Without planning, life is lurching from one crisis to the next...

Around 1800 Helmuth von Moltke said, “no plan of operations reaches with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main force”.

AKA – “no plan survives first contact with the enemy”

Winston Churchill said, “the best generals arrive at the results of planning, without being tied to plans”.

Eisenhower is very famous for having said, “plans are worthless but planning is everything”.

The process of planning involves rehearsing future events in your brain - training the three pounds of organic matter between your ears to spot the signs and triggers of what's really important.

What are the prime movers in any given situation? What are the key factors that need to be considered? What are the levers and triggers that are within your control and outside your control? What are the things that you need to mitigate? What are the risks? What is external and internal to your business? What are the strengths here, what are the weaknesses, what are the opportunities, what are the threats?

Planning is a process, not an event. Good planning means that you do not simply react to situations, but instead you respond to them in a measured and controlled way.

As Marcus Aurelius, the famous stoic philosopher said, “our lives are what our thoughts make them”.

But in order to have the psychological safety, the locus of control, needed to have that positivity and that confidence and that ability to grow we have to be confident in both our internal and external environment.

That means, strong self-esteem coupled with robust planning.

When we look at the current situation, many people have been saying that they can't help but think that things have changed irreparably.

But, here's my thought for this Sunday afternoon as I write this ... is ‘repair’ something we need to consider?

The number one thing that people say to me at the moment is “I can't wait to get back to face-to-face meetings”.

I know how they feel. I miss that personal human interaction too.

But when we do go back, let’s not go all the way back. Let’s not lose what we have gained.

Over the past nine months, we've proved that we can accomplish a remarkable amount remotely. For some of my clients and network colleagues, productivity has even increased. Their businesses have become more efficient.

Certainly, most of us have reduced the number of miles we drive. I know that my own car has sat on my driveway for much of this year, far more than it has sat on the road.

How many traffic jams have you sat in this year, compared to a ‘normal’ year?

So, there are some positives, but negatives too – I acknowledge that we do lose something when we're doing remote meetings.

We lose the handshake or the hug. We lose some of the nonverbal cues. We maybe lose a little bit of eye contact and some of the connection that comes from physical proximity. Feedback that we get is limited to the screen. How do you have the same emotional ‘skin in the game’ that you would have in a face-to-face meeting? Do we also lose a little bit of certainty? Is there a greater risk of misunderstanding?

If those ‘losses’ are affecting you and your business, do you simply avoid remote meetings? Or do you seek ways to compensate?

Well, there are techniques that you can use to improve your personal behaviours when it comes to video conferencing:

Look directly at the camera so that you are making some eye contact. Lean forward. Make sure that you are always attentive and you don't have other devices, or windows open on your computer, distracting you. Use your facial expressions even more than you normally would do. Don't be immobile. Use body movement and gestures. Increase your energy levels by around 20%, so that your energy really does shine through from the screen (consider getting a ‘sit stand’ desk so you can stand up for meetings – it really helps your energy levels). Employ active listening skills; restate and rephrase what you have heard the other person say; check that a shared understanding has been achieved.

Those are just a few ways in which you can neutralise or at least mitigate some of the losses that we have from not being in person.

And, if you think about it, many of them are simply ‘good practice’ for meetings in general – whether remote or in person.

We’ve talked about what we ‘lose’ by being remote, but what do we ‘gain’ from not being in person?

We've already said that we gain a certain level of efficiency, but that goes way beyond reducing the mileage on your car. Think how many meetings used to take place because it was the accepted ‘way that things are done’? How many of those meetings could have been a quick phone call, but now they can be a Zoom call or a Teams call (whichever you prefer)?

There will always be a place for 'in person' contact; we are, after all, a social species, and we are built by evolution to be with other people.

In the future, perhaps many of the meetings that do happen ‘in person’ can be reserved for the meetings where physical contact really matters? The first ‘big’ meetings, rather than the initial exploratory chats. The sign-off meetings. The ones where the handshake is really important.

For those of you who are dyed-in-the-wool advocates of ‘in person or nothing’, I urge you to think again.

You really can build a 'proper' relationship and strong mutual trust, even remotely.

Trust and equal business stature are the foundation stones of any strong relationship, and if you are a genuine person with an ethical approach, you don’t need to be in the same room as someone for that to be recognised.

Although intimacy is a key requisite for trust, it does not always require a face-to-face meeting. It is a confluence of several things:

1. Credibility (you are good at what you do),
2. Reliability (you do what you say you’re going to do, when you say you’re going to do it), and,
3. Rapport (you genuinely seek to understand others before you seek to be understood by them - habit number five from Stephen Covey’s ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’).

These things build trust when weighed in the balance against your own levels of self-interest (which should be leavened by your personal integrity – you tell the truth even when it is apparently not in your own best interest to do so).

And you can build a shared understanding of those things remotely - after all, actions speak louder than words.

For those people who sit there wringing their hands saying, “well, I can't I simply can't work that way”, the bad news is this:

The world has moved on. And you are getting left behind. 

Let me tell you a story that’s very relevant to many of the naysayers.

I have a friend in my networking group (BNI). This is a man who, I am sure he won’t mind me saying, is a self-confessed Luddite. His technological prowess extends to just about knowing where the ‘on’ switch is on his computer.

Despite the fact that his industry is one of the worst hit by the global pandemic, and despite a definite preference for ‘in person’ meetings, this friend of mine has embraced the Zoom revolution and taken affirmative action to intentionally influence his own life and his own future.

I just checked the BNI reporting and I can see that, from the 23rd of March until today (15th of November), this man has done 110 Zoom meetings with people in his network; looking for ways in which he can support them, and seeking their counsel and support in reciprocation. I know that he has also spent countless hours in personal development; webinars, podcasts, audiobooks...

This may not be the whole reason that his business is surviving through this difficult time, but it sure as Hell hasn’t hurt him any … my hat is off to him.

That’s not to say that I’m not looking forward to the day when he and I can get together for a bottle of red wine and a damn good steak dinner. That day cannot come soon enough for either of us!

But in the meantime we will both make the best of what we have got, using the tools we have.

As a wise man once said: you can't change the past so don't try and live in it.

People had challenges before COVID came along. The pandemic shone a spotlight on some pre-existing problems; it did not create them.

The pandemic may be a very big, very recognisable crisis, but change is the only constant and, in that regard, life could be seen as a series of crises of varying magnitude … we lurch from one crisis to the next, tripping over our own feet, stepping on other people’s toes, and generally getting in our own way.

Unless we plan. Unless we adapt. Unless we evolve.

The better your planning is, the more your lurching starts to look like dancing.

If you'd like more information about planning, we run a planning and goal-setting session at the beginning of each year. Email me at [email protected] if you'd like to attend a January 2021 session.