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