Why plans fail

I was quite surprised to read Seth Godin, who I normally admire, saying that plans almost always fail.
I don’t agree with this. Bad plans fail. Plans that are not updated fail and plans that have no clear objective fail.

Plans that work

However, well thought out plans do work, very often. The trouble is that most people don’t bother to plan carefully and think that they will just be able to muddle through.
Then they get used to what it’s like to muddle through and so muddling through becomes the norm.
When you allow that to happen you have lowered your standards. So now, you don’t even think about planning effectively, you just accept the status quo.

"You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine."

-- John C. Maxwell

What planning means

Planning effectively means taking time to think a task through, to identify what needs to be done when, and what could go wrong. It means you need to review your plan regularly and keep your eyes open for indications that you need to modify your plan.

It means, as John Maxwell says, changing something in your life daily. All you need to do is think about things before you start them. Just give yourself a few minutes. Ask:

• Why am I doing this?
• What do I need to achieve?
• What would be the most effective way to do it?

That will get you started. Then build the habit. As you start to see a return on your investment, you can build your skill, which in turn will give you more time.

The pay off`

Planning really pays off. It is the corner stone of time management.

A client of mine who is a project manager recently had a performance review. His manager said: “I don’t know how you get so much done.” 

This is a sad reflection on the manager. The individual is good at planning. He does not rush into any project or new situation; he gathers the information, organises it and works out his plan very carefully. Then he keeps monitoring it all.

When there are problems he usually has a contingency plan. He has many contingency plans. Most of them never need to be used.

The result you get from planning

The result is he is able to achieve twice what most of his colleagues do. He is not superhuman. He just puts his effort in where it gives the most benefit. It may not be as glamorous as charging in and saving the day, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, but it is much cheaper and less stressful.
In fact most people are working far harder than they need to do just because they don’t plan. Make sure you’re not one of them.

Get more help here.

http://www.vinehouse.co.uk/TimeManagementTips.htm

How to promise what you can deliver

Do you know someone who is always late? Or do you take a train or plane that is always late?

I flew to Glasgow this week. The flight was delayed by 2 hours. The man behind me in the queue confided that this was usually the case on that day of the week.

I can accept the odd problem that causes a plane to be delayed, but when it happens every week, you wonder what is going on.

Change the schedule

If the plane is never on time, why don’t you just change the schedule? I asked one of the staff this question and was met with a blank stare. We didn’t even get an apology from her.

Telling people what they want to hear

So many times I have seen problems caused solely by people promising things they just can’t deliver.

Work out when you can deliver and then promise people that date or time. Don’t pretend you can give a faster service than possible just to make a person happy at that moment – you are storing up problems for the future. People really don’t like being let down.

Don’t annoy people more than necessary

Even worse, our helpful member of staff told us that we still had to turn up at the published time next week (even if we could see the flight was delayed), in case they somehow manage to bring the flight forward (so that it was only 1 hour 30 minutes late).

This kind of behaviour shows a complete lack of consideration for others. It’s just the same in hospitals where people are often kept in the waiting room much longer than necessary.

Sometimes there is a real emergency

I have been going to the same dentist for 25 years. One of the reasons I stay with them is that they are so reliable. Last time I went was the first time I have ever been kept waiting. It turned out that two of the dentists were off and two emergency patients had come in that morning.

My dentist had had to deal with both of them. However, she apologised profusely and I felt that, given the previous track record, I was happy to cope with this one-time delay.

Most of the time you can schedule things properly, even appointments in hospitals.

You just need to put a bit of effort in working out how long things really take, rather than how long you would like them to take. This is the vital time management skill of estimating. Without it planning is useless.

Learning how to estimate

This is very quick to learn. All you do is estimate how long you think a task will take. Then measure how long it really does take. Work out the percentage difference and change your estimate next time accordingly.
Keep doing this, and very soon your skills will improve.

For more help with time management go here.

To see our teleseminar on time management go here

Are you distracted by the wrong problems?

This week our government seems completely transfixed by the phone hacking scandal. And I do think it’s a scandal I am completely against this kind of behaviour.

But I also think that there are other serious problems that the government should be focussing on at the moment. Like the economy.

Of course, the media don’t help. This is a problem with the media itself, so it’s bound to be of more interest to them than other issues.

It’s easy to be distracted

The trouble is, when there are very serious problems to be tackled it’s very easy to get distracted by things that aren’t as serious. This is because you lose your ability to prioritise.

Prioritisation is a vital skill that you generally need more of when there are many problems to be solved.

How to prioritise

The first thing is to make sure you have a clear, SMART objective or goal. Once you have this, ask yourself what will enable you to achieve it.

Draw up a plan

It’s always good to have a plan. Even if you change it later, it’s still a good thing to start with one. It helps you to keep focussed on the right things rather than lurching from one thing to another all the time.

Reassess you plan

Lastly, keep checking the plan and update it if you need to. Often new problems crop up that cause extra work or simply divert you from your goals. Make sure you keep your plan up to date so you are always working on the things that will help you the most.

5Big Change Mistakes - 5 Not Learning from Past Changes

There can’t be many organisations that have not had to implement changes in the past. Unfortunately from the way some of them implement each new change, you would imagine that they have never done it before.

One reason for this is that many of the people who like and enjoy change are the kinds of people who don’t like planning and detailed careful work.

So they just go ahead with a change and, before the dust has settled and they have checked if it has had the desired effect, they are onto the next change.

Bad managers

There are some managers who are brought into a department purely to implement changes. You have probably seen them yourself.

I came across a particularly bad one recently. She had been rotated into a department to ‘gain experience’. She made a complete mess of it and left the members of the department not only to implement the changes but also to sort out all the extra problems she had caused.

The results of your work

If you don’t have to stick around to see the impact of your work, you can be left thinking that it’s all gone very well. So it’s really easy to make the same mistakes time and time again.

If you have to live with your mistakes you are likely at least to be motivated to do it better the next time.

Learn from your experience

Ideally you need to set out clear goals and objectives. Then make sure you have all the tools in place to ensure you can measure your results.

Yes, it does take time, but it means that, next time, you can do it a lot better.

What should you measure?

Identify what is important to you in this situation. When I was a production manager, the most important things were getting the output and keeping the quality up.

When we had to make a big change, these were the things we checked. By focussing on these, you can plan your change more effectively.

A difficult change

One of the most difficult changes I had to handle was when a very popular supervisor who worked for me retired. It was hard to imagine that anyone could fill Anne’s shoes. She was one of those ‘larger than life’ characters.

I had noticed that output was often reduced when the department lost motivation and suspected that people would be very de-motivated after Anne had left.

I was a very young and inexperience manager when I worked with her, and she taught me a lot. Even now, as I write this, I still feel tremendous sadness at losing her. Not only was she extremely skilled in her job, she was a great friend and fun to work with.

I remember her telling me that she bought her Christmas cards in the January sales every year. That probably gives you an idea of how much planning she did.

My plans

We organised a surprise party and all kinds of other events to celebrate her retirement.

But on top of this, I put a huge amount of effort into planning how we would keep up the output after her final day and keep up the motivation in the team. It paid off. In fact, the output was higher the week after she left than it was the previous week.

Out of respect for Anne, I never mentioned it. But I did learn that you can implement changes effectively if you learn from your past experience and build on it.

Christmas cards

Every year, as regular as clockwork, on 1st December I received a card from Anne. Then, about ten years ago now, I had a card from her husband saying she had passed away, a change I wasn’t quite as well prepared for.

For a summary of five big mistakes when implementing change see this article


5 Big mistakes to avoid when making change