Does this conversation I had with my son a couple years ago resonate with you? “Josh, you had a lot of work to do this past weekend. Did you get it all done?” To which I got a dirty look. Again, “Josh, did you get all your work done?” “NO!” So what happened? He knew what he had to do, but be failed to plan adequately.
In talking to him, he thought he had a plan. In reality he didn’t. (1) It was all in his head. It’s hard to be held accountable to something when you don’t write it down or tell someone else. (2) His “plan”, even executed well, would not have gotten the task done. He didn’t check his homework portal, there were assignments he forgot about, he did not plan breaks or plan adequate time to complete the assignments, and he never included metrics to make sure he was staying on track. And, (3) he did not adapt his “plan” to the changes that happened after he started execution. When something came up on Saturday that took him away from study time, he did not adjust the plan so he could complete the work on time. In the famous words of Mike Tyson, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
So what could he have done differently?
1. Write the plan down – it does not matter if it is your task list for the day or a three week project. Putting it in writing makes you more accountable to it.
2. Share the plan with someone else – this increase your accountability even further, and it also is good to have another set of eyes looking for what you might have missed.
3. Include metrics for staying on track – having goals for the plan is great, but “it’s done” is not a good metric to make sure you are staying on track to complete everything you want on time.
4. Make sure to build “assess and adjust” checkpoints into your plan – this way when reality affects your plan you already have a reminder to evaluate if you have to make a course correction.
5. If it is a longer term plan, launch it quickly, do it cheaply and revise it rapidly. Essentially fire “small bullets” to test and tweak your strategy before investing a lot of time and money in it to make sure your ideas will work.
“Efforts and Courage are not enough without Purpose and Direction.” – John F. Kennedy
“Without strategy execution is aimless. Without execution strategy is useless.” – Morris Chang
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