A good plan can be a wonderful thing.
A story well told with a call to action.
Lots of charts showing results, and diagrams showing how they’ll be achieved.
Enough details to ensure integrity.
Clear objectives.
Is it enough?
A team’s plan is like a menu for a meal.
The menu is not the meal. It’s just words on paper.
It’s a promise of what’s to come.
A Plan is not an end in itself.
Any builder or soldier will tell you that the real plan is not the paper you started with, but the real struggle on the building site or the battle field where ambition meets reality.
In engineering or construction, plans are documented and updated as changes happen.
In most organizations, as on the battlefield, there aren’t enough resources or time to document every change.
So the “meal” is best judged by the how it tastes.
The menu or the recipe is updated later, if at all.
An organization is not like a stone wall that, once built, stands for ages without effort. All the effort is put into building, not maintaining.
An organization is rather like a tree. It has a growth stage, yes, but it only lives as long as it stays living.
It can die, quickly or slowly, and will die once it’s life forces stop.
A big old tree can take a long time to die.
Or even stay erect long after it’s dead.
“ the real plan is not the paper you started with, but the real struggle on the building site or the battle field where ambition meets reality.…”
An organization only lives now, not as a plan or as a leftover of past action.
A living organization has plans that are visible in the organization.
Not just in the planning meeting or on a poster on the wall.
In action.
Where plans aren’t working they’re changed.
Not just in the planning meeting or in a poster on the wall.
In action.
A leaders role is to keep their team and their organization alive.
By making plans, setting priorities, and making sure they’re kept alive.
In action.
Do you have a plan to meet your objectives?
If I visited your organization could I see it?
In action?
Do you expect to see it?
“I might be wrong, but at least I’ve thought about it…”