How to Plan

 

Have you ever had to plan something and have all your plans go awry? Did you just shrug and believe that that’s just how the cookie crumbled at that point in time or did you dig deeper to see why your plan did not work out?

Ever noticed that everyone has an idea about how or why your plans did not work, or why your plans were successful? Everyone seems to have an idea about everything, right? Even you have an idea of what could have gone wrong. Let’s dial back and look at the planning or idea process and examine if this is the stage where we didn’t quite get it right, the stage where our plans went awry (caveat: this is not an exhaustive list, I am only examining the thought process before the execution of our plans at this time).

Every plan starts with an idea, right? So, just before I wrote this, I took a walk around my office recently and asked a couple of people what they thought the word ‘idea’ meant. Here are some of the responses I got:

“A thought or an intellectual opinion a person has or acquires usually in response to an as a possible solution for looming challenge.” – A Sadiq

“An idea to me is that which drives me to achieve or a driving force to my success” – I Opara

While none of these are wrong, I realized that many times in executing our plans we miss out on a major ingredient. Let me share my story:

Recently, I had an idea for a project. I knew the parameters of what I wanted to accomplish. I knew the parties I wanted to benefit from my project; where I wanted to host my project and an estimate cost/budget for my project. I had all of this information on my planning dashboard. The dashboard I created to enable me check the viability of projects, as well as to pull together in one place all the information I needed for any project/task/assignment. It works for me. Do you have any tracking mechanisms for your ideas or projects?

Anyway, I had this on my dashboard for over 2 months, but in those couple of months I never pulled the trigger. Don’t ask me why, but I just did not ignite my idea. I had the ‘plan’, an idea of the resources required, I knew who the target beneficiaries would be, but no action! My plans, dashboard and all that go with them aren’t worth a penny to anyone as long as I have not ignited them i.e. put them into play. Better yet, plans are irrelevant without execution.

When you have a plan and you do not move, your plan is a dud. This is experience talking. Without execution no plan will succeed. You’ve heard it all before; ‘make hay while the sun shines’ ‘strike while the iron is hot’ and so on. There will never be the perfect time when all the stars and planets align signifying that it is the right time to execute. The best time to execute is NOW.

Although this wasn’t quite the case in this personal experience I’ve recounted, I have observed (I am also guilty of this) that we can make our plans insignificant in value. ‘How so?’, you may ask. Well, your plans become insignificant in value if they are not made explicit. So make your plans explicit. You need to write all your ideas down – preferably in one place/book or like I do -use a dashboard. In my work as a coach, I encourage my clients to track new ideas daily in the Eva Wright Goals Journal I put at their disposal (available from my company Eva Wright). It’s said that the average person has about six viable ideas each day; but because we fail to write them down we lose track of the ideas and end up not executing them. Ever seen someone come up with a winning idea, a veritable money spinner and then think… “Oh boy! I had that idea two years ago…if only…!” So make your plans and ideas EXPLICIT!

Many of us have highfalutin ideas and lofty plans which truth be told are not executable. This could be the difference between frustration, a sense of achievement and actually achieving your goals. We all need to be realistic with what we can achieve, and ensure it is within our sphere of influence. Obviously you can have ideas for things within your sphere of concern (things you cannot control, but are concerned about), but you won’t go spending major brain time coming up with plans to solve these issues, would you? Do you have the skills and experience to pull off your idea/plan? Is that plan really realistic? So make certain that your plans are really executable.

Is your plan really within your circle of influence? Do you really have the power to take action? Does your network include key decision makers in the area you see the gap or solution? Of what value is your idea if you don’t have the power to execute it, or even influence the execution of the idea? You’ll be setting yourself up for major frustration. You’ll be setting yourself up for major frustration; unless you want to become a social media pundit or activist of some sort. If William Wilberforce was not a member of the House of Commons in the UK, he would never have been able to influence the laws of the land to abolish slavery. Are you in such a position of influence regarding your objective? It is uber important to always plan within your circle of influence.

So, when next you have an idea and have to come up with a viable plan, do a quick mental check using the points above. Two things this check will tell you:

a. Should you invest your valuable physical, mental and emotional energy on this plan? You see I use the word ‘invest’ that’s because nothing done in the realms of executing ideas is time/energy spent; ‘spent’ connotes some degree of consumption and waste. Investment rather says you are expectant for returns. Are you spending or investing your energy?

b. Will this plan really work? Who wants to invest all of that time that we can never get back on a plan that will go burst?

Let me end this by asserting that our  plans have power to fuel our successful life. If we generate impotent plans that are neither articulated, executable, or outside our sphere of influence we could jeopardize our internal energy (mojo) and sap any strength we may have summoned in the first instance. If we fail here, we need to be strong enough to own that whatever ideas we think we have are really just wishful thinking or at best a very well thought out dream. Hopefully, we will have more viable and successful plans than we do wishful thinking.

I’m raising my mug (tea) to your continued success in executing successful plans.