Mind Tools - Planning Skills

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Introduction to Planning Skills

Why Should You Plan?

When you are about to attempt a project, whether organising an expedition, launching a new product or embarking on a research project, you inevitably face problems and risks. These might be:

Risks to life or health
Risks to status, career or employment
Problems of lack of resources
Risks of wasting limited resources, whether money, time or power
The risk to your self-esteem if you fail
etc.

The Planning Process

Planning is the process by which you determine whether you should attempt the task, work out the most effective way of reaching your target, and prepare to overcome unexpected difficulties with adequate resources. It is the start of the process by which you turn empty dreams into achievements. It helps you to avoid the trap of working extremely hard but achieving little.

Planning is an up-front investment in success - by applying the planning process effectively you can:

Avoid wasting effort:
It is easy to spend large amounts of time on activities that in retrospect prove to be irrelevant to the success of the project. Alternatively you can miss deadlines by not assessing the order in which dependent jobs should be carried out. Planning helps you to achieve the maximum effect from a given effort.
Take into account all factors, and focus on the critical ones:
This ensures that you are aware of the implications of what you want to do, and that you are prepared for all reasonable eventualities.
Be aware of all changes that will need to be made:
If you know these, then you can assess in advance the likelihood of being able to make those changes, and take action to ensure that they will be successful.
Gather the resources needed:
This ensures that the project will not fail or suffer for lack of a critical resource.
Carry out the task in the most efficient way possible
So that you conserve your own resources, avoid wasting ecological resources, make a fair profit and are seen as an effective, useful person.

The formal procedure of applying the planning process helps you to:

Take stock of your current position
Identify precisely what is to be achieved
Detail precisely and cost the who, what, when, where, why and how of achieving your target.
Assess the impact of your plan on your organisation and the people within it, and on the outside world.
Evaluate whether the effort, costs and implications of achieving your plan are worth the achievement.
Consider the control mechanisms, whether reporting, quality or cost control, etc. that are needed to achieve your plan and keep it on course.

Pareto

You may have heard of one approach to the Pareto principle: that 80% of a job is completed in 20% of the time. Another application in an non-planning environment is that 80% of the effort tends to achieve 20% of the results. By thinking and planning we can reverse this to 20% of the effort achieving 80% of the results. We may even decide that it is more efficient not to attempt the remaining work at all!

Why do people fail to plan?

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