Planning. What is its value?

Sometimes I like to plan.

Ah, ha! I hear some of you say, regular readers who know my thoughts about planning: “I always knew she was a closet planner!”

I like to plan how I will drive across Melbourne. I like to plan when I will have an annual holiday (because if I don’t block those dates out of my diary, it’ll never happen). I like to plan what I will cook for guests when they come over. I like to plan what flights I will take to avoid killer connections (either too short or too long). I like to plan meeting friends for coffee or dinner. And I like to plan weekends away. It appears that most of my planning is really scheduling. Is that what planning is then?

I was once asked in a job interview, oh maybe 20 years ago, if I had a five-year plan. The answer was no. I wondered if I ought to have a five-year plan. Did everyone else have one? I didn’t know. I got the job. I never did get a five-year plan.

As I was leaving a meeting recently someone asked me for my advice on strategic planning. Hmmm…

Strategic planning is one of those activities that organisations are expected to do. I suspect many people, deep down, know that it’s a waste of time. Yet we cling to it, fearing to try anything else. Or we do it because it’s always been done.

I do think there is a place for planning in organisations – allocating resources and people to activities (and then letting them get on with it – I am certainly not a fan of milestones, and performance indicators etc) – a bit like my own scheduling.

This seems to be the main purpose of planning – to allocate resources: people and time and money to certain activities over others. And to justify grants and budgets, especially for NFPs, with the added burden of identifying outcomes in advance. All of this seems to stem from an era when predictability was the norm. Surely everyone has noticed by now that un-predicatability is the new norm? Operating in complex environments means we have to try multiple small actions to see what works, because the very nature of complexity is unpredictability.

And what about predicting the future? Three, five, ten, twenty years from now – especially now when the world seems to be speeding up? It seems to me that things change too quickly for any sort of strategic plan to be meaningful. So what to do? Is it time to drop the notion of strategic planning completely? Or at the very least have a strategic plan on a whiteboard or on a wiki where it’s easy to change and adapt as needed. I guess there’s some value in knowing which direction you’re heading – I’m just not so sure there’s much value in scheduling all the stops along the way. What happens when an exciting, unplanned opportunity emerges?

Football musings

The sporting metaphor is well used, and sometimes abused. It’s alive and well as we are currently swamped with football. Here in Australia there’s Real Footy (AFL) – our very own home-grown variety that is somewhat incomprehensible to outsiders, and there’s also football, or soccer, madness courtesy of the World Cup.

Here’s a couple of observations about two very different games.

In an AFL game, there’s always four players on the bench who can be substituted. The obvious reasons include when there’s an injury or to give a player a rest. There’s no limit to the number of substitutions. A common approach by coaches is to ‘drag’ a player – when he makes a mistake, he’s given a spell out of the game aka on the bench. I’ve never really understood the psychology behind this approach, but hey, I’m not a footballer, or a coach.

Last night two of the better teams played each other. Half way through the game both teams were evenly matched, but by the end, one team, Geelong, had completely dominated. There’s probably many reasons why Geelong is the best team in the competition, and I’m sure this contributes. Players are NOT dragged for making a mistake. That’s right. If they make a mistake they just put it behind them and keep playing. No time spent on the bench thinking about what might have been, what they should have done etc etc. They just keep on playing. Therefore players take more risks. That has to be good – and for Geelong, at least, it translates into success.

It’s hard not to get caught up in World Cup fever, and following games on twitter makes it even more fun. I like twitter comments because they are real time. The time differences makes it hard to watch live. Of course, I’m following Australia aka The Socceroos. There’s a big gap between hope and expectation – hope that they’ll do well and expectations that they’ll be well out of their depth. I guess every team has a hope-expectation gap. Surprises come from teams where there is a big hope-expectation gap, and disappointment and recriminations when expectations are high and teams don’t live up to them.

And that’s as much analysis that I’m prepared to do. Just lucky then that everyone else is an ‘expert’ – the web, the telly and newspapers are awash with predictions and analysis. I even read a SWOT analysis comparing Australia and Germany in one newspaper!

Reminds me a bit of organisations that get so wrapped up in analysing and planning of all shades they forget what it is they are there to do. I suspect the most successful teams in the World Cup will just get on and do what they do best – play football, er soccer.

Living life

I’ve been to two funerals in recent months.

The first one was for a friend who also happened to be a Catholic priest. His funeral was in his church, officiated by the Archbishop and attended by a lot of bishops, and about 1200 people. It was very, well churchy (especially for this non-Catholic, non-churchy friend). There was little focus on the man – more on his role in the church – and virtually no mention of his extensive, world-wide work outside of the church. That made me sad. And, yes, I miss him too. He was a good friend and mentor.

