Grains of wisdom on how to turn ideas into actions

Q: Planning has become a flavor-of-the-month activity at our company. Why can't we stop planning and just do it?

Nancy: Every organization needs people like you, people who are impatient with process, focused on action, and hungry for results. And every organization also needs people who get the importance of planning, so that you doers focus on the right kinds of actions and results. So, face it, you need those wonks, cowboy.

At its best, planning is agile and fluid. When the market changes, you need to change your plan. So your company may well be doing exactly the right thing, continuously rethinking and revisiting the plan, to keep pace with fast, continuous change. What seems like flavor-of-the-month thinking may actually be good leadership. It's a whole lot better that sticking slavishly to a plan for the sake of consistency, when fundamental conditions have changed.

But, the balance between planning and action is key. And you speak to the frustration of a lot of people who see their organizations out of balance. We've identified five syndromes that point to planning gone haywire.

Bonnie: The first we call the Yup Yup Syndrome. The problem here is not necessarily bad thinking, but incomplete thinking. The basic plan might be perfectly sound, but it remains too abstract, too broadstroke. People don't duke out the details, don't think through the implications. They are anxious to be team players, to say "yup yup" to the vision. As a result, they don't get clarity about the different definitions and assumptions around the table. They are too polite to argue, so they don't work out the impacts on resources, set the new priorities, determine what they are going to do differently, and define what they are going to stop doing. Execution suffers, and, before you know it, the plan is back on the drawing board.

Then there is the Myopic Approach. This approach taps the intelligence and experience of the internal team, but makes the mistake of not getting outside perspectives and fresh ideas. It puts the same people with the same information around the same table, time after time. And, surprise surprise, they keep on reasserting the same agendas. The process is just a rehash of the same stale ideas and prejudices.

Third is the Work Around Syndrome. Here, the CEO is a visionary. He or she may be new to the organization, charged by the board with carrying out an ambitious plan. This leader often is charismatic, articulate, and open with the troops. The trouble comes when he or she overestimates the power of that charisma with the next managerial levels down. These people have worked hard to build the organization, and may feel that CEO's proposal of sweeping changes negates a career's worth of effort. The CEO needs to acknowledge their anger and appropriately engage them as generals. Instead, they are allowed to passively, and sometimes even actively, sabotage the plan. The CEO thinks they will come around on their own, or that they can be worked around. The plan doesn't have a chance.

Nancy: Number four is the Blame Game. Some organizations have gotten very cynical about planning, seeing it as something that has to be done for appearances but that in reality contributes little or nothing to the quality of decision making and action. The game is to hire a consultant, either to champion a particular agenda or to actually tell the organization what to do. The plan is almost certain to fail because it reflects nothing of the internal culture and intelligence. It is sabotaged or dies from neglect. And, conveniently, the organization can simply blame the consultant and move on to the next one.

Finally, there is Pseudo Strategy. This approach fails to take into account organization as a system. It focuses on an isolated activity or function and plans as though the rest of the organization didn't exist. Participants think they are being strategic when they are actually being operational. They don't consider all the intersections with other parts of the organization, or question whether their plan supports, or undermines, the broader goals of the organization. Too many companies do a series of these isolated plans, add them all up, and think that makes a strategy. It is a recipe for endless and ineffectual planning.

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