Jack,
And a Merry Xmas to you too. Thanks for your message and herewith a quick
response . . .
. . . it seems to me
>that you are comparing your style of planning for your environment to
>others who are inept planners. That does not say that planning the
>business is the wrong thing to do.
Absolutely correct, but I've also taught the same concepts to others who are
themselves having a great deal of success with it. Those with whom I've
worked have found it frustrating, not to mention impossible when one doesn't
have the necessary skills and knowledge, to work through the traditional
form of SWOT analysis, business and market plans, HR strategy and so on that
goes to fill up the average business pan. I know doing so teaches and
practices discipline in planning but the fact that hard work is no
substitute for a good plan doesn't always mean that a good plan is as much a
substitute for hard work.
>How do you know you have the right sub-objectives? Do you try some
>scenarios (mentally or with spreadsheets or with simulators) to raise your
>level of confidence in having identified the right sub-objectives? Do you
>postulate outcomes in order to estimate whether the objective is
>sufficiently robust for your needs? And if you want to call this form of
>planning something other than business planning, what adjective do you use?
Got me on that one! But identifying an overall objective and breaking it
down into sub- (achievable) projects is also used in strategic, operational,
project and just about any other type of planning that incorporates the use
of resources over a given timeframe - as I'm sure you already know.
>>. . .just as Bill Gates does and it seems to work quite well for him don't
you
>>agree?
>
>Please provide a citation where Bill Gates said that's what he does. Else,
I don't agree.
>
I am in the middle of moving house and office or else I would be able to
provide chapter and verse. However, off the top of my head, a year or so ago
a brilliant book came out about the planning processes used within Microsoft
(which, as Microsoft user, scared the pants off me but, in retrospect, does
seem to make a lot of sense) that support the process of moving from one
objective to another (they call them 'stable points). Being a totally
customer driven organisation Microsoft use feedback to develop and current
market situation to develop plans before making the next move. Of course
there is an overall set of objectives that drives the organisation but these
are linked to the achievement of the lower level objectives rather than the
other way around. In the IT world this seems to be the most sensible way of
doing things - as events show.
>[...]
>>By way of example, my lastest 'plan', developed about
>>ten months ago, didn't even consider the business opportunity that fell
into my
>>lap, and which I've now subscribed to, in the past 24 hours - an
>>opportunity that
>>has seen me undertake a major rethink of what I thought I wanted to do.
>
>Why was a major rethink required? Sounds like the event must have been
>preceeded by a major think. That was called business planning -- and so is
>the rethink, methinks.
Without giving too much away, my company is involved in providing support to
universities, colleges and private organisations in the development and
application of competency based training and assessment systems and
processes. We have a number of professional level courses that we run to
illustrate the potential application of these systems and demonstrate the
success that others can have when following them. That is the advertisement.
Like most organisations we had been concerned about the fact that we needed
a minimum number of students before running face to face programs - if only
to make it financially viable. After so many years we thought this was
something that we would just have to put up with. That was until last
Wednesday when I was introduced to a concept that allows us to run courses
of any length and all it needs is one student (or hundreds). That wasn't an
advertisement, it was an explanation of how something just fell into our lap
that was impossible to forecast as little as three days before when we had
our latest meeting.
Sure, it will cost time and money but our flexibility in planning processes
allows us to do this - costs and time saved in one area are rechannelled to
this new area, something we probably couldn't have done if all our capital
was caught up trying to overcome the Asian currency crisis and fight off the
bigger institutions.
In my experience, success can't be planned. As we used to say in the Army
(and I've recently posted this so apologies) the best plan goes straight out
the window as soon as the first shot is fired. The same with business
planning, the best plan goes straight out the window once the realities of
working the plan in a frustratingly fluid environment sink in
Merry Xmas and all the best for the New Year
Phil Rutherford