Signal & ScienceAcademy

Course 4 · Lesson 6 of 7

Distinguish a fresh plan from a reassessment

Tell whether a plan is completed, stale, or the wrong bet, and choose between closing it out, rebuilding from new evidence, and starting fresh.

Lesson 6 of 7 in Build the Right Plan
  1. 1Name the outcome first
  2. 2Set the planning focus and the success contract
  3. 3Fit the plan to capacity and the growth model
  4. 4Treat recommended work as advice, not orders
  5. 5Edit, reorder, skip, or discard a plan responsibly
  6. 6Distinguish a fresh plan from a reassessment
  7. 7Close out the plan and keep the learning

Why this matters

Plans end in different ways, and the ending decides what the next plan learns. A plan closed out as complete keeps teaching: its finished work, skip reasons, and measured results feed the next plan as a reassessment. A discarded plan teaches nothing except the feedback you give, which is right when the plan was the wrong bet. Choosing the wrong ending either repeats a rejected approach or throws away evidence that the Learn step needed.

When to use it

When a plan is nearly finished, has stalled, or no longer fits the business.

Before you start

  • Know the plan's state: draft, active, or completed ("This plan is finished and locked."). Archived plans were superseded by a newer one; discarded plans were rejected.
  • Know what has changed since the plan was built: a new diagnosis, updated intake, a new Planning Focus or primary target, or newly analyzed Research.
  • Record results on completed tasks first (see Close out the plan and keep the learning).

Do this

  1. 1Read the plan's state first. A completed plan is locked; its only forward action is "Build my next plan".
  2. 2Watch for the app's own prompt. With three quarters of tasks done (or the quarter over) it shows "Great progress!"; with every task done it shows "Plan complete!" and "Close out this plan".
  3. 3If the plan was worked and the bet was sound, choose "Mark plan complete" from the plan's action menu. Open tasks are recorded as unfinished, and the next plan reads what was completed, skipped, and measured.
  4. 4If the plan was the wrong bet (wrong bottleneck, wrong channels, too much work), choose "Discard and start fresh" and say what was wrong. The next plan is built from your diagnosis and intake, not from the discarded plan.
  5. 5When the next-plan choice appears, match it to what changed: "Nothing much. Build it now.", "A few things. Quick check-in." (four questions on what worked, what did not, and what changed), or "A lot. Redo the intake."
  6. 6If a request for a new plan returns "No new data to work with", none of the inputs have changed since the last plan. Use "Re-run Diagnosis" or "Quick Check-in", or update the focus or target; "Edit anyway" builds one regardless. See Re-run a diagnosis.

What you should see

A clear state and a matching next step: a locked, readable record for a completed plan, an undo bar after a discard, or a new draft built from your choice.

How to judge it

You can say whether the current plan is being continued, closed out, or replaced, and name the evidence behind that call: task completion, measured results, or a specific change in the inputs.

What it does not mean

A stale plan is not a bad plan; it was built on the evidence available at the time. Closing out does not mean the plan succeeded, and discarding does not erase outcomes you already measured. A plan goes stale because its inputs and results changed, never because a score crossed a threshold.

Try it in Signal & Science

Open the Marketing Plan, read the plan's state, and list what evidence has changed since it was built.

Open in Signal & Science

Put it to work

Know what to do next.Know whether it worked.

Signal & Science keeps the evidence, the plan, and the results in one place, so each lesson here becomes a working habit in your own workspace.

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