The second funeral couldn’t have been more different. It was held in a still-being-built recreation centre in a small rural town. This was the funeral for a friend’s husband who had been killed in an accident. I didn’t know him all that well, but that didn’t stop me feeling unbearably sad for my friend and her four children. People from all over gathered to celebrate his life – one that was cut short way too soon.

And just last week I heard of the sudden death of a friend on the other side of the world. I had never met Celeste Rast face-to-face but that didn’t stop us being friends. We spoke on skype, we exchanged emails and photos and shared our stories. Celeste was 82 and lived life in a way I can only aspire to. Here’s a tribute to Celeste by Patti Digh that beautifully captures Celeste’s life and influence. And yes, I’m one of those who ‘want to be Celeste when I grow up’. Oh, and Celeste set aside a special fund of $1000 just for champagne to celebrate her life. Now that’s style.

What struck me about all three of these deaths was that they were all sudden. Poof! Here one minute, gone the next.

Sort of makes me wonder about putting things off. I’ll just wait for the right moment (oh so guilty) or I’ll do this before I do that. There’s a big assumption that there will always be another chance, more time, an opportunity to make amends or to say or do what I’ve always wanted. Or maybe not.

So I guess that means for me that life has to lived,  and lived well, by saying a big YES to opportunities.

Some days I’d rather be birdwatching

There’s something very meditative and grounding about birdwatching, especially when all around is becoming increasingly complicated. It’s the watching part that I find helpful. They go about their business as birds do.

There’s a bird bath outside my office window. At the moment it’s frequented by about six different species, mainly honeyeaters. At first glance they all look similar, but after a while I can see remarkable differences. If I watch their comings and goings, I can also detect different behaviours too.

They remind me to notice my surroundings and only to do what’s necessary.

Not so different to facilitating really.

Orphans in Uganda

Back in the day, when I had a ‘real’ job (read, worked for someone else) I always hoped to travel to interesting places, especially overseas. There was a lot of paperwork and permissions to be gained, and for one reason or another, never eventuated.

Then I quit and started my own business. That was in 1996 and every year since then I have traveled overseas with work. It wasn’t my plan. It just happened that way. In some years it was just a single trip. It was enough. Now, I do more work overseas than in Australia.

I always wanted to visit Africa. When the opportunity came my way to work in Uganda (Uganda!) I couldn’t believe my luck. What I didn’t count on was the depth of admiration I would have for the local Ugandans I worked with and for the sense of purpose when I met orphans such as these – orphaned by an aids epidemic that continues to ravage much of Africa. This is why I do the work I do.

Transitions

Last night I went to the opening match of this year’s Australian Football League (AFL) season. My team, the Richmond Tigers were playing – but that’s not the point of this post (although it could be, and may well be one day soon – a post on hope and expectation). No, this is a post about transitions.

Matthew Richardson was an amazing footballer. He played with Richmond for 17 years, and what made him stand out – apart from his incredible talent – was his heart. His emotions were on show for all to see. During the off season he retired due to niggling injuries.That meant he didn’t have the big farewell. So last night he did the lap of honour and we got to cheer and clap and shed the odd tear at his retirement.

What struck me was the transparency of the transition. A few months ago he was a player, now he’s retired. Some transitions are visible – marriage, divorce, retirements, switching jobs, moving house. Some are not so visible. Some transitions are incremental – they creep up and without any conscious plan you’re suddenly in a new place.

Organisations too have visible and invisible transitions. Merges, takeovers, office relocations are visible and restructures and change management programs are announced so everyone is aware of what’s happening. Or are they?

It seems to me that we are always in transition – and if we’re not, we’re stuck. Maybe that’s true of organisations too, although they seem to strive for something else. Something unatainable – security, surity, to be stable and predictable. And in trying to strive for what’s not possible to achieve they lose sight of what’s possible – of being adaptable and creative, of being able to respond to the changing demands of an unpredicatable environment.

Personally, I’ve been in a major transition phase for well over a year now. Today it became clear that I want to be a disruptor. No longer am I prepared to play the old, finite games where there are winners and losers (that’s best left to the likes of the Richmond Tigers who could certainly do with a bit more winning, and definitely understand what it’s like to lose). I’m still not completely clear what i want to do – but I am very clear what I don’t want to do. This is an invisible transition.

The times we’re now living in, the pace of change, the demands for new skills and a different way of viewing the world all point to a state of constant flux. A state many are uncomfortable with. Maybe we need to see transitions as redundant and the state of constant relearning and discovery as the new normal.

Recalibrating

I really enjoyed this exerpt from the book Inventing the Rest of Our Lives: Women in Second Adulthood by Suzanne Braun Levine.

It was this W H Auden poem “Leap Before You Look” that first caught my attention.

