Why Plans Don't Work: And What To Do To Make Them Succeed

Why Plans Don't Work 

Why Plans Don't Work, 

Here's Why And What To Do To Make Them Succeed. 

Leaders often say they have a plan, it can be written down or in their head. Sometimes they have great names, from action plans, to project plans, to business plans.  When I visit clients I am often presented with plans, ideas and concepts all in some state of existence. Some are online share documents with many contributors, several revisions and are carefully annotated graphs and charts, others are glossy brochure plans with pull out action and implementation plans.  

But Plans don't work!  A plan of any kind is just some works (images graphs etc) to make change happen. But plans do not make change happen. Plans only show the steps to make change happen. To move the company from where it is today too somewhere new. But that does not make change happen. That just moves people out of their comfort zone to somewhere where they are not comfortable.  

Habits Matter More Than Plans

Plans make change, but don't make change happen.  ITs what happens next that matters if plans are to work. Taking people somewhere new is interesting but getting them to stay there and thrive is the real goal of any vision. It is the afterwards that matters if change is too be sustainable. If you want people to perform in a new way it's making those new ways their habit that matters.

Habits matter because that is where change becomes the way. Habit is what matters in making change happen. The biggest driver of people's behaviours is creating new habits, but these do not feature in business plans. Habits are very powerful but business plans, action plans and implementation plans fail to have habit forming built into them.      

Habits are why people do things. Habits are why people are reluctant to implement real change. Habits are the most powerful driver in people's behaviour. Habits are often more powerful that people's desire to succeed in making change happen.  Employees are often open to change until it becomes something they have to do differently to their habits. 

Plans Fail. 

Habits are a lot more powerful than someone else telling you to change. This is why plans fail. Even if people see change as necessary they will agree that change needs to happen they often fail to embed it, preferring to go back to what they know, like and have always done, they kept their habit. 

"Plans change processes but fail to change peoples' habits."  

Changing habits needs to be built into a plan. The changing habit phase is rarely, if ever identified until after the plan has failed to succeed. Look at why plans fail and the most common and frequent reason given is the failure to change peoples' habits in implementing change. 

Creating and sustaining change requires plans to build in habit changing as part of culture change. Habit changing     takes time and needs to be planned out over the long-term not a short-term fix.  A plan saying we will change this process next week, is unlikely to succeed if it has been around for a period of time and is part of people's habits and is supported by the existing culture. 

The Power Of WHY

Simon Sinek has outlined the importance of why change is being made as a driver of supporting change. Leaders' must provide context, the WHY change is happening not just WHAT and HOW. The power of why is an essential underlying rationale which changes the relationship between leaders and employees, buying them into the strategy, rather than them being kept in the dark on a need to know basis of information.

Leaders need to understand that plans don't work, but people do when they are doing something they love, in a way they control for a cause they believe in.  

Plans are meaningless unless they carry everyone to somewhere they can create new positive habits. When you remove those habits you alienate your people. 

Changing Habits Takes More Than A Plan

Here are a few ways I have found to make plans really work, to get them beyond the page, implemented, and embedded with new habits in place.

Leadership Behaviours

]Leaders needs to act as ambassadors of change and provide new habits for people to adopt and ideally develop their own new habits within the new model which the plan determines.  Leaders need to proactive lead from the front in creating a new culture, being and developing role-models of the right behaviours and habits in each department so those role-models can be seen and modelled against.   

Recognition And Reward

Recognition is also a key element of habit forming, recognising and rewarding the right behaviours is central to bring the new way of working. Too often leader's spend too long penalising those not doing the right stuff rather than focusing on people doing the right behaviours.   

Burn Bridges

Burn the bridge of the old ways, change everything that needs changing with no going back or slippage options. This drives new behaviours which can be supported and allowed to develop.

Zero Tolerance

Zero and immediate corrective action to keep people on track with the new behaviours and performance which the plan requires. Do not let people have leeway in moving to the new way of doing things. Leaders must not just lead but also carry people forward and then allow them to flourish within that new environment. 

Champions Keep Everyone On Track

Creating habit champions is a highly effective strategy. But not just line managers, identify early adopters of the new from wherever they sit within the team, ignore their title or role, and make them champions to keep everyone on-track with the new, so that they can support across all the whole company the new way of doing things.

