Why We Resist Planning
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"Remember, it's Ready, Aim, Fire; any other sequence is
counterproductive."
- Bryce's Law
The short answer: "Because it requires work."
The long answer: People tend to resist gazing into the crystal ball and
prefer to react to life as it passes them by. Some people believe planning in
today's ever changing world is a waste of time, that you must be more "agile"
and accommodate changes as they occur. As anyone who has designed and built
anything of substance knows, this is utterly ridiculous. We would not have the
many great skyscrapers, bridges, dams, highways, ships, planes, and other
sophisticated equipment without the efforts of architects and engineers. Without
such planning, our country would look essentially no different than how the
pioneers first discovered the continent. Although we must certainly be flexible
in our plans, and we will inevitably make some mistakes along the way, little
progress would be made if we did not try to plan a course of action and control
our destiny.
People often take planning for granted, that someone else will be making
plans for us, such as government officials, our corporate management, or even
the elders of our families. Consequently we become rather lax about looking into
the future. Nor is there any encouragement by anyone to plan our affairs, such
as a tax break. Whereas other countries offer incentives to save money for the
future, such as Japan, America does not. Therefore, planning is a rather
personal activity; we either see the virtue in doing so or we do not.
Americans have become legendary reactionaries who procrastinate until it is
too late. We see this in everything from business planning, to career planning,
family planning, financial planning, and even planning for our demise. It is
simply not in the American psyche to plan, but to react instead. There are
plenty of examples to illustrate the point; such as Pearl Harbor (where General
Billy Mitchell predicted the attack with great accuracy 17 years prior to
December 7th, 1941); there is also Hurricane Katrina (where engineers and
government officials knew well in advance of the weaknesses in New Orleans'
system of dykes and levees, yet did nothing about it); and, of course, 9/11
(where we learned a hard lesson of dropping our defences in the face of
terrorism).
Years ago, a long range business plan was for five-to-ten years. Such plans
have become scarce in recent times; probable casualties of a dynamic world
economy. Now, "long range" either means until the end of the fiscal year or end
of the quarter. It is even difficult to get a prioritized list of objectives for
a department, let alone a whole company. Instead, companies are now operating
under a whirlwind of ever changing "priority ones," thus confusing workers and
causing them to be counterproductive.
In the I.T. arena, planning is still very much a faux pas, but then again, it
has always been such. For example, in our
"PRIDE"-Information Systems Engineering Methodology (ISEM), developers would
like to skip through the early phases used for planning and design, in order to
get to the programming phases. In other words, they didn't feel comfortable in
planning and instead preferred to be writing software. This makes for an
interesting paradox: although they liked to skip down to programming (where the
"real work" was performed), they also liked to complain about deficiencies in
requirements definition and other design specifications (which would naturally
result from the preceding phases had they been performed). The most common
excuse you hear from developers is, "The users do not know what they want."
Basically, this is an admission that the developer is either not properly
trained in or lacks the discipline to plan properly.
Part of the problem is that we have become very impatient for results and I
think this can be attributed to our technology. For example, we now expect
information at our fingertips, instant communications, quick turnarounds in
medicine, etc. Instead of patiently waiting for results, we now want instant
gratification. Consequently, activities such as planning are perceived as
interferences for getting a job done.
There are, of course, several tools available for planning,
- Calendars - to remind us of important dates. Even though there are many
varieties in paper form and automated on computers and cell phones, it is
interesting to see how few people actually use them.
- Statistics and trend analysis - which is actively used in business to
track historical activity, and hopefully to project corporate direction.
Perhaps the best known entity to use such tools in the U.S. Bureau of the
Census who produces some rather interesting projections which are often
overlooked by the general populace.
- Documentation - When building new products or other major structures, a
set of blueprints are required to act as a road map during construction.
Without such blueprints, construction or manufacturing cannot be effectively
implemented or managed. The same is true in the realm of Information Systems,
without a well thought out set of blueprints (flowcharts and other graphical
techniques), you cannot assemble a system regardless of how well you can
program. There are also project planning techniques like Gantt Charts, PERT,
and CPM to express planned work dependencies, schedules, and precedent
relationships.
- Priority modeling tools - to keep track of objectives in priority
sequence. This is also referred to as "To Do lists" or "Punch lists."
Regardless, the intent is to make people cognizant of objectives and their
priorities, thereby assuring workers are accomplishing the proper tasks in the
proper order.
CONCLUSION
If we do not understand or appreciate the need for something, we tend to
avoid it, but that is not the excuse here. We all have at least a rudimentary
idea of what simple planning can do for us, we just balk at doing it.
We fail in planning not because we lack the proper tools, there are actually
quite a lot of them available to us, but simply because we lack the discipline
or desire to do so. Rather, we prefer to wait until disaster strikes so we can
blame others for our problems and hope they can bail us out.
Like it or not, planning represents work. It is also something many of us are
not disciplined to do, regardless of how simple it is to perform. We can
rationalize why we do not plan all we want, but in the end, it is because of one
thing, plain and simple: we are lazy.
If you would like to discuss this with me in more depth, please do not
hesitate to send me an e-mail.
Keep the faith.
END
About the Author
About the Author
Tim Bryce is a writer and management consultant with
M. Bryce & Associates
of Palm Harbor, Florida and has over 30 years of experience in the field. He is
available for lecturing, training and consulting on an international basis. He
can be reached at
timb001@phmainstreet.com
Comments and questions are welcome.
Copyright © 2008 by Tim Bryce. All rights reserved.
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