After spending the last seven or eight months refining a strategic plan, involving an outside consulting firm, staff leadership, board members and community volunteers, the planning team was asked “what is your plan B if this doesn’t work?”
Having worked on several such plans in my career, I have heard this question over and over again. It really feels like a cop-out question to me. The question may be innocent enough, may be a need for greater clarity or a true lack of understanding, but it is always extremely irritating. I know what the answer to this question is. I have always known the answer to this question. I learned the answer from a captain of industry who granted me fifteen minutes on his schedule to present multiple plans for a committee he chaired.
After carefully outlining the Plan A, budget, strategy and key players, Mr. Campbell stopped me saying, “I don’t need to hear Plan B; your first plan seems sound and manageable. We should go with the strongest plan.” You might be thinking that Mr. Campbell was watching the clock and just wanted to rush me out of his office, which crossed my mind too, except that he then proceeded to spend the next hour and a half contributing his considerable experience and company connections and resources to kick off my “best plan”.
It’s a simple as that. We don’t need to waste time and energy making alternate plans. We need to put our best plan forward, knowing that we used the greatest combination of research and resources available to us at the time. The entire point of making a plan is to assure that the best actions are taken. To needlessly delay action by creating multiple plans to achieve the same result is wasteful. The irony is that usually when I am asked about a second plan of action, the question is asked in the name of mitigating risk. If a plan is carefully created risk has already been factored in, delaying the action steps to rework the same data set usually just delays the desired results.
One day I may have the nerve to boldly respond, “there is no need for a plan B” when a board member, or non-planning committee member sandbags a presentation at the end of a long process that includes plenty of by in from stakeholders. Hey, what do you know, I think I’ve got my plan A for this week.
There is a time to fish and a time to cut bait. (Credit to Dad’s everywhere, on that last quote.)
Sheila,
Love it. Here’s an expansion on your thesis, as food for thought:
Plans, however static they are before they commence, become organic thereafter.
The old military axiom, “The moment the first bullet is fired, all plans are thrown out the window”, is true because once things happen, things _change_.
Coming up with a secondary plan for a different set of static (because they haven’t happened yet) variables is a waste of time. If Plan A is the best plan, it’s the only one worth going with because once the variables change ( and often they’ve changed beyond anything you might have been able to predict given information on-hand during the planning stage), Plan A, Plan B, and however many other plans you layed out on nice white paper is so much garbage. You kick off Plan A, and you are immediately, and automatically, working on a new Plan A given the new set of variables.
Coming up with multiple plans is a great way to show off how smart you are, but execution isn’t only about being smart, it’s about getting the bucket of water up the hill. Go with your Plan A, and then keep driving when things change. I’ll cite an software development axiom I’ve heard before, then shut up: “Launch early, and launch often. Iterate. Your customers will teach you what you never could have planned for.”
Thanks for your post!
Nate Smith