“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” – Warren Buffett
“It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.” – J.R.R. Tolkien
To paraphrase Dwight Eisenhower, while plans might prove useless once the rubber hits the road, planning is indispensable. All but the most oblivious of companies, organizations, and business people make long-term planning an essential part of their infrastructure; those who don’t go the way of the dodo. It’s a harsh type of natural selection that constantly hones productivity and its pleasing by-product, profit. In pursuit of both, over the years “long-term” has been repeatedly redefined as business, technology, and culture have evolved.
There was a time last century when five-year plans seemed sufficient for the lumbering bureaucracies of big businesses and nations; witness the Five-Year Plans intended to modernize Stalin’s USSR. But even then, such plans were often too restrictive for maximum performance. Businesses often stalled out, while Stalin’s backhanded success came mostly through military might that ground millions of people into dust setting the stage for a bankrupt ideology a few decades later.
As the world moved on, it became clear that multi-year plans were less and less effective. By the turn of this century, one-year plans were the norm. But in the face of social changes and Moore’s law, even those were too long. Many companies, like Home Depot and Zappos, made quarterly reviews and flexibility the standard for their “long-term” plans.
You can do the same for your work goals. Here’s how.
Carving shorter-term goals out of your long-term plans is straightforward; I recommend, quarterly, monthly, and weekly goals. (Your daily to-do list represents daily goals.) It’s just a matter of splitting that goal-mountain into foothills, then boulders and gravel.
The hardest part may be remembering to review your goals occasionally. Amidst the hustle and bustle of productivity, your periodic reviews of your accomplishments, deficits, and alignment can slip your mind. But you can’t allow that, or you’ll have learned little or nothing. So, while you’re planning, make reviews a hard target, mini-goals you must hit before moving on. There’s nothing like a nice milestone to make you stop and assess your performance.
This was originally published on Laura Stack’s The Productivity Pro blog.
