What are you planning on?
I love plans. I love being strategic. At my local radio station, I make sure we put a lot of thought into a quarterly departmental strategic plan. This plan is generally only two or three pages long, but it outlines all the goals we want to achieve over the next quarter, and how much money we plan to spend. This is then delivered to the board, and they say yea or nay.
But, I’ve recently come to realise that a plan really isn’t a plan. Plans can change. Plans aren’t really a good name: Guessing would be a much better word to describe what we are doing. Jason Fried from 37signals describes it well:
Planning’s too definite a term for most things. We often use planning when we really mean guessing. And what we call it has a lot to do with how we think about it, do about it, and devote to it. I think companies often over think, over do, and over devote to planning.
You don’t really come to realise the what this means until your plan actually fails. It can be frustrating at best, embarrassing at worst, when this happens, especially when you put so much effort into the planning.
But failing doesn’t have to be a bad thing!
I experienced this recently when my quarterly plan fell to bits due to some proposed equipment being discontinued (and similar models not available, either). This sent us back to square one. For a couple of days, I was annoyed. But then I went and examined the alternatives. We sat down and thought about it, and we came up with a solution which was actually $600 cheaper! Success!!
Failure can lead to success. Failure is what you make of it. Never plan to fail, but be ready for it when it does.