Ideas to Avoid ‘Planning Trap’ and Focus on Execution
Tanmay Vora
A lot of organizations fall in what I call “planning trap” – a lot of planning in the meetings, lot of decisions on improvement areas and eventually very little action.
One of the simplest measures of team/organization effectiveness is to keep a close watch on how much is decided in a meeting versus how much actually gets done. It is very easy to get distracted by other issues (and surprisingly, these ‘other issues’ always exists) within your area of work.
Two main reasons why this happens:
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Executives loose focus on key actions (and focus on other issues)
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Executives get impatient for results (specially for improvement actions where an organic approach is needed.)
Here are a few ideas to get over the planning trap:
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Conclude every meeting with action items, deadlines and responsibilities. Keep a log.
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Measure the progress and celebrate ‘quick wins” to keep everyone motivated. Show them the evidences of success.
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Set the context right, so people understand the importance of actions and how it solves real business problems. They need to see the purpose of improvement actions.
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Recognize their effort and provide direct/indirect rewards for participation.
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Persistently monitor how much is decided versus how much actually gets done.
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Involve top management in demonstrating their commitment towards improvement and underline the importance of execution-orientation.
- Test, Validate, Inspect: Simply put, test the product before it ships, make use of the countless
ALM tools out there for testing, and don’t allow it to have bugs!
More the gap, more you need to work on it. Do you remember that quote? – “A simple idea executed brilliantly is far better than a great idea executed poorly.”
Success in any long term improvement initiative depends largely on two factors : Doing right communication to keep everyone motivated and keeping the score.
Here are a few bite-sized ideas from my book #QUALITYtweet that underline this fact:
#QUALITYtweet: “If you don’t periodically review the progress of your quality initiative with your team, you are giving them a reason to slow down.”
#QUALITYtweet: Critical question: are the results of your improvement initiative visible enough to keep everybody engaged and encouraged?
Bottom line: If you don’t communicate enough and fail to keep a score of actions/deadlines/key objectives, you may fall in the ‘planning trap’ – and trust me, it is not a nice place to be in because little actually gets done!
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P.S: My post “Training and Development – A Holistic View” is featured in Carnival of HR at “HR Observations” blog. If you are looking for fresh insights on HR specific issues, posts in this carnival are a must-read. Check it out!
Sir thanks a lot for sharing this useful insight. Very rightly mentioned that organizations many times falls in ‘Planning Trap’ and I have seen this happening with Product based s/w companies more frequently than Process based companies. Reason is very simple, lack of basic review and monitoring processes. Quick implementation and repetative monitoring of action items are equally important to framing and identification of these items.
Good ideas strikes with creation of happy to go environments in meeting room in morning and then by EOD, management/planner sometimes have no track of what was discussed and what needs to be done further. I believe that “Processes” are key to maintain such monitoring practices.
Avoiding this, creates a negative impact on employees and things or plans are then started to be taken for granted, last thing any organization would prefer to happen.
Lastly to add: “A minute of planning saves an hour and it’s implementation within minutes saves the Trap” – the ‘Planning Trap’ 🙂
Thanks again to Dr.QA!
Thanks Jay – for expressing your views on this.
I agree that monitoring processes are very important to ensure that ideas see the light of the day.
Equally important is personal due deligence to ensure that we don’t loose momentum on key initiatives.
Best,
Tanmay
Good post, liked it. You have highlighted the importance of communication and the which need to be regular, and also about reviews to be done on a regular basis to see the progress.
Hi Anand, Thanks for affirmation and I am glad you liked the ideas presented in the post. Yes, when dealing with organizational improvement initiatives, constant communication is important to 1) Maintain the momentum 2) Get a feeling of actual progress made and course corrections that are required.
Best,
Tanmay
Agree completely with your quick wins point, Tanmay. A great way to ensure your team moves out of the planning rut and into the execution stream is being able to demonstrate some early accomplishments to drive the team’s momentum.
.-= Tanveer Naseer´s last blog ..Mothers – Our First Example of Real Leadership =-.
Tanveer – Thank you so much for the affirmation. I am glad you found these reminders useful.
Best,
Tanmay
Here is a comment from my uncle – who expressed himself in email. Posting his comment here – because it is special and adds to conversation:
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Whether business, social, or economic concern, planning strategies for achieving the desired goals has been a crucial task. Not only in formulation process but to percolate the objectives behind, to the different management layers. If not done the job right the desired results cannot be achieved.
Many a times a good no of organizations came out with the best planning blueprint naming Performance Budget etc., however for one or another reason the task is not accomplished thus business objectives are far reachable. At conferences, meetings that are convened often sometimes loose the sight and derail the discussion more on other issues loosing the attention towards the set targets. It is all about the implementation part that comes in the way to achieve the goals. So whole the crux lies here.
Carry out the spade work. I like it.
Kaushik Vora
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Thanks!
Tanmay
Hi Tanmay,
It is always good to read your thoughts. Every time you come up with the post on any topic, your thoughts are are crisp to the point. Thank you for sharing your experience, lesson learned and all your views.
Hi Vikas – I appreciate your support to this blog. Thanks also for the affirmation – I am so glad that you find ideas on this blog useful.
Best,
Tanmay
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