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Submitted by TheJudgeI had surgery about two weeks ago and I was going to get two weeks off from work because of it. I came up with a plan to keep me busy during that time off. In the day, I would clean the house to make the GF happy. Once that was done, I could goof around on-line, chat with people, work on some banners for this site and other sites, etc. I also planned to rent a Play Station 2 or an Xbox for a week. Of course, none of those things occurred.
Let’s look at my original plan again. Did I clean up the house? I did the dishes once. Did I goof around on-line? A little bit, but not as much as I wanted to. I was too busy napping. Did I make banners? Yes. I made some shitty ones this morning then pointed
http://www.geekforum.org/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2" target="BLANK">Chris to a banner making software and told him to make his own fucking banners. Same deal with
http://www.geekforum.org/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=866" target="BLANK">Pseudonymph. Did I rent a gaming console? I almost did. I was in the store, I picked out three games and was about to walk to the counter when a little voice said “Why waist your money on this when you can play games on the computer?” That was my girlfriend. She was right. So I walked out empty handed, only to make my way to the mall and buy me a new PC game. Thanks for the suggestion dear! Ha!
So instead of doing all the things I wanted to do, I played
http://www.callofduty.com" target="BLANK">Call of Duty every day this week. I finished the game in about 6 hours. That pissed me off. $70 for six hours of game time? That’s in Canadian funds. It’s probably like $40 US. Still, the experience from the game is unique and it was worth it. Besides, the multiplayer feature will offer many hours of fun.
Isn’t it funny how you make plans and they never happen? It’s like that in my personal life and it’s like that in my work life. And the reason why plans keep changing is because there’s always a bunch of variables that you can’t control that come into play. At work, there’s always an idiot making dumb decisions that affect your strategies.
http://www.geekforum.org/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=13" target="BLANK">Demosthenes gave a fine example of such an idiot in
http://www.geekforum.org/viewtopic.php?t=1369" target="BLANK">this thread. So why bother with planning in the first place if you know that 90% of the time things won’t turn out as planned? Is planning irrelevant?
Well not quite. That’s the beauty of planning: In order to keep a plan, you have to keep changing the plan. Planning gives direction. Planning allows everyone to get on the boat. Sure, there’s always a guy that rows in the wrong direction, but when the other 20 guys are rowing in the right direction, he’s of little or no consequence. The problem lies when the guy who’s in charge of steering the boat leads everyone in the wrong direction. That is called incompetence. I hate working with incompetent people because it’s a hassle. It’s an insult to my abilities and it creates more work for everyone. When you have a guy like that on your team, then planning is less effective. In fact, all planning does in this case is to expose the incompetents. So it still has value.
One thing is sure, you can plan all you want, but you can’t see in the future. All plans will change. All plans should change to adapt to the uncontrollable variables of the environment. We often hear the phrase “stick to the plan”. That’s dangerous. We should be saying “Let’s re-examine the plan”.
There are other people that will say “screw the planning we need to act”. Good point. Talking about things doesn’t do anything. However, how can a team function without direction? And since direction comes from planning, then I guess you do need a plan after all. The key is to not waist too much time planning because things will change anyway. The plan will change. This is where you get into the wonderful world of risk management. Risk management involves planning at different levels. You start off by making an assumption and you start building a plan around that. For example, let’s say that the Chief Information officer (CIO) of a Government Department decides to build a new system based on a pending legislation that may or may not be accepted in two months. The assumption he’s making is that the bill will be accepted and a new law will be the result. Of course, you don’t just flip a coin to make that decision. It’s a critical decision that requires a lot of information. But at the time the decision is made, two months prior to the actual official position of the government on this bill, research and available information seem to indicate a high probability of the bill being accepted. So you act as if it was. That is the risk. You allocate human resources, financial resources, space and equipment and you start the project and come up with the initial plan.
What happens next? Well you’ll either loose your shirt, or impress a lot of people. If the bill is accepted, you are ready to flick the switch and put your new system in a production environment. If the bill ends up being refused, you just blew a few million dollars and your future as the CIO is questionable. It’s a win or loose type of management. It’s like gambling, only you don’t rely on luck but on information and planning. Of course, risk management occurs on smaller scales. You don’t have to be involved in million dollar projects to say you are doing risk management. A secretary can do risk management by assuming that a future event will take place and prepare for it.
So why the hell am I posting all of this? It fascinates me. The business world is huge and there’s so many things to explore and when the end result is a success, you feel like a million bucks no matter how big or how small the project you work on is. In my introduction, I described a plan that never took place. In that particular case, the plan was irrelevant because there was no positive or negative consequence related to the success of the plan. In the business world, it’s a different story because you are playing with your own resources, or someone else’s. And if you want to success, you need a good plan.
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