Getting Stuff Done: Balancing Planning with Execution

Planning, preparation, execution, assessment, delivery…. ?too rigid? Should I just relax and just go with the flow? I like my lists, they give me structure, but are they removing my creativity?

In May 2024 I organised a ‘cast on all things business in the new age with some coaches whom I greatly admire:

- Aditya Jhunjhunwala?from Pune, India, a TEDX Speaker who has brought his dream to life for young entrepreneurs, business mentor

- Kay Solanki, English, living in Perth, executive business coach, mentor, chairperson, business succession planner

- Adele Hartland, ?South African, fellow Quality Mind Global Mentor, leadership coach, brand launcher, sales training facilitator, communication specialist, Heart Math coach

(I like surrounding myself with overachievers)

The Aim and Method

The conversation started with the premise of something like “What do leaders want to know but are scared to acknowledge”. ?We recorded and decided to split the cast into bite-sized segments and then each write a reflection article.

Here's the video:

A Little Bit Na?ve

I assumed we’d all be coming from the same sort of angle… How na?ve I am! ??As I edited the article, there were some very strong connections from the different schools of thought. What seemed like conflicting ideas were very supportive.

Planning worked for exams – Elevated Education

I was overwhelmed approaching SWATVAC for my final exams at high school. Pre-Internet, 5-inch floppy disks, dot matrix printer, monochrome screen. I spent a whole day organising everything I needed to know for the five exams and felt relaxed once I knew what I had to do.

Fast forward to 2024 and my 16-year-old daughter is years ahead. She is guided by Elevate Education; project management for homework.

Their secret sauce? What is your social life (the “why” for a 16-year-old), what do you want to do, then realistically plan around that? I cannot recommend this enough.

It gives us a common language to help rationalise study loads and make sure she enjoys being a teenager.

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Even the Stoics like planning

By the time I got into stoicism, I was also journaling extensively; unpacking to reorganize my thoughts and directions. I learned that planning and execution without review were almost pointless as it became hard to learn from our mistakes.

Seneca wraps this up beautifully:

The bender that broke it

I started my first full-time business in my mid-20s; the romance of following in my parent’s footsteps and being my own boss met the stark realities of not knowing what I was doing … endless, inefficient hours at work, earning bugger all, stumbling from one thing to the next.

So a group of us go out on a Wednesday night for New Year’s Eve dinner, then drinks, then the nightclub, then a ?couple hours sleep, then a day party, another nightclub, a friend's house for more …. The head was nasty… (do you ever wonder how you survived your 20s?)

I was seriously questioning my life choices as my friends built their careers around me (and the 2-day bender). I sat on the balcony with a notepad (coffee, paracetamol) and wrote exactly what would make running a business worthwhile. I poured out 20 pages of notes and kicked my arse into gear.

I planned what I needed to do next week; the worm began to turn.

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (non-long term planning)

It grabbed my attention in much the same way that “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a #5^” did; in stark contrast to some long-held beliefs.

Taleb spoke about the “Rational flaneur”; like a tourist who balances planning with spontaneity. Rather than filling the entire itinerary, they have a loose idea, get there, get settled, and see what happens.

It’s a blend of structured exploration with the joy of observing details thoughtfully, always learning as they go along.

There is no suggestion not to plan, but planning too far in advance ( anything beyond three months) strips us of options.

The moment we begin executing our plan, we learn and we need space to implement those learnings to enhance success. ?

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I’m a tech geek; Agile planning in action

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When I started my IT career, you wrote a full spec and only then started coding. ?

Then along came agile; programmed increments, and regular check-ins, and it evolved and grew. As I began managing ever-growing offshore projects with a team spread across four continents and three time zones, it was essential. As we learned to tune our model we delivered more, on time at a higher quality.

However, the other senior managers struggled with the idea of having a looser long-term vision and definition of success.

“Just make it $%^*@#$ work Mark”.

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Health and wellness coaching brought it together

By the time I got to 2023, after 24 years of self-employment, business success, failure, major projects delivered, and lots of lessons, and of mentors, I was good with my process but still trying to reconcile the bit about long-term planning.

To become a certified mental fitness health and wellness coach, Wellness Coaching Australia, aligned with HCANZA, worked on the following structure and it all came together.

The vision should be loose and aspirational. The quarterly increments are a period that we can meaningfully work with. The weekly goals are what we do now.

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Bringing that altogether

Stoics, high school study, elevate education, agile program methodology, anti-fragility, wellness coaching…

Dreams and visions motivate and give direction, but the plan to execute must account for the fact that every day, life happens.

Growth, accomplishment, and delivery are seldom linear. ??Plan a route but be ready for it to change.

Much more controversial is that a vision for “success” should also be flexible. The plan for my coaching business began two years ago, but what I am doing now is nothing like what I thought I would be doing. I’m still coaching, I’m still building a business, I’m still changing people’s lives, but nothing like the way I planned.

By my old logic, I was “wrong”; where do I stand today? I’m smarter.

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So what is my planning methodology?

What’s yours?        

Over to you Adi, Kay, and Adele.

#ContinuousImprovement #CMVVaccineDevelopment #Stoicism #HealthAndWellnessCoaching #ElevateEducation #QualityMind #Antifragile #ProfessionalGrowth?