Are You In Love With Your Plan?

What is it about agreeing to a plan that allows it to take on a special life and power of its own?

Many companies devote huge amounts of time to strategic, long-range plans. Managers feed data up the line, which gets fed down the line for revision, which gets fed back up the line...

I'm not knocking planning. It's a must.

I am wondering if the very magnitude of some planning exercises cause us to follow them too long without re-visiting their validity.

It's an individual thing, too. Once we announce a goal or desire, we often feel compelled to keep going even when we're no longer feeling drawn by it. My own process is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I usually tell a close friend about a new goal; it makes me more accountable once I've announced it. On the other hand, I probably don't slow down quickly enough when things aren't going well because I don't want to be seen as a quitter.

What Can We Do?

U.S. President and retired General Dwight D. Eisenhower said this:

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."

He was a process guy who knew that the final plan wasn't going to go according to schedule. But the process of planning would lead to the thought and discussion necessary for success.

I think that's our clue. We can start with a plan, but success lies in the process of re-visiting and questioning it regularly.

Staying Focused and Balanced is a post by Ed Brenegar at Leading Questions. Click and you'll see an expanded version of these 4 questions that can be used to check how we're doing with our plan. I'll paraphrase a bit:

1. What is the impact of our plan?

2. Who are we impacting?

3. What opportunities do we have now?

4. What problems have we created?

Those concise, open-ended  questions can generate a lot of good information that will help us stay on track, get on track, or decide to make a new plan.

Ed also mentions a little ritual that Tom Peters likes to use for the same purpose.

Do you have any favorites to add to the mix?

Click on Comments and offer your suggestions. And while you are at it, I hope you'll subscribe and join the conversation regularly. Just click on your favorite feed or subscribe by email.

Comments

[Erik Mazzone]

Love the Eisenhower quote! Captures the situation perfectly.

To me this question comes down to balancing the internal engineer with the internal philosopher. Take for example a comparison of two planning/productivity systems: Getting Things Done (David Allen) and 7 Habits (Stephen Covey).

GTD is a bottom up planning system (the engineer) that focuses primarily on discrete daily tasks. 7H is a top down planning system (the philospher) that focuses on mission, values, and goals. It's similar to the difference between management and leadership.

Effective planning requires a balance between these two approaches. An engineer like focus on execution softened by a philosopher's view of the big picture.

[Steve Roesler]

Hey, Erik, thanks for the insight. That's a practical way to help people understand the different approaches. They both lead to the same end (hopefully!) but would satisfy the innate predispositions of the two types.

Much appreciated!