Buddy up people through change. Encourage those who have adapted early to support those who need to be nudged along the way. But don't waste energy on the change deniers (laggards), never waste good people on carrying deadwood. They won't thank you. 

Accountability Matters

Make everyone accountable to someone else for making a permanent change happen. Keeping a change alive is one of the biggest challenges a plan has, how to keep it living post the initial launch phases. Once the excitement of plans launch and big changes has happened, keeping the plan alive so that the cultural and new habit forming changes are shaped and embedded are often where the most required to deliver the plans Return On Investment ROI.  

Embed Change

Make the change permanent across the whole organisation. Plans don't work unless you make the change permanent across the organisation and re-enforce the changes you want to see and as importantly see the change that has happened. So often looking at where you have come from to where you are now and where you see teh company getting to carries your people forward. If you have made  change which can increase your processing by 25% then show them that change from where you were to where you are now and where you will get to over the full rollout of the plan as new habits are formed.  

Create An Environment Where New Habits Can Form 

To get people to stop smoking experts identified that getting people to stop for a month increases the likelihood of them giving up smoking for good six times more effectively than other traditional stop smoking campaigns.  It takes time to form a habit, and in stopping smoking giving yourself time and changing your existing habits from breaks to who you go for a work break with (don't hang out with smokers, or carry on the smoking driving habits) if you want to stop smoking. Form new habits that support you change your habits to the ones you want. 

The same is true to making change happen at work. For people to change they need to burn the old habits that are no longer wanted, but more importantly be allowed to create their new habits which fit with the new model. That requires leaders to allow people, actively encourage them to create new habits, so do not tell them what to do, give them the environment and the freedom to do it their way. Allow people to create their own new habits.   

Measure The Change

If you measure what matters, then measure how people adapt to the new normal, the change by their habit forming as they normalise to the new work environment the plan delivers. If you measure habit forming, people's ownership of the new way of doing things, how fast they take ownership and lead the change, then you will see the plan deliver the positive outcomes which your plan wanted to achieve. 

Plans don't work, but people making change does. Focus more on delivering a plan that moves people and allows people to own their plan then you will see the productivity and effectiveness that you wanted to see the plan deliver. It's not the plan that matters, it is how people react to that plan that will deliver the results leaders need to see.

Strategically are you leading ahead of the curve of behind the curve?

For a Managing Director or Chief Executive Officer, knowing where your business sits within its market is an important first step in leading it to where it needs to be. Where you are today is the result of action taken years before. For leaders' determining where they want their business to be is about deciding where a business is best positioned to succeed within its market over the leaderships tenure. 

Strategic Brand Positioning

That conversation of where to be (and where not to be) requires careful consultation with the shareholders, and key stakeholders as well as the people within the business.  What are their aspirations for the business today and over what horizon?  If a business is a mid-market player within a sector then is everyone happy to stay there and defend their market position and market share, or do they want to move to somewhere else?  Pressure mounts as other players within the market accelerate their growth by moving to other areas of the market. Staying where you are needs to be defended, then the leadership team must be able to defend these strategic decisions.  

That desire to shift should be based not just on a simple aspiration, or the selection of a new MD / CEO to move the brand, but on key factors which will include growth potential within segments of that sector, short-term opportunity analysis of moving compared to staying where you are as well as long-term goals including profitability and sustainability over the a long-term strategic and team culture goals.

Leaders' Biggest Decision

Moving position is not about dropping what you currently do, unless that is redundant within the market, but more about where will the business will be over time. Deciding where make prioritisation of future investments and place resources, including your energy is how businesses naturally migrate. Dramatic events such as Covid where businesses have to overnight pivot their model is the most often need to make complete shifts. Traditional change models are often driven by macro market drivers, (PESTLE) factors most of which are driven in response to consumer demand, reflecting changing preferences or within markets by changing dynamics of a market. 

