Some things are foundational. Some things are improvements. The failure to distinguish between those two categories creates a lot of unnecessary problems in organizations.

The real issue is not whether to plan or act. It is knowing which uncertainty belongs before launch and which uncertainty can only be resolved by operating the system. Those are different problems and they require different answers.

The Foundation Comes First

Throughout my career I led new implementations, process changes, quality systems, and organizational transitions. In almost every case, there were people who wanted to keep planning until every possible risk had been eliminated, and people who wanted to start immediately and figure everything out later. Neither approach worked particularly well. The first delayed action indefinitely. The second often skipped critical work that should have been completed before launch.

The better approach was to build the foundation first. Roles needed to be clear. Processes needed to exist. Success measures needed to be defined. Training needed to happen. Ownership needed to be established. Not because the design would be perfect, but because the system needed to be capable of functioning. Once the foundation was in place, reality could become a teacher. The foundation is not a feeling. It is observable. Roles are assigned or they are not. Processes exist or they do not. Training happened or it did not. You can see it the same way you can see whether a house is ready to move into.

The Soft Opening

I needed a way to explain that the foundation had to be complete before the learning could begin. For more than twenty years I used a different term for that first period after launch. I called it a soft opening.

Most people associate soft openings with restaurants. The kitchen works. The staff is trained. Customers can place orders. The business is operating. What nobody expects is perfection. The purpose of a soft opening is not to determine whether the restaurant exists. The purpose is to discover what happens when real customers interact with the system.

Years ago, when we rolled out a new quality inspection process, I decided to use a one-month soft opening. The decision had already been made. What we were trying to learn was how well the process worked under real operating conditions. We fully expected problems. The goal was not perfection. The goal was learning. Use the process, see what breaks, fix what you discover. That approach taught us far more than months of discussion ever could have. The system itself became the teacher.

Learning Requires Commitment

The soft opening approach accomplished two important things. First, it created commitment. The decision had already been made. We were not debating whether to implement the process. We were implementing it. Second, it gave people permission to be honest about what was not working. Nobody had to pretend the design was flawless. Team members could raise concerns and identify problems without being viewed as resistant to change.

The process was stable enough to generate meaningful feedback, and the feedback was valuable enough to improve the process. That combination is where learning happens.

Launch Is Not the Finish Line

Many organizations treat implementation as the end of the work. In reality, implementation is where the learning begins. The plan meets reality, reality exposes assumptions, teams adjust, and processes improve. That is not failure. That is the purpose of a well-executed launch.

The goal is not to eliminate surprises. The goal is to make sure the surprises occur on top of a functioning foundation rather than underneath it. That is why I have always preferred the idea of a soft opening over building the plane while flying it. One acknowledges that learning is inevitable. The other too often becomes an excuse for skipping the work that should have been done before takeoff.

The soft opening is not the destination. Once the learning period closes, the process gets solidified and monitored like any other operational process. The learning loop continues. The difference is that the system is now stable enough to generate reliable information about where it needs to improve.

You don’t build the wings while you’re flying. You build the airplane well enough to fly safely, then learn how to improve it with every flight.