Help! My plan has gone out of the window!

A common theme in all of my conversations with clients recently has been how can we plan for the coming months when everything is so very uncertain.

A year ago, it felt like we didn’t have this problem at all. For sure, we all knew that the future lacked a degree of certainty, something that we factored into our plans and strategies, but now it certainly seems that the whole landscape has changed beyond what we could have imagined. Now, not only do we have the variables that change our plans that we are used to, variables that we have experienced before but we also have a whole host of new ones, lockdown, partial lock down, ever changing restrictions, isolation, home working, dispersed teams and the fear that the business we are used to now, may not even be in existence in six months time. 

As a coach who works extensively with business, looking to the future was an exciting conversation, being the catalyst for my client’s clarity, deepening their understanding of human nature so that they could feel more confident, more resilient, engage their teams more, creating exciting and often creative plans, without being welded to them - that was something that I admit I loved. However, I have noticed that understandably there is a cautiousness, a fear a worry around what the future holds and in many ways an assumption that the future is undoubtedly bleak.

But to me, it doesn’t have to be that way and there is a simple, straightforward approach that is available to everyone. 

I remember when I first launched my first business some 9 years ago now, I was told ‘if you fail to plan you plan to fail’. I recognise in myself that I have never relished a plan and have joked many times that if you make me write it down it will almost guarantee I won’t do it (I have always had a rebellious streak!) However, in my experience many innocently believe that when they have a plan it gives them a clear direction, without it they won’t achieve their goals, they won’t be motivated. Without that clear plan they will undoubtedly fail. Of course now, what is the purpose of a plan if you are going to be tripped up by a regulation that you’d never thought you would exist? Or if your business will be closed because your clients aren’t allowed to come to you? What is the point of a plan if by next week you’ll have to completely change it again? So it seems now not only will you fail if you fail to plan, but if you plan as well!

In my mind a completely fresh approach is needed, not only at times like this, but it’s one I’ve been sharing for some time now. It’s an approach that enables you to be time responsive, adaptable to your current circumstances and also enables you to be more creative with your solutions. 

When I work with a client, we don’t focus on strategies or techniques during our sessions, rather exploring the nature of who we are as humans, how we really work, because when we understand that we can really leverage this when faced with any amount of unknown future challenges. In many ways it’s a bit like taking a client from driving their car only in second gear and moving forwards, and showing them they have four more gears, a steering wheel and reverse. They are still driving their car, they just have more understanding of it’s full potential!

Here are three key facts that will hopefully enable you to start driving a little differently.

I find it fascinating just how resourceful human beings are. If we roll back 7 months, in that time we have created endless solutions to problems that didn’t even exist back in February 2020. Take a moment to really let that one sink in. Our lives and businesses have changed, at times, beyond recognition yet we have adapted, changed and been enormously creative and innovative. So what is that? Where does that fresh thought come from? Where does the capacity for solution focused creative thinking come from - when we have no experience to draw from?

That, that part of our nature, is a deeper intelligence that runs through every single human being. The capacity for fresh thought, responsive to the moment we are in, which has driven the human race forward, enabled it to evolve and change since the dawn of time, it has created the life that we are so used to now, it’s the very reason we are still not living in caves! Imagine if we only ever had old thought to rely on? It literally would be groundhog day, every day, nothing would change!

To me, really knowing and seeing this in ourselves is a game changer. This deeper intelligence isn’t only available to a select few, it’s part of who we are innately, has nothing to do with intellect or education, it’s available to everyone, even the person whom you may consider to be the weakest member of your team!

So what does this mean, practically? Everyone’s mind wonders to the future, it’s part of human behaviour. However, there are two things that are really worth noticing. 

We don’t know what the future holds so we imagine what it could look like. When we do time travel into our imagined future, it can seem really real - that’s the function of our mind to make our thinking seem real; by that I mean that it can seem like it’s really really likely to happen! However, noticing that this is a function of our mind, and not an indication as to what will actually happen can be enormously helpful. 

More importantly, when our minds race to the future, creating all sorts of problems and challenges that we may face, we innocently forget that in that future moment, we too will have the capacity for fresh thought, for solutions, to be able to figure that out in real time - just as we have done for the past 7 months!

But what about plans? Surely we need them? Yes and no. First of all we don’t need them for our businesses to survive, that isn’t a universal rule albeit it widely accepted practice. Plans can be useful, they enable us to have a direction of travel, which when you are working in a team can be useful to be travelling in the same direction! Plans can also be enormous fun, imagining what a plan will look like can be both enjoyable and energising. Our imagination is a wonderful tool enabling us to enjoy the journey.

However often what happens is that we get so invested in our plan, we think that our plan will happen, especially if we work hard, hit the targets etc. But when reality looks different to our plan, it’s like we’ve been hit by a curve ball, we become frustrated, stressed, disappointed, upset or disrupted in some other way. 

However, as the last 7 months have shown us so clearly, plans are not an indication of what will happen, that’s simply our thinking innocently creating a future for us, our disruption is always the difference between what we thought would happen and what is happening.

The beauty of knowing this, and seeing it for yourself, is like discovering the most effective cruise control on your car. When we start to see the nature of how our thought creates future realities for us, and it is that which is the true source of any disruption we may feel and not our outside circumstances, that thinking becomes a little less gripping. Further when we combine this with knowing that we have a deeper intelligence available to us, that is responsive, in the moment, resourceful and fresh; it enables us to be free to embrace our unknown future, create exciting and energising plans, which we know and are able to adapt, change, expand and even create fresh new solutions for future problems that we haven’t even thought of yet!

Andrea Morrison is an experienced Transformational Coach, Tedx Speaker, Writer and Columnist for The Yorkshire Post. Message her today to find out more about how she can support you and your team over the next six months, enabling you to reduce stress, fear and anxiety and to create more confidence, resilience and calm.