The big decision for an MD / CEO is where to go from where you are today. That decision starts by answering why where you are today not where you want or need to be tomorrow. For a new leadership team moving the company's position is the reason they have been brought in as shareholders are not happy with the current position in terms of profits, ROI or sustainability. Deciding where to go requires some deep sole searching as well as emerging market opportunities from existing key customers but also in where and what impact emerging trends will make on the business. Dealing with the conflicting pulls and pushes of advice as to where to go, requires detailed analysis and evidence building, so as not to be pulled from pillar to post in strategic thought.

  

Leading ahead of the curve, or behind the curve.

Moving a business requires a thought process of where is that business sitting today within its market. Is the business ahead or behind the curve? Is the first and most important question to answer.  The gulf between the two is a huge chasm, are you a brand leader or a sector follower. 

What is the curve?

The curve is where a company/brand sits within a market. Any and every market are structured around the technology levels within them. From cars to computers, fashion to furniture, to energy to engineering every sector has its own defined structure. The curve is how customers see a market, and how customers engage with brands along that curve. In effect the curve shows where customers are by their buying behaviour, what they will spend based upon their value perception of each brand. It's why Rolex and Tag Heuer can charge more than Swatch and Timex. Those ahead of the curve invest more in research and their product across their marketing mix than those behind the curve.

This understanding of a market is a strategic issue for leader's to assess, understand and determine where and how they position their company to develop their long-term success. Where to position a company for long-term success is fundamental to the business's success.  Where you sit within a market provides you with a place to defend and an according accessible market presence, it is easy to use an existing cash cow to sell more downstream, it is harder to reposition yourself upstream with a new product as the brand perception is outside comfort or competency  The danger of growing using just cash cows is that it naturally slips the brand down the curve, a dangerous precedent which is hard to stop or reverse. 

Strategic Curve Positioning

This structure, the normal distribution curve is a line along which every player in the market is mapped by perception as to where they sit. At the far left are the innovators, small technical product/service creators at the cutting edge of the market who develop bespoke new products. While there are always very few of these players (in a mature market) they are vital as the develop the new and innovative products and services the sector is known for. To do this they require the right mix of talent, creative space to succeed and deep pockets to support their innovation development. That makes them small players but with disproportionally  big brand presences and are often funding (owned or in Joint Ventures with main stream players).  

As the curve increases businesses are seen as early adopters, where higher growth companies sit who have developed sufficient market size to stand alone, and who quickly adopt ideas form innovators and take it to the mainstream market. for many people these flagship companies are what determines a market as they reflect the innovation but in a larger scale than then the pure innovators. Typically good at marketing and sales as well as product development these companies can premium price their products and services to the discerning customer who buys the pure value proposition that early adaptors offer.

Early majority companies, play in the mainstream, safe, established with a wider value proposition than the product they bring innovation in once proved. By being a mainstream player the brand USP and value proposition has to be clearer across the entire marketing mix and unlike the earlier sections a wider skillset of people are needed who can identify trends and develop them into the mass market position early on in which those companies operate. 

Late majority companies gather trends and repackage them with lower priced versions of that trend, but bring it to new audiences with enhanced convenience, more support and rely upon mass acceptance using a wide range of marketing mix techniques suitable to their sector.

At the tail end of any sector are the laggards, players in the market who hoover up trends that are now past, but have some lower price or new laggard customer segments who they can resell these products too. Laggard markets can be extremely successful where they extend lifespans of trends to keep them alive by repackaging them to wider, often high value alternative markets. 

Why being ahead of behind the curve matters

Where a new or existing customer, sits on its sector curve is a core strategic issue. A company must play it its competitive advantage, and shifting that takes time and resources to achieve.  The gulf between the front of the curve, the innovators compared to the laggards is huge. Players within the same sector but at significantly different market positions are almost speaking foreign languages to each other and certainly very different cultures.   

Innovator and early adopters will more heavily invested in new products and services while those behind the curve invest significantly less, sometimes very little in products and services.  This reflect sin visual differences in the relative prices they can charge for their comparable products and the timeline with which they bring bring their respective products to market.   

That investment in new products require high investment which is offset by higher profit margins to premium customers, while those further down the curve have to offset lower gross margins with lower costs in product development coupled with larger market segments increasing sales volume and therefore lower costs to come to market. Choosing where to sit 

Strategic Sustainability

Choosing where to position your company is therefore a vital strategic decision to take. The key criteria of a long-term strategic view is essential, where does the company want to compete over the next 5 years, not just to capitalise on next years' opportunity. It takes time, even in agile companies to orientate, become established and achieve positive ROI's and develop a sustainable position within a market.   

