“I am sitting with my team at the warehouse door. Every product carton is sitting in its bin with its barcode label facing front. On the clipboard hanging by the shipping table is a computer report showing, in order, the highest turnover items. The top fifteen items on the list occupy the fifteen bins up front next to the staging area.

“Our controller is standing with the group. He has two reports from his computer system. One report is our book inventory in the computer. The other report is the cycle count report from the inventory just completed. The numbers at the bottom of the report match.

“The UPS driver just showed up for his afternoon pickup. All outgoing shipments have been sitting in the staging area, ready to go, for the past twenty minutes. There is no picking backlog.” Calvin was proud as he described this picture of his warehouse two weeks in the future.

“Calvin, why do you think this picture is important?” I asked.

“There are a hundred details that make this picture happen,” he said. “Some of the details, we will put on a list, but others we won’t. But if we continue to work toward the picture, it will all come together.”

“Calvin, the most important part of this picture is the pride I see in your face, knowing that you have finished a complicated process. We can set all kinds of goals and performance standards, but it is that picture of the future that drives the emotional energy to attack and complete a project. The most important planning skill is to create that picture of the future. Now, go make it happen.” -TF