Planning – the forgotten art March 9, 2009
Posted by inspiredleaders in Communication, Leadership.trackback
“Garth, you don’t understand our business. There’s so much happening and it’s happening so fast, we can only react. We don’t have time to plan. (pause) But we do have time to do it over again tomorrow.”
I’m happy to say there was a smile on the Supervisor’s face when he made the above statement. Although he was being serious in one sense, he did have enough smarts to know planning wasn’t happening on a regular basis.
Every time I work with a leadership group I’m still surprised by the “deer in the headlight” looks I get when I mention planning. It seems we’re too busy “doing” to actually take time to plan. Or, if we do plan, we don’t take time to include others in our work groups, consequently it’s not a common plan. React is still the order of the day.
A few months ago, when the economy was on fire, you could almost understand the concern about stopping, taking time, and planning. After all, if we stopped our clients would think we weren’t working and they’d go to our competition. Consider this, maybe if there’d been a bit more planning we wouldn’t be in the current economic mess.
Consider something else, if planning and included ethics instead of greed, several million people wouldn’t be out of work today.
Garth Roberts
www.garthroberts.com
Well said Garth. Planning pays. I was talking to a group of six ex-offenders at a transition program today about the need to chart a new course for their lives. Initially, they gave me that “deer in the headlight” look but as the pieces of knowledge started falling in place they began making commitments. I’ll be visiting with them next week for an update and look forward to hearing them share their massive progress.