ARE YOU PLANNING TO FAIL?
Have you created a plan so you can sprint over the line at year end or are you playing catch up and need some additional focus?
To this day I am yet to meet a person that intentionally and consciously self sabotages themselves in business. I don’t think anyone does it intentionally, however most times lack of self-discipline results in failure to plan. Planning can and more often than not, IS the difference between victory and loss in your business venture.
Good old Benjamin Franklin’s quote “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”.
I’m sure you’ve had that said to you at some point in your life, whether that be for a project to work or right down to preparing your food/groceries for the week ahead.
Mindset Vs. Strategy
It’s really quite a simple equation… “success” is 80% mindset & 20% strategy. Mindset is key.
Not only will it push you to get back up when you have a fall, but it will give you the drive that you need to be successful & help you to build resilience when things get tough… Which they inevitably will.
Yes, programming a winning mindset will get you far. It will power you to get back up after you’ve fallen, it will give you that determination to succeed and it will help build your resilience to keep going when it gets tough.
But let’s not underestimate strategy and planning.
Having a strategy is about making sure you are in the driver’s seat with a clear vision of where it is you want to get to, why you want to go there, and how you’re going to turn your vision into reality A.K.A, your plan.
Planning will ease the bumps in the road, allow you to consider your choice points when they arise and force you to sit down and think about the future growth of your business, of your people and of you, personally.
Put simply; you’re giving the 20% strategy a fighting chance to succeed.
Why failing to plan really does mean planning to fail:
A fascinating story which brings this point to life is the race to the South Pole in 1911 between the successful expedition led by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and the failed one led by Robert Falcon Scott.
On paper, it was a great match: Amundsen and Scott were of similar ages, and each held plenty of experience in daring polar exploration. They set off within days of each other, and it was reasonable to assume that they would arrive simultaneously. But that’s not what happened at all.
Before I continue, let’s consider some of the hardships they would face: gale-force winds, temperatures of - 0 degrees celsius, even during the warmest months, and a round-trip journey of more than 1,400 miles. That would be a serious challenge today, even with all our modern equipment and expertise; it’s hard to comprehend how much harder it was in 1911.
Amundsen had been preparing for years, however. He adopted an intensive and long-term fitness regimen. When he travelled more than 2,000 miles from Norway to Spain to earn a master’s certificate in sailing, he didn’t go by ship or train, but by bicycle. He planned for scenarios he might only face once in a lifetime. He was 39 when he set off on his journey to the South Pole, but he had already been on a quest to personal mastery from a young age.
Scott’s preparation paled in comparison, and significant differences in their planning emerged...
1.) Amundsen learned that dogs thrive in Antarctic conditions and spent time with the Inuit people in the north of Canada to learn to dogsled. The result: while the Amundsen party ran their teams of dogs to the pole and back, the men on Scott’s team had to pull their sledges themselves, moving far more slowly and exhausting themselves along the way.
2.) Amundsen laid down supply caches along the route and marked them with black flags so they would be visible for miles on their way back. Scott did not.
3.) Amundsen stored three tons of supplies for five men starting out. Scott stored one ton for 17 men.
4.) Amundsen carried enough extra supplies that he would be able to miss every one of his stock supplies and still complete the journey. If Scott missed even one of his stock supplies, it would be the end for him and his team.
5.) Amundsen brought four thermometers. Scott brought one, which broke.
6.) While both men knew there was no way to remove all of the risks, Amundsen prepared for the very worst weather, unexpected geographical challenges and other hurdles, where Scott appears to have operated in the hope that everything would work out all right. In his journal, discovered with his frozen body years later, Scott complained about his bad luck.
On 15 December 1911, Amundsen and his team planted the Norwegian flag in the South Pole. It would probably have stunned him to know that the Scott expedition was still 360 miles from the pole, man-hauling their sledges and would take another 34 days to get there. By the time they did, the Amundsen team was just eight days from their home base. They reached it precisely on the day they planned.
Amundsen was already sailing back to Norway when Scott’s team finally gave up hope, exhausted, depressed, frostbitten, and near starvation. Their frozen bodies were discovered in a tent, eight months later. It’s a tragic tale for those brave men, but it’s also a cautionary tale. If Amundsen had reviewed Scott’s plans before he set out, he would probably have urged him not to go at all.
Six fundamentals of planning
In this story, the fundamentals of planning are brought home;
#1 Scott set himself up for failure. Amundsen set himself up for success.
#2 Amundsen planning was future-proofed, through ‘what if’ scenarios with a plan B, C, and D (remember the saying there are 25 other letters in the alphabet if plan A fails).
#3 Improvement, growth and success need direction and a sense of purpose. They won’t happen on their own.
#4 A clear roadmap forces accountability and responsibility, which sometimes may lead to a change in route. This is OK. Accept this and follow your new path.
#5 Risks can be turned into opportunities, but you need to have identified them as risks first, otherwise, they’ll come at you as a crisis, and then you’re on the back foot.
#6 The ‘weight’ of a decision is reduced when you’ve had time to consider and calculate it’s upside and downside.
#7 For Scott and Amundsen, their results were aligned directly to the quality of their planning.
While I’m not suggesting you trek to the South Pole to test your planning abilities (!) take a look at your current priorities, projects, work stack and ask yourself these questions…
Do I have a plan?
Do I have clear goals with critical milestones and actions?
Have I identified the risks and put actions in place to mitigate them?
Do I understand the decisions that need to be made & the choice points I have?
Do I know the stakeholders who can help me with those decisions?
Am I operating in the Scott or Amundsen planning camp?
Am I failing to plan or planning to fail?