Don't panic!

Are you prepared for when things go wrong in your business or do you react to them at the time they occur?

The overriding benefit of strategic planning is to have a coherent strategy plan that will get you to where you want to be by the most direct route possible and which will keep you on course when you encounter hurdles that seek to do the opposite. But what do you do when something (as it will) goes wrong? Do you have plans to mitigate?

Instead of being reactive, be proactive, be prepared and plan for the problem.

Know the risks

Even the best laid plans can be knocked off course for any