It’s the Mother of all Systems!
And like any system planning has an output. The output is THE PLAN.
Why Do a Plan at all?
If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you will keep getting what you’ve always gotten.
The question is … is that a bad thing? I’ve run companies without a plan and had clients who did. Keep putting one foot in front of the other and you’ll get somewhere. That may be sufficient. If you haven’t defined what you want from your company, then do that before you try to make a plan. Then decide how likely you are to achieve what you want by doing what you’ve always done. But understand, without a plan you might achieve a local maximum instead of your real goal.
If where you’re headed by default is not good enough, then you need a plan. So by definition a plan will change what you and your team do when you show up for work. If you’re not ready to change your day to day activities, don’t do a plan. Sure – go ahead and spend the money for a fancy off-site retreat with your planning committee. Just don’t expect it to be anything but a boondoggle.
A Plan Has These Parts
Assumptions
Resources
Milestones
Commitments
First Describe Your Goal
As Covey said, begin with the end in mind. Specifically what does the goal look like? How will you know if you achieved it? A good way to do this is to pretend it’s the end of the year (or whatever time frame the plan is for).
What will you look at to see if you got there?
If the goal is revenue, then likely you’ll look at the income statement.
If the goal is free cash flow then likely you’ll look the calculation you do to determine FCF.
If the goal is a new product launch then you’ll likely look at market share for that product.
You get the idea.
Next Use the W Framework
I got this framework from First Round Review.
Here’s how it works.
Leaders share the high level goals with the teams.
Teams send back their plans of how they’ll achieve their parts of the goals.
Leaders integrate all those plans into a single plan and send it back to the teams.
Teams make any final adjustments, confirm buy in, and get started.
This Can All Happen in the Same Meeting
For a large company this may happen over a few weeks. If your company is small enough (less than 8 team leaders give or take) you can do this all at once. If people are prepared, you can do it all in a day. If they need more time, do it in 3 or 4 two-hour blocks spaced apart so folks have time to work. It makes the integration step simpler.
Let’s put the two lists together.
Assumptions. What must be true (outside the company) for the plan to work? These assumptions should have been described before the plan is made, in determining a company strategy. This is communicated in part 1. I wrote about strategy here.
Resources. When the teams send back their plans, they include the resources they need to achieve them. That’s in part 2.
Milestones. When the leaders integrate all the team plans, they’ll approve the resources and develop milestones so people can track progress along the way. Those are in part 3.
Commitments. Everyone commits to doing their part to achieve the plan. That’s part 4. Each person (or each team) must know what they’ll be accountable for and be committed to accomplishing it.
How to Use the Plan
You may have heard the famous quote by Dwight Eisenhower that goes Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. Don’t believe it. It’s not that Ike was wrong – he’s been taken out of context. He was specifically talking about an emergency where, by definition, nothing is going to happen the way you planned. In normal times a plan is a great tool. You can read his full remarks here.
However, to use a plan well two things must happen.
In the routine of work, people must make decisions in light of the plan. When faced with a decision, they must ask “Which decision will be most likely to help us achieve our plan?” and ignore any choices that will detract from the plan.
Progress must be evaluated at the milestones. If progress has not been reached, then the assumptions are revisited. Has something changed? Were we missing something? If so, adjust the plan. If not, then the problem was inside the building. Adjust your activities.
In short, the plan must be a living document. If you’re not going to use it well, then it probably is worthless.
Why is Planning the Mother of All Systems?
Because each team has to have their own systems working to be able to commit to accomplishing their part of the plan. If they don’t, this will (hopefully) become obvious in the planning session when they have to commit to the milestones. Remember – a system is what produces an output. It’s everyone’s outputs that together accomplish the plan.
I’ve facilitated planning sessions where it becomes obvious that a team can’t commit to the plan because their internal systems are broken. I count this as a win! If the problem hadn’t be uncovered, it would have upended the plan – but months later. Better to fix it at the outset, even if it delays your planning.
I recommend you stop planning and clean up some systems if you realize they’re broken. Fix your car’s engine before you plan a road trip. In case you missed it, I wrote about systems here:
If you’d like me to facilitate a planning session for your company, send me an email to see if I have any slots left before year end. John@CEOBootCamp.com