“I think planning is a waste of time!” decried Roger. I was not sure if he was just trying to get out of the assignment, or if he truly had a bad experience with planning. Roger continued, “We plan, but we never stick to the plan. There are too many unknowns to think about. All kinds of things can happen that we cannot predict. We might find an opportunity that was completely unforeseen that renders our plan obsolete. It takes too much time; I don’t want to do it. I mean, it’s not that I don’t want to do it, I just don’t want to write it down. Things change too quickly.”

Enough. I stop him. “What are the benefits of planning? If you do your job well, what are the positive things that come from a written plan? If you do not have a plan, then how does your team know what to work on next?”

Roger thought for a minute, “I just have to be specific about what I want them to do next.”

“Do you realize how much pressure that puts on you to constantly monitor their activities, to constantly be devising the next task, and the next task? Do you realize that no one is watching your backside because the team has no understanding of where the project his headed?”

The downfall of most managers is the incredible stress they place themselves under. The team who does not understand the direction of travel MUST depend on the manager for every step and move. Problems cannot be anticipated by the team because they don’t know from which direction the arrows will arrive. This leaves the manager in a never-winning battle to anticipate everything and solve every problem. This is not where I would want to be. -TF