Proper Planning Prevents........

I enjoy watching The Apprentice on TV, and by the way, we have both the UK and US versions here and I have to say the former makes for much more compelling viewing.

Image courtesy of BBC - www.bbc.co.uk

What frustrates me with almost every episode is the lack of planning which goes into every task. Everyone is always in a huge rush to be DOING "stuff" and they never seem to pause to think. Typically, they'll spend two minutes choosing a project leader, another five minutes thinking about the task, and then they all rush off to start their allocated jobs. And yes I know that there is bound to be some serious editing for television, but it's pretty consistent.

The result is often a poorly executed task, and appallingly, the teams can spend two whole days being busy, but not actually achieving their objective. And it's all because they don't pause at the start and really examine what they need to achieve, and then come up with a sound strategy for doing so. How many times have we seen teams lose despite having higher sales, but by delivering a much lower profit because they hadn't considered their costs?

And I see the same pattern in "real" business as well. Someone comes up with a good idea, and before you know it, they are into the implementation.

I think it's a real issue, and one of the reasons so many ventures (both on and offline) fail. Our modern society demands that you have to be seen to be "doing" things, and we try to pack as much activity into every working hour as we can.

When was the last time you switched off your screen, stopped the music, leaned back in your chair and simply did some thinking? When you last came up with a great idea, how much time did you invest in thinking it through, weighing the options and thinking through different scenarios?

If you're in a strategic management position in a business, you're there because of your brains, not because of your ability to churn work other people can be doing.

Try it with your next great idea. Turn everything off for an hour. Examine the idea from top to bottom, ask yourself every "what if" question you can think of, be really, really clear on the objectives and think through every possible scenario.

It will be time well invested.

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