Do I really need a plan - or a vision?
Make them as detailed as required and a bit more fuzzy than you can stand it!
Do I really need a plan?
A question that was bothering a client the other day. They felt hemmed in by plans, and since they thought that plans stemmed from visions, that was a no-go area as well.
Hmmm. Oh!
Let’s deconstruct this a bit, shall we?
First of all, I propose that the idea that plans which are constricting might be a cultural thing. If you immediately think of a full calendar and a spreadsheet full of to do-items, you might be subject to a very particular view of planning.
In fact, I’d suggest that most people who do get out of bed in the morning and go and work sometime during the day will follow a loose plan. Otherwise you probably wouldn’t get up. So my question is: are you hemmed in by the plan per se or by the nature of the planning that you feel compelled to write.
Now – who is forcing you to do that? I get that an engineer building bridges or a scientist working on the next vaccine will have to follow very specific guidelines. Do they have to follow the same level of precision to get out of bed and brush their teeth? Probably not.
So it would seem the culprit is not the plan, but rather the nature of the plan. That nature can and will vary significantly from one person to the next. And rightly so, since no two persons are the same. Coaching when done well will enable you to find the right balance for you as well as your tools to keep it.
Now – the vision. While the same thing applies as for plans, I’d like to add one more aspect, as we’re most likely not talking tomorrow morning nor next Monday. It’s probably closer to a morning in the next couple of years.
In a western culture, especially in the corporate world we tend to plan for that the same way as we plan for Monday the week after next. That is in great detail, and with a gazillion of assumptions to account for all the things that are more fuzzy the further away they are.
Spoiler alert: if you are planning getting up at 6.55h on a precise Tuesday morning three years from now to pick up your morning latte with the oat milk you love at your preferred corner shop at 7.48h – I’m sorry to say that there’s a very high likelihood you’ll miss that target. You might be sick, you might have moved away, you might have moved on from latte to smoothies or no breakfast at all, the oat milk brand might have folded, the corner shop might have moved and it will take you 5 more minutes to get there… In short, there’s a multitude of reasons why that particularly detailed vision might fail.
So – what can you instead? Let’s have a look at what that plan above looked like: it was a straight line from a starting point to one singular event in the future.
A vision that will be sustainable will be more like a corridor that opens up more the further you look into the future: maybe you want to describe how you’ll be in a position that you can have a leisurely morning beverage at a place you will then love and that will be in an then acceptable distance to where you’ll live at any given day of the week.
Sounds good, you feel like this will make you happy? Great!
What might make it even better? Maybe the fact that the activity that will come after that morning moment is something that is a fulfilling one for you.
And that’s where you can start describing what you’ll need to reach that state of satisfaction and happiness. The location, the apartment you’d like, the job you’d need.
From there you’ll probably already know what you would need to do explore these option.
And hey look: there’s a vision, and a plan! Was it painful? I bet not.
Have fun!
Here’s more on plans, visions, and strategies…
I said earlier and I stick to what I said: change is about dreams (and some other things, too, ok ok). And yet, dreams seem to make us uncomfortable as adults. Why is that, how can we overcome this and how do our dreams lead to change?