[intowords] planning and managing #2

In the summer of 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton departs aboard the Endurance for the South Atlantic. At the “most extraordinary adventure ever”, Shackleton and his crew faced many unexpected challenges that made the journey a great leadership, planning and managing lesson. You know we can plan and manage anything, but here I want to focus in business. Nevertheless, we can learn about business planning from several analogies from the "ordinary" world, and that’s why I chose to start with an old travel story. You can find the book about the history here.

Aboard the Endurance, Shackleton craved to cross the antarctic continent, passing through the South Pole. But, unfortunately, the ship got trapped in an icefield, forcing everyone to find ways to save their lives. We can look into planning as the act of setting up steps and methods for getting something done. The process of planning should take into account that some things will happen, of course, managing some pegged risks. Making out that these risks are real and, mostly, things won’t go exactly as planned is a big tip for planning. Ok, the Endurance situation is, somehow, in this sense, extreme. But it teaches us that our planning can be as weak as the variables involved are unknown. In other words, if you know nothing about the context, probably the plan won't be good. Planning is also an exercise of estimating an creating a future path and, for that, we need time.

PLANNING TAKES TIME

In business, the day to day rush uses to make us deprioritize the planning process. How many times you remember wenting off a planning meeting completely satisfied about what you done there? The pressure for instant results unconsciously take us to execute plans with missing parts. The meeting that needed 4 hours to be done is made in 1 hour. The process that pass through 8 steps is finished with the “3 most important ones”. I’m not saying you need to take a very long time just for planning (I know it’s almost impossible to get good results without execution), but keep an eye out of what you are missing out.

METHODS

Talking about steps remembers me of the first times I did some business plans. It was common to get stuck, thinking about what I should do next. A lot of methods helped me to know the next step (things like SWOT, Design Thinking, BSC…), but be careful. Methods can be a trap. Instead of being fissured in a specific methodology, try to think about your objectives with that. Mixing some methodologies, in order to guarantee that your objectives are met and you are being assertive with the needs of your business is a favorable path to follow. By the way, you can use Google or Chat GPT to increase your repertory.

GOALS

By planning, I hope, at this point, you expect something that don’t show you only what to do, but also your final desired results. In other words, your goals. And, by goals, I mean things that can be numerically measured. Of course, not arbitrary numbers, but some that you chose after doing a deep exercise in historical research, complementary indicators study and trends analysis. Only after doing that stuff you are able to set a reasonable number. But why do we need goals? For me, simply to know where we want to go. Otherwise, I also think that:

1. Goals (and our current state) can tell us how far we are from where we want to go;
2. Goals can motivate people to fill this gap;
3. Goals can make us dream big.

By saying “dream big”, I mean setting a goal that the path for achievement is not 100% obvious and known by anyone involved, balancing it with the motivational topic, what leads us to a concept based on equilibrium. In summary:

• Too big goals tends to make people discredit it
• Too small goals limit people from doing their best

Let’s talk about this balance. From my personal perspective, I prefer reaching 9 of a goal of 10 for the “indicator x” than 8 of a goal of 8 for the same “indicator x”. 100% is better than 90%, but in this case, 9 is better than 8. It could look quite obvious, but it is easier, and more common, to be positive recognized by the case where 100% of the expectation created was met. That’s what leads some teams to set goals not audacious enough. Think about it when setting goals and recognizing people.

We are starting to get into the managing part of this article. Specifically, indicators management. Bringing back the “indicator x” example (and let’s call 9/10 Situation A and 8/8 Situation B). In which one of the situations do you think the team done a better job? For me, the best answer for this question is: we don’t know. We don’t know with just that information. Think with me: 9 is a better result than 8, that’s a fact (assuming that we are talking about a “bigger is better” kind of goal). Can we assume that A > B in terms of quality of the work done? I don’t think so. What if some random event, that have nothing with the team’s work (a completely external event) happened in the Situation A? An event that directly leveraged the final results. Let’s suppose also that in both situations the only internal way (by their own effort) of increasing the results is measured with the number of “y” made. Let's assume that a single “y” takes them directly to 1 result value. 2 “y” leads to 2 result values. And so on. If in situation A they done 7 “y” they directly reached 7 result values. The other 2 were caused by the external event. 7 + 2 = 9. Final result of the Situation A. Assuming that in the Situation B they done 8 "y", the external event didn’t occur (and it’s the only other way to reach result values) we have 8 + 0 = 8. Final result of the Situation B. Worse result, but better job. If you’re confused, check the image below.

Of course that we are talking about fictitious situations. In real world it’s not that easy to measure “amount of good work done” (it’s different of amount of work done - two people can do the same thing with different qualities). But, with the previous example, we can conclude that there are different ways to look into a indicator result. You can check it below:

Next time you analyze goals results, use critical reasoning to do it. It will help you to make better decisions. By the way, do you know when it will happen in your organization?

RITES

Having predetermined rites to do it is the first step of a good managing process. Setting these meetings, creating an effective agenda, and guide the moment is the basics that you as a manager must do. Don’t underestimate or postpone these moments. There you will save time and money by choosing what to do based on real data. Quarterly, monthly, weekly… It depends. The tip here is to have enough moments not to let critical results to be forgotten or unseen. If something is important to the organization you need to do something about it. And for that you need to make good questions. Create an agenda that makes the team ask themselves about things like:

• What were our expected results?
• What were our results?
• What were the planned activities?
• Which ones weren’t done? Why?
• What are the key learnings about the period?

You can look for some other help for review meetings here.

Lastely, I’d like to share a valuable insight about the theme. Dealing with results analysis, especially when you’re talking about your own area/department results, is a vulnerability exercise. It’s not easy to say that the results are very bad and firmly discuss about a non done plan. But by don’t doing that you will set a non effective plan. It works also for planning. It’s natural to unconsciously think you can do more and faster than you can actually do. Try to be realistic. 80% of your results will come from 20% of your actions (the classic Pareto Principle - it works a lot).

Thank you and let‘s keep turning it [intowords].

If you want to keep in touch of the next “chapters”, I’m posting weekly, every monday!

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