On planning

I’ve always been a skeptic when it comes to spending time and effort (that could be much better spent elsewhere) on creating detailed, prescriptive business plans. Sitting in a room one year and “deciding” exactly what you’ll be doing a year later has invariably felt like an exercise in futility to me. The unexpected always happens. Client A, who you thought would be your main relationship, no longer needs you. Meanwhile, Client X, who you’d never even heard of, turns up and wants lots and lots of everything you do. Always. So why even pretend? The plans are always derailed and we always adapt to those changes – ending up somewhere quite different from the plan. Not necessarily worse – often better – but always different.

More useful is scenario planning. Assuming you have the true north of a broad goal, purpose or strategic direction to guide you, imagining a range of different possibilities and setting yourself and your business up to be ready to adapt seems like a better use of precious time and effort. You end up with something of a menu, with a lot of the thinking done. You can select from it, a la carte, as the year unfolds with all of its unpredictable twists and turns.

At the moment, though, even scenario planning seems impossible. The menu would run for thousands of pages and be useless. How might things be looking a month from now? Next quarter? A year? Who knows – not me, not you.

How do you plan for that?

For me, and many people I’ve been speaking with, it’s this inability to plan – even to do scenario planning – which is particularly challenging.

Plan

How to plan when planning is impossible?

  • Accept What Is
    Much as we might wish it were otherwise, here we are in Unpredictable Land. Railing against it won’t help so try to find a way to let that go (some days I succeed at this, other days I do not).

  • Shorten Your Timeline
    Specifics will vary from person to person and business to business, but there will be a timeframe within which you actually do have a reasonable level of clarity. For me, it seems to be about two weeks. Each week, on a rolling basis, I’m making plans for the fortnight ahead. My sense is that might be the case for another couple of months before some ability to make longer term plans returns. But who knows?

    Your timeframe might be a day, or a month - maybe even a quarter. Just notice where your plan becomes a work of sheer speculative fiction, and stop there. Think broad (upskilling, retraining, or - the word of the moment - pivoting) rather than long (detailed, specific plans), to increase your ability to be ready to roll with whatever turns out to be the reality when you get there.

  • Plan to Plan
    Already, we are seeing signs of a return to some kind of a new normality. Here in Australia we have been very fortunate (thus far) in curbing the rates of infection and so conversations are turning to returning to the office, re-opening businesses, emerging back into economic activity.

Right now, it’s not clear how that will look or what the timings will be. Will there be an upswing in cases that will mean a return to lockdown? When will borders re-open? Eventually, we will know.

Stay alert to the indicators that will allow you to broaden your business planning radar. Be ready to shift your timelines and horizon as the landscape clarifies. It will clarify. We will come out the other side in some form or another. We’ll be ok.

Take care of yourself and others,

Madeleine Shaw

I work with clients from executive leadership teams to the front line, helping them to make clearer decisions about what they want, and adapt faster and more easily to change and transition. I use deep purpose as a key to unlock powerful thriving in work and life.

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Madeleine Shaw