I just completed the curriculum for the next Subject Area in Working Leadership Online. Planning – Creating the Future.
I am always struck by what planning helps us do and what excuses we have for not planning more often.
- We don’t have time to plan.
- Our plan never works anyway.
- We don’t have enough information to plan.
- We could create a plan, but the boss will veto it.
- I was responsible for the last plan and it didn’t work. I caught hell for it. No more planning for me.
- If we put a plan together, someone will try to hold us accountable for it.
That last one is my favorite.
Planning – Creating the Future kicks off March 16. Working Leadership Online. Register now.
You summed it up wonderfully!
The most challenging step I find in team development is the action plan at the end.
WHen I facilitate the question of how are we to apply this within your work team. I always hear “you want us to plan for greater team work”.
What you wrote sums up the under current of if we write a plan down then we have to be held accountable.
I feel this fear is unsustained. People plan stuff everyday and either complete or don’t complete what was planned. This a acceptable and part of the routine.
What is it about the workplace that this “accountability” word becomes so freightening?
We worked with a finance house (mergers, acquisitions etc) and one of the senior execs your exact words: someone might hold us accountable.
I suggested that if the company could show a plan of how long the merger would actually take they would have a huge competitive advantage over other companies. No he argued we better not do that. Six months later the papers showed they were in dispute over charges for a recent transaction. The company were accused of poor planning by their client! If only…..
I understand the fears and have seen some of those exposed by various people but management is managing people and planning. If one of my managers was fearful of failure or not able to present a plan to me because I will not listen then I have failed them as a supervisor