Tag Archives: paradox

Planning and Paradox

Business Planning, Plan-as-you-go Planning, Planning Fundamentals, , ,

Business planning is full of paradox. It’s a matter of balance. Here are some interesting examples.

  • Business plans are always wrong, but nonetheless vital. Wrong because they’re predicting the future and we’re human, we’re fallible, so we don’t get it right. Vital because we need the plan in order to track where, how, and what direction it was wrong, which becomes planning process, which becomes management. I deal with this a lot.
  • You have to focus to survive, but you need new markets to grow. So which is it? Have you heard of the corridor principal? It says business strategy is like walking down a long corridor full of doors. Open every door to investigate and you never get anywhere. Ignore all the doors to just keep going and you never get any new opportunities.
  • I’ve written before: “it’s better to have a mediocre strategy consistently applied over three or more years than a series of brilliant strategies, each applied for six months or so.” So do you stick to the plan regardless, like running into a brick wall? Or do you revise? When do you revise? How do you know? There’s paradox, where the human judgment comes in to override the formulaic.

The solution to that paradox is the frequent plan vs. actual review, tracking results and assumptions, to put changing the plan into a real context. Set the plan, review it, and revise it, frequently, based on needs. It’s still a tough decision, at times, because of the consistency vs. pivot problem; but keeping on top of it makes it easier. For more on that, check out Lean Business Plan as Business Dashboard and GPS.

(Image: shutterstock.com)

Planning and Paradox

Business Planning, Plan-as-you-go Planning, Planning Fundamentals, , ,

Business planning is full of paradox. It’s a matter of balance. Here are some interesting examples.

  • Business plans are always wrong, but nonetheless vital. Wrong because they’re predicting the future and we’re human, we’re fallible, so we don’t get it right. Vital because we need the plan in order to track where, how, and what direction it was wrong, which becomes planning process, which becomes management. I deal with this a lot. 
  • You have to focus to survive, but you need new markets to grow. So which is it? Have you heard of the corridor principal? It says business strategy is like walking down a long corridor full of doors. Open every door to investigate and you never get anywhere. Ignore all the doors to just keep going and you never get any new opportunities.
  • I’ve wrote in my Plan as you Go Business Plan book: “it’s better to have a mediocre strategy consistently applied over three or more years than a series of brilliant strategies, each applied for six months or so.” So do you stick to the plan regardless, like running into a brick wall? Or do you revise? When do you revise? How do you know? There’s paradox, where the human judgment comes in to override the formulaic.

(Image: shutterstock.com)

You Decide: Business Rules vs. Case by Case

Management,

It seems to me that carefully defined rules clash with judgment calls and case-by-case common sense. You grow a business team based on one or the other, but not both.

Take the example of customer returns: do you define the rules and stick to them, or do you make exceptions all the time. You can’t do both. If you offer a 60-day money-back guarantee, some of your team will want to refuse returns from beyond 60 days, because that’s the rule. Others will want to give an unhappy customer their money back even if it’s been 61, 90, 120 days or longer.

The problem is that you can’t do both, but you want to. I’ve always wanted employees empowered to break the rules for special cases. I’ve always thought people wanted to be empowered to use their common sense and good judgment. But I’ve learned through the years that “you decide” and “use your judgment” is not everybody’s favorite policy. That makes some people very uncomfortable; they want to know the rules and follow them exactly.

This conflict applies to lots of issues that come up as a business grows. Think about bonuses in this context. Think about sick days and vacations. If you build a lot of rules, making exceptions gets harder.

(Image: RAGMA IMAGES/Shutterstock)