Anti-Planning.

I admit it. I’ve got really high expectations for anything we might call a “plan”.

I do not define plans in terms of hopes, aspirations or stated intents. I define plans by the action and results we can look back on because of them. If they don’t yield such outcomes, then they were never a plan in the first place. (I’m reminded of the first-century leader who said as much about faith and works. It ain’t faith if we don’t see the works.)

This is important because plans are usually costly to our organizations. They take a great deal of focus and time. We should therefore demand a great deal from them. And in education institutions, where annual budgets consist mostly of staff time, all the more reason to squeeze good juice out of our planning efforts.

There are entire libraries of books and documents about planning, and probably a million seminars. You probably have a plan for your department. There’s inevitably a strategic plan lurking somewhere in a binder or framed at the entrance of your organization. Heck, it might even sit next to the mission statement.

So?

What’s actually happening because of your operational plan or the organization’s strategic plan? Or, more importantly, what’s not happening because of your plans?

I do not mean for you to ask "what’s not happening" and start doing it. Rather, ask yourself "what shouldn’t happen" in order to make way for what should happen.

Another way to say it is this: if you want to steal second base, it’s assumed you have to let go of first base. You can’t keep one leg on both and stay in the game.

The problem in our work planning is that we don’t accept this reality. You can’t do everything, despite what your superiors, or their superiors, might expect. But it rarely gets stated, does it?

Planning is typically about what we’re going to do rather than what we’re not going to do. The problem is, what we don’t plan on doing, we end up doing. Tyranny of the urgent and all that. And because we never come out and discuss this – we never create a suitable anti-plan. That is, we don’t account for the inevitable things that aim to screw up our best intentions. As a result, we have little defense against it, yet the expectations keep coming.

We need to anticipate more.

It is critical for decision makers and supervisors to be confronted with the reality that something might not happen in order to facilitate another thing happening. The question comes down to priorities. The more you can set expectations on priorities up front, the better your batting average will be.

Here’s one place to start: What aren’t you going to do this month or this year? And does everyone important agree on this?