the principles of planning
The 5 Principles of Planning for Managers (and Explorers)
By Chris Halward, Managing Director, True North
Planning is a fundamental management skill - whether you are managing a trek to the Arctic or managing in a business environment.
Adventures in planning: Alan Chambers is an extraordinary man by any measure; the leader of the first successful British team to walk unsupported from Canada to the Geographic North Pole. After immense challenges - including the evacuation of two team members - and extreme frostbite and hunger, Alan and team mate, Charlie Paton, raised the Union Jack on top of the world at 23:16 hours on 16th May 2000. The walk on the ice lasted a gruelling 70 days.
Alan was asked at a workshop how he could justify, as a family man, risking his life on these expeditions. His answer was that he genuinely believed that he didn't feel that the level of risk he was taking was high. He argued that the planning he undertakes is so meticulous and effective that really very little is left to chance and the risk is relatively low. As another famous arctic explorer, Roald Amundsen once said: "Adventure is just bad planning"!
Good planning improves your chances of success, whatever your endeavour. So, what are the key principles of planning? On our management development programmes we highlight a cycle of five important steps:
1. Set goals
It might seem to some obvious but this step is so often not done well. The first step in the planning process is to determine with absolute clarity what you want to achieve. The goal must be specific - you and others will need to recognise if and when it is achieved.
2. Clarify the tasks
Once you have defined your goal you will need to do the hard work of establishing what to do to achieve it. The list of tasks might be relatively short for some undertakings, for others the list of tasks can be exceptionally long and take considerable time and effort to create.
3. Agree responsibilities
A plan is a tool that enables people to achieve a given aim. Each task needs to be owned by someone, and importantly they need to know that they own it.
You might find that an odd comment - how can someone own a task and not know it? In organisations this happens all too often, at all levels in the organisation. Recently we heard a manager in a large bank complaining that a senior executive did not appreciate they were the designated 'senior executive responsible' - a specific role in their governance model - for a large and strategically important supplier relationship. The executive was relatively new to the role and had not been told!
For the plan to work it is key that every task is owned, and that all owners know what they are responsible for and have agreed to owning the task.
4. Schedule
This means establishing some time scales. By when is the goal to be achieved? If you work back, when will the tasks need to be completed to ensure the goal is achieved within the planned timescale? In complex scenarios of course this might result in the creation of any number of plans that all come together to achieve the main goal. Linking all this activity together is key, and highlights the importance of a clear plan effectively communicated to all who contribute, and to those who have an interest in the plan's achievement.
5. Learn
It was US President Eisenhower who said, "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." He was making the point that effective plans are not static but dynamic. They are frameworks for action, which help us to make decisions about what needs to be done in an efficient way. We need to capture our experiences as the plan unfolds and feed them back into the planning process - a continuous feedback loop, making changes where necessary.
Summary
Planning is a key skill that every manager needs to develop and hone. One last quote, this time from Peter Drucker the management guru who said, "Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work."
Alan Chambers would certainly agree with that - he might not think the risks are high in going to the Arctic, but he knows all about how much work is required to achieve his goal.
Planning skills are part of True North's Management Skills Toolkit. For more information please contact Chris Halward on 0845 130 5500, chrish@truenorthgb.com