This means that strategic positioning defines a leadership's success or failure. Picking the right strategic position is the biggest single decision which a leadership team has to undertake, it will determine what your business future looks like, determining your business model through to defining your long-term success.

Getting your strategy right.

Strategic planning is the most reliable way to develop a sustainable and successful market position. Evaluating all options, stakeholder and shareholder needs aligned to the current and future market opportunities and risks. It also focuses leaders on setting their goals and aspirations in context with those key factors aligning the whole business with a focus and shared direction to take. 

For leaders to lead they must be going someone and that requires them to make the big decisions, but make them strategically not tactically.

How to make Change Succeed in the Workplace

How to Create, Drive and Sustain CHANGE in the workplace 

Executive Summary

Change is the only constant in business.The challenge is that success reduces the need for change, until it is too late. Businesses which continually succeed do so because they respond to the changes in their market. Those which can adopt the quickest and proactively succeed in adapting and developing to meet their customers needs, succeed at the expense of those that are unable, unwilling or slowest to adapt.  The drivers of change in business are often driven by a company failing to achieve outcomes in turnover and profit. Change of course is easy to talk about doing, but difficult to achieve.  Changing anything that exists takes more than suggestions, words or even plans. In this article I want to share how I work with high growth organisations to create and sustain change and remove the blocks and active opposition to change within an organisation.

In today's flat rather than traditional hierarchical structures, change is delivered by specialist high impact teams are often using dynamic agile business techniques, rather than traditional command and control annual planning changes. That removal of traditional hierarchy, to create and deliver tailored change plans, provide quicker localised and holistic (mentored) support in creating change. That allows supported change to be sustained by a a specialist team, not necessarily in-house, (or line managed) providing flexible support. While this type of change provides speed it can also generate resistance, although a different type of resistance than the traditional command and control "tell em" approach. 

Resistance to change from either traditional or the more modern will occur if the leadership team do not have a proactive change strategy in place. Key to that strategy is he the ability to focus not on the change itself, but on the outcome of being able to make and sustain change, ensuring that the business unit is fit for purpose after the change step is made.

Here are a few ways which I have used to make change sustainable:-   

Leadership is vital in making change successful. Change in key areas such as culture (and let's face it most change  often about cultural change within a division) must be led by the leadership team. Leaders cannot delegate shifts in culture, either in traditional or modern structured organisations, they must lead it. It is more than just by-in needed by leaders for change to be successful, leaders must lead from the front. Cultures within a company are established, driven and supported by the leadership team, they set the pace, either at the corporate or unit level, so cultural change must led by the leadership.

Leadership often does not see that they set and define the culture, that also means that the leadership does not need to make changes within themselves. Changing the corporate culture from the top is an essential part of making change happen so that it is sustained.  Leaders must inspire, believe in and lead form the front from change to be more than a fashion or fad.      

1. Clear Vision from Change 

Change is ultimately not about the process of change, but the outcome. Successful change focus on the outcome it delivers, even if that change is only a stepping stone phase.  Creating and setting the post change environment, the outcome is a vital first step in making change successful.

Leaders must create and believe in their vision for their business. That belief has to be their focus, passion and end goal. Leadership is about leading, but how, where and why is fundamental for leadership to deliver change successfully.

2. Team Structure

Creating the change team, giving people the roles and responsibilities to create and deliver change,  stretching people and developing  the potential for personal and team development.  Developing people is key to retaining talented people and ensuring they fit with the future needs of the organisation. Good teams are diverse in the make-up and challenged to deal not only with today's business challenges but also stretched to be ready for tomorrow's potential challenges.  

3. Set Stretch Goals. 

Whether just benchmarking the competition or creating a completely new model for delivery, change needs to have goals, but don't talk about 5% better, change only happens if you stretch people to double the team's performance. Without the stretch you won't get real change.  

