Episode #395: Modern Micro-Planning For Leaders

Best laid plans of mice and men. That was 2020 wasn’t it. We all started that year with our plans, hopes, aspirations and strategies in place. They all went down in flames and business became a game of catch as can, as we tried to grapple with an unfolding disaster. In our company’s case, our financial year starts in September and we were up 25% on revenues compared to the same period the previous year. I hired four more staff in January and had a record breaking year looming in sight. It was a record breaking year all right, but in the opposite direction to what I expected. What about this year? Are we any better positioned to plan for 2021?

Japan has seen a state of emergency declared and virus cases leaping higher and higher each day, like the flames of an uncontrollable bush fire wreaking havoc on everything in its path. Japan, being Japan, won’t accept the vaccine test results like the rest of the world. No, we have to replicate the tests here again because, well, we are Japanese and are different. That effectively means there won’t be any real vaccine led recovery until the end of the year at the earliest. How do you plan in these circumstances?

Long term planning is fine, but there are so many assumptions involved, on top of the normal lot, that you have to really question whether it even makes sense to bother. Maybe we just suspend long term planning hostilities, until the smoke clears from the battlefield and we can see what is going on. If we are not able to do any realistic planning for the long term at this particular point in time, then what should we be doing?

Now is the time for micro-planning. Fine, but how far ahead is this micro-planning limit? I would suggest a year to 18 months is realistic to do some interim planning before we can get back to longer term assumptions that actually make sense. I would even break that down further to look at the initial planning phases broken into 6 month terms. By mid-year we will have a better idea of the production and logistics associated with vaccine dissemination. Vaccines give us the capacity to get to herd immunity as fast as possible, with the minimum number of deaths being recorded. Then we can project forward in six month brackets, with more confidence that our plans can actually be realised.

Our micro-planning needs to be focused on cash flow, cost control and productivity. This is a good time to go back to the WHY. Leading people remotely requires a lot of devolution of responsibility and leaders need to delegate a lot more than usual. We need to make sure our people are committed to being highly productive and that they remain focused. This has to be an inside out thing, where they are motivated to do it themselves, without requiring any external interventions. Every company has their Vision, Mission, and Values done these days, but often more observed in the abstract, than in the practicalities of everyday work. They are nestled up inside some protective glass, hung auspiciously on a wall somewhere like a totem to a better world. People glide past them in the office without paying any attention and now they aren’t even gliding past anymore, because they are working from home.

Get the team together online and go through these guides and decide if they sufficiently suitedcover the current situation? We may need some interim updates to tide us over this period of business anarchy and disruption. Maybe we need to re-write them or revise them temporarily. Do they fit the moment? We have our peacetime versions and today we probably need some wartime versions too. Sprouting bromides, homilies and apple pie declarations from another simpler time, comes across as distinctly hollow and makes people cynical. Let’s start by reworking the guiding principles around what we do, why we do it and what are our values in this moment of meltdown. We need everyone’s buy in, in order to pull through this nightmare.

Doing simulations on cash flow are mechanical exercises based on the fall out of the numbers. Importantly, we can arrange the teams’ efforts around the fulcrums which will give us the biggest lift. What are they and who needs to be working on what. What are the things we have been doing well that have worked and where are the areas for further improvement over the next six months. Where are skill set gaps which need to be plugged. How do we recognise individual effort when the bankable results may still be distant. It can be frustrating to be working hard and feeling you are getting nowhere. Do we have a detailed, specific plan for each person, for their role, which plots out where they should be focusing their concentration in the months going forward. Leading remotely can mean the personalisation of leadership becomes diminished. We have to take that into consideration and allocate the time to micro-manage people in a good way.

We can only see the immediate other side of the parapet at this moment, but we have to work given where we are and with what we have. Our genius grand plans and brilliant strategies can come later. We have to make sure we are still around to be able to play in that world. So let's go micro now, so that in twelve to eighteen months time, we will be busy putting the final touches to the major strategic plan triumph.