In this post I will start you working on an “express” version of my planning process. I’d like to make a point first.
Here's the point: I have already given you an express version of my planning process. If you think you missed it, don’t go looking for a post you missed. Instead, if you look back, from the very first post I gave you what you needed to know. Define your results. Plan the process you will employ to produce them. Dip down into your source and decide how to transform the counterproductive behavior you think is going to trip you up.
If you had wished, you could have acted on that clarity alone and put it on a single page, no?
What is my point in making that point? It is this. How much of your life have you missed waiting for someone to tell you, in detail, what to do, how to do it and when to do it? There is a little loop here that ties back to the self-deception we've been talking about.
Self-deception is fed by self betrayal, and self betrayal is to have a feeling to do something you know is true to you and to life, and then denying that feeling and doing something else instead. Knowing to do something, and then not acting on it, hoping and waiting for someone else to tell us what to do, how to do it and when to do it is a key leadership self betrayal, which in turns fuels self deception.
I'd be 20 again. In my own life, if I could subtract the time I've spent waiting for someone to tell me what to do, how to do it and when to do it (an authority "smarter" than me), I’d be 20 again and I’d have more hair, a broader chest and a flatter stomach. And you?
If this strikes a chord in you, too, I have a suggestion. I suggest you recognize this tendency and adjust your approach to planning, acting and living accordingly. If you do, you will get a lot more out of the brief time you are here on earth. I’m 50 years old and just learning that.
This is not to say that a planning process might not help. Perhaps it will. I will give you an actionable slice of mine. And if you will fuse with my process the insight that you perhaps had above, Katie-bar-the-door. You’ll light up your life like you got plugged into the cosmic power plant.
Let’s begin.
What are the seven most important key outcomes you intend to produce over the next six months?
Think about that.
You will notice I did not start the planning process by asking what you think the purpose of life is, what you think your purpose is, what your vision is, what your mission is, nor did I even ask what your values are. Some planning processes start you there, "so your aim is true." Why didn't I ask, why didn't we start there? Is it because I don’t care? No, I do. Is it because I don’t think those are important? No, they are essential.
So why did I dispense with all the ponder your navel stuff? Because most people I know have some lint in theirs. Not that I go around checking, mind you. But I know. And it is impractical to ponder your navel if it clearly isn’t even clean. Better to get the lint out, and then ponder if that is what you want to do. What’s my point?
Most leaders I know have not mastered the things right in front of them: taking care of what is right in front of you is an intensely practical place to start. I could say quite a bit about this phenomena, where it comes from, what it is, what it means, etc. Yet I am not going to explain why at this time. What I will say is you cannot possibly imagine what this is costing you in terms of wasted psychic RAM, self esteem and personal power. I want you to find out.
Get out a piece of paper (2 if you will be doing this for your business and your personal life) and a pencil and an eraser. Separate the page into three sections. You may want to leave a little more space in the center section.
In the top section write the word Results in the top left hand corner. Right underneath that, write Part A: Key Outcomes and list the numbers one through seven. Now, write out up to seven key outcomes you intend to produce over the next six months. Here is some additional clarity.
1. Notice I said “you intend to produce.” I did not say, “would like to” produce. I did not say “hope” to produce. I did not say “should” produce. I did not say “might” produce. I said intend to produce. I’m not going to dip into talking about the esoteric underpinnings of intention and the power of intent, but do you get my drift? At least a feeling as to why I chose that word so carefully? You. In. Tend.
2. Notice I said “key outcome.” I did not say “goal,” nor “resolution,” nor "intention," nor “project,” nor “initiative” nor anything else. I said “key outcome.”
What is a key outcome? It is something indisputably observable by multiple people looking at it, and more often than not, it is measurable—like sales, revenue, profit, debt, savings, the value or your investments, pounds lost off your bod, total visits to the gym, percentage of your children’s recitals or events missed, number of dates with your spouse, or number of markets you expand into, competitors you acquire, or clients you intend to add.
3. Notice I said “six months.” Is this an annual planning process? Yes. But you do it twice in one year. Why? Because life is now moving too fast to plan once a year. Besides, if you actually follow the process month-in and month-out, you will learn so much that you will want a new plan in six months.
4. Make a clear decision regarding whether to use one plan or two, and whether to do business, personal or both. It is your call whether to have one list of seven with business and personal, to have separate lists, or just do one or the other. If you are new to planning and/or have a history of planning fits and starts, use just one plan. You can make that one plan for work, for personal, or for both. Just following your intuition as to what is right for you.
5. Do not have more than seven key outcomes. Here is where I am going to be a hard ass. I want you to focus, and you cannot focus on more than seven things (there’s research to back that up).
Now I know there are those of you who may think seven is not enough or that you are a lot more sophisticated than that. I know you may have, for example, a scorecard for your business with a lot more than seven metrics on it. For example, you may have 50 metrics on your operations scorecard, and in the words of Austin Powers I say, Groov-vy, ba-by.”
But in that situation you are not focused on 50 things: You are focused on one thing. Namely, understanding what is going on in your business so you can run it better. And those 50 metrics provide a way dissect what is going on in order to do that. So, great!
Yet in this planning exercise, we are not dissecting your life to understand what is going on so you can run it better. Instead, we are pulling things together, culling out the lesser in order to identify the vital view, and providing you with a point of focus: namely, the vital few things that matter most to you.
There is, however, a way to bridge these two things together. In this planning situation, you might have a Key Outcome that is “Run the business well”, the basis for that measure might be the percent of the 50 metrics in the acceptable range, and your target might be 90%. With me?
Can you have less than seven? Of course! Seven is the limit, not the requirement.
6. Each of the seven items must have three elements. (Hard ass here again.) 1. Description. 2. Basis of measure. 3. Target number. See insert for examples.
Go. As in,
start writing. Write out up to
seven key outcomes you want to produce over the next six months, (Just checking to
see if you were awake—did you notice “want” instead of “intend”?) Yes, so,
reach deep. Come up with the most important seven key outcomes you intend to produce in the next six months.
You've completed Part A of the Results section--the key results you'd like to produce. Next up, Part B.
