Return on Intention

This post started with some discussions I have been having lately with my business partners and colleagues. Here lately I (we) have been battling the same problem regardless of the scope of work, be it brand work, digital work or just good old fashion marketing strategy work. In an effort to reduce cost or speed along a project, the one thing that always seems to get sacrificed is the planning. It takes a lot of time and effort to try and convince people of the importance of planning. So here goes, in a nutshell and as short as possible, why planning is important, even if the plan will more than likely fail.

First off, I will agree that planning anything seems to be an exercise in either mind reading or some other form of extra-sensory intelligence. Most plans are built with the assumption that with enough hard work and diligence, everything can be outlined and mapped to ensure that success is obtained. We look at market research, consumer behavior and mountains of data to try and project what will happen if we do (insert your tactical changes here) or how the market will respond if we (insert your strategy for new product / brand extension / creative idea / making the logo bigger on your packaging).

The fact of the matter is that no matter how hard we all try, we cannot see into the future. We plan hard and thoroughly with the assumption that an educated guess is better than random actions. Then we launch the program / idea / whatever and quickly discover that what we thought would happen usually doesn’t, at least not exactly. As the adage goes, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy (or no marketing or business plan survives contact with your customers or employees). So while it would seem that these are good reasons to not plan or to cut back on the planning process, they are actually the entire reason we should plan to begin with.

Every plan is built on a set of assumptions. We assume our customers will like blue in the design. We assume the market is ready for innovation. We assume that our customer research is factual, even when chances are they are only another set of assumptions our customers make about what they want. So we go thought the best ideas we have, apply some type of logic to them and then craft our execution. In short, we make a stack of assumptions. It should then come to no surprise that, as assumptions often go, the assumptions are off. Sometimes a little off and sometimes a lot, but rarely ever are they right on. The real trick to all of this is to identify which one(s) of the assumptions are off, after all a plan is a stack of assumptions. If you can identify what was wrong in the planning, they you have a head start on figuring out what to do about it. (Pause for the Ah-hah moment.)

Can you imagine going thought the process of a new product launch that misses every projection and you realize that you won’t hit profitability when you need too. If you have no plan you have no place to start to adjust your processes or offerings to make your new product work. Its also common that without a solid plan, you can make some adjustments to your assumptions without fully understanding how they effect the other assumptions you have. You may launch your product and find that you are not moving enough pieces to meet your goals, so you react by offering lower prices or specials. You see the inventory start to turn and your product start to fly off the shelves so feel good about your “save”. Then, five months down the down the road, you discover that you are not going to be profitable in time, and you might run out of money. This is because as one assumption changes so do every other assumption in the stack that follows it. There are too many correlations to track without a road map, and that road map is a plan.

The true value of a plan is that it’s a map to your assumptions. DO not skip, or skimp on this step. Too many things change too fast for you not to be driving with a road map. Know in the planning process what assumptions you are making, even if they seem like facts, and know what assumptions are stacked on top of each. When you know that your plan in some way shape or form will fail to some degree, you will plan better and be ready to make changes as needed. Plan with planning in mind.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 17th, 2007 at 10:35 am and is filed under Doin' it right, Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.