The sense of danger must not disappear: The way is certainly both short and steep,

However gradual it looks from here; Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

. . .

Much can be said for savoir-faire,

But to rejoice when no one else is there Is even harder than it is to weep;

No one is watching, but you have to leap.

. . .

Our dream of safety has to disappear.

And this…

In my lexicon, Second Adulthood is the unprecedented and productive time that our generation is encountering as we pass that dreaded landmark of a fiftieth birthday. If you think of your first adulthood as, roughly, the twenty-five years in which you built your life and set your style, the next twenty-five years can be a second chance—to do it better, to do it differently, to do it wiser. I say can be because a lot depends on luck—good health, good fortune, good friends. But a lot also depends on determination—taking risks, making change, weighing new options.

And this…

To seize that second chance requires recalibrating many of the primary forces in our lives and shifting gears. As anyone in our age group knows, to shift gears you first have to disengage the clutch and literally give up control for a moment. In the context of the Second Adulthood transition, letting go—of worn-out demands, of old news, of empty promises—is like stepping backward off a cliff. It is terrifying, especially for women who have spent a lifetime holding on, keeping things together, planning, coordinating, and prioritizing. It is hard to surrender to serendipity and to risk and change. It is distressing to find oneself having to renegotiate the most intimate relationships. But whether we see it as an adventure or not, we are at an age when circumstances force us to let go—of our children, of our looks, of some of our life goals—and feel ourselves fall apart, to ease off doing what we know how to do, to look into the abyss. For those who take the leap, letting go is also an opportunity to consolidate, to cherish, and to soar out over new terrain.

Scary. Exciting. Liminal. True.

Touring with the band

While watching this excellent trio of talented Quebecois musicians known as Genticorum I was musing the nature of collaboration. Each of these musicians is no doubt talented in his own right, yet together they can do so much more. I saw this time and again over the last few days watching various bands perform. I saw them looking out for each other, building on each other’s strengths, creating something together that they couldn’t do alone. It reminded me of the challenge of working alone – of looking for others to collaborate with and the fun, energy and creativity that can emerge; the difficulty of explaining that to clients; and the expectations that, of course, musicians collaborate, but facilitators don’t need to. This facilitator prefers to be a band member rather than a solo performer.

Perfectionism

Dan Pink has a post on perfectionism, that adds another dimension to thoughts I’ve been riffing with Johnnie Moore and David Robinson around what we’re calling The Tyranny of Excellence.

One of the principles of improv is to ‘be average’ – to give yourself permission to stop worrying what others think, do what you do, and allow yourself to shine. David describes it as ‘putting down your clever and picking up your ordinary’. I wrote about it here. This nearly always gets a strong reaction – either ranging from “Yes! At last.” to “Oh, no, that can’t be right.”

Here’s some recent research that Dan cites:

According to research reported in this Miller-McCune article, perfectionism comes in two varieties: adaptive and maladaptive. And one of the key determinants of the type of perfectionism someone displays is whether the quest for perfection is “motivated from an inner urge or an outside push.”

…if you’re pursuing perfection because of pressure from others — parents, bosses, peers — that’s likely to take you down the path of dissatisfaction and reduced well-being.

The Tyranny of Excellence  sets us up to fail. It oppresses us by demanding we be creative, strive for excellence, make the right decision – even the best decision – to not be ordinary. It can be both internally driven, by that small voice telling us we’re an impostor or not ‘good’ enough, or externally driven by feedback and judgement. Is it any wonder that it’s easier then to just do nothing, to give up trying to meet such unreachable standards? And here’s the rub. What is ordinary to me, what I do really well because it is ordinary (to me) may very well seem extraordinary to you (because it’s not ordinary to you).

So it seems it’s a good step to aim for perfection if it’s what you want, not to appease others. And maybe it’s also worth considering the idea of ‘satisficing’ rather than ‘maximising’ as described by Sarah Wilson.

Here’s some of what she wrote:

Then there’s this idea of “satisficing”, a portmanteau of satisfy and suffice, coined by an economist. Satisficing involves making decisions by first selecting criteria that matters most to you, then going with the first option that ticks all such boxes.

Thing is, most of us are “maximizers” – we put off deciding until we’ve examined every possible option, which makes life not unlike a bottomless purgatorial pit. I’d argue our culture encourages us to maximize, to believe a perfect decision exists; it justifies the enless choices consumerism chucks at us. But – quelle irony – research shows satisficers actually make better decisions than maximizers, and are happier to boot.

Messy

Forms, flow charts, matrices, systems diagrams, models – all are designed to help us make sense of this complex, messy world we live in. We assume that messy can be ordered, that wild can be tamed, that we can predict cause and effect. Sometimes we can. If machines are involved, usually. When humans are involved, everything changes. Messy is normal. Get used to it.