4. Don't Over Plan The Change

Change does not work if you over plan it.  Change succeeds when it is both an evolving process of discovery and of inclusive involvement. If you only provide a total change package there is no buy-in to those on the ground (or the leadership and management team), so change becomes enforced and therefore resisted. The second element of change is that over planning also removes or reduces flexibility in response.  

5. Passionate Leadership 

Leaders must not only be the agents of change but also chief cheerleader, motivating and driving change consistently throughout the whole change process. Active involved leadership (passion) is not only about visibility but also to drive the leading players and pull up the slower, resisting or passive elements in making change.   Emotional leadership is an important part in creating and transferring believe in change.

6. Rationale Argument for Change

While emotions matters, so does rationale in carrying people forward. People buy with their hearts but confirm with their heads. The importance of rationale arguments, supported by either (or both) perception or hard evidence for change is an essential element in carrying the team forward with change.  

One key question any leadership team (or NED) must always ask is the business fit for purpose, today and tomorrow?  Yesterday's success is no guarantee for tomorrow's success. All markets change as customer needs and expectations evolve, as existing competitors and new entrants change or emerge to outcompete existing players. Change is therefore an essential element of business, but too many business leaders become complacent, before seeing that they are loosing profits, customers and market position. 

Change is always occurring, so good and great leaders focus on tomorrow's (note the deliberate plural), typically 3 horizons of tomorrow's business planning skills. A horizon, a future, is static, while tomorrow's retain the rolling nature of change impacting upon a business. Tomorrow's accepts change is inevitable and therefore making change is a logical outcome for leaders to focus on.   

7. Overcome the Depression Point with a Ladder

The pain point or depression point, is the low point in the change curve, the area where the change is under way, initial optimism has evaporated the pain of change is most apparent, because no tangible benefits are yet materialising. It is at this point that the leadership needs to be personally driving change by proving a ladder (simple steps) that deliver tangle progress. 

Making change a step is vital element in carrying people forward. Change takes people from a place of comfort and safety into places of uncertainty, so moving people in steps, where they can see where they have come from, where they are and what the next step(s) are will carry people through the uncertainty.  

8. Empower the Front-line 

For change to happen and to be sustainable the front-line of the change needs to be in charge of delivering change. This is difficult in traditional command and control companies, delegating power and authority to the front end of the operation is a challenge, but one which organisations must embrace if change is to be successful. for change to succeed the front end of any operation must feel its benefits and be empowered to drive it through to completion.

9. Allow A Culture of Trial and Error 

In both traditional and modern organisational cultures the most successful change happens when people can try new things, without fear of failure. That ability to have space in which to try changes, safe failure, allows people to try new ideas (within safe limits) without being judged. One successful measure of change cultures is to measure how many new ideas are generated, tried and tested.

10. Positive Solution Provision. 

Leading change is more than just saying well one and get on with it. Leaders must be a source of ideas, not necessarily answers but sources of inspiration, or of resources which can support change. Providing suggestions and fresh support, internally and externally to enable and support change throughout the whole process including post change to re-enforce and sustain change.  

Like to learn more then read further blogs, subscribe or  get in touch to to discuss your needs enquires@cowdenconsulting.com

Richard Gourlay supports leaders develop their skills in creating and delivering strategic change.

Successful Business Leaders Plan Their Business For Success

Successful Business Leaders Plan Their Business For Success

Executive Summary

Business planning often gets a bad press, yet those who do sit down and plan their business are so much more focused, confident and successful than those who float along with the economic tide. Over the past ten years as a strategic planner I’ve worked with hundreds of business owners and seen how those that create a plan and implement it, do so much better then those owners who try aimlessly lead their business on a wing, a prayer or a dream.  

According the latest BERR report, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME’s) together accounted for 99.9 per cent of all enterprises, 59.8 per cent of private sector employment and 49.0 per cent of private sector turnover. SME’s really do matter to the British economy, despite this they receive little effective support from Government agencies despite being the backbone of the economy, employment, and innovation. Small business matters to every economy and those which plan their growth outperform those that don't.      

Why Businesses Don’t Plan       

“If you don’t make things happen, things will happen to you” Lanes Company

Having questioned business owners over the last decade there are many reasons why owners have not put a plan in place and executed it. The excuses range from not having the skills, not able to make the time, or have the conviction of their thoughts. Nearly all business owners know they should have a plan 'we had one when we first started, but have not looked at it since’ is a common theme.  

The other key factor is being too busy fire fighting, to realise that preventing fires starting is the best way to not have to fight them.  If business leaders do not believe in their business plan and don't follow them, then the value of business plans in driving your business forward and achieving their goals is limited.  

Do business owners not see the value in developing a plan for their business? On the other hand, is the classic perception for business owners that frenetically staying alive is seen as being successful? For many not knowing how to plan or what to plan is another major reason why people haven’t and don’t plan their business. Where to start,  or knowing what they are trying to achieve immediately puts business leaders off planning.

Business planning is also often at fault, the most common reason people have a plan is to secure funding from banks, that’s when banks did fund business start-ups (now they just offer a high interest mortgage backed by the Government). Therefore, once people have received funding they no longer see the main advantages of planning (and the real advantages are not around money). 

Planning Skills – Have clear GOALS

"The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen." - Lee Iacocca

Business planning takes time, resources (grey stuff) and commitment. Its not the executive trip to some exotic away weekend planning, but some time allocated to review where you are as a business, how your sector and industry are performing and what you want to achieve in the future. Whether it is looking at the next year or planning the next five years, everyone who owns or directs a business is responsible for setting its direction. However, just having a plan in your head, with the classic defence of ‘its flexible at the moment’ is either ducking the responsibility or deluding themselves. 

Great leadership is about developing a clear vision for your business and turning it into a plan with clear goals and objectives delivered through action plans. The only way to have a plan rather than a dream is to have it written down, turned (if it is not already) into an action plan which is resourced and owned by someone to deliver. Only then do businesses go forward in a deliberate purposeful way. 

Only then do the right things happen because you made them happen and only then can everyone, employees, shareholders, customers, channel partners and even other halves, see your dream, share your dream, deliver your dream. That’s when planning works. It is a written document, which lives within your company, and it doesn’t matter if you are a one-man (woman) band or running a multi-national Plc.

What Planning Delivers

"In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it." – Robert Heinlein

Planning provides focus in strategic direction, its provides clarity of where the business is and where it is going as well as a vehicle for getting from where you are to where you want to be, in your market, with the customers you want. Planning time provides time to reflect on personal and corporate goals, time to share and channel new ideas while reviewing existing activities.

Planning in a structured and open format develops clarity of purpose and a clear understanding of the organisational and individual skills people have and can use to leverage advantage. Bringing in outside views widens the planning horizon, which can drive businesses forward, which is why many successful businesses use non-executive directors or outside specialists to help drive their business forward. That is one reason why so many people volunteer to get support from people like the Dragons from Dragon’s Den, they are looking for expertise and advice which gives them confidence to go forward as much as the money.   

British business owners need to plan, more often to keep being successful. Good planning creates and sees opportunities as owners and directors lift their heads up from the daily grindstone. How often should you plan? Well it all depends on the speed of your market’s evolution, but even stable and stagnant businesses should review their business every year, and not just a light dusting (add ten percent and change the year) but strategically review what and how well they are doing.

It is only by looking for fresh opportunities and how to take best advantage of them, by planning your business around those opportunities that companies successfully compete in today’s business environment.

Planning is not a four letter word

“An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage" Jack Welch

The old adage, compete or get beat, is more relevant today than it has ever been. The rise of the internet means there are no secrets, competitive advantage lies with those who can see an opportunity and adapt fastest to take advantage of it. Those owners and directors who see and go for opportunities become the stronger ones, and that is where good strategic business planning provides it real advantage.

By orientating a company to where it can retain better, win new and develop existing customers companies that plan their success outcompete in their sector, and equally importantly have everyone focused on where they are going. From the smallest to the biggest every business needs to have a plan that is written down, owned and guiding your business in the direction you want it to go.

Good Luck

   Richard Gourlay 

See how great leadership can be enhanced by business planning skills to deliver innovative business plans using robust, tried and tested and easy to use business planning tools, click here to see my video on how to take the guess work out of your business success.

Other resources on Leadership: www.cowdenconsulting.com
Other resources on Leadership www.richardgourlay.com

#Dumfries and #Galloway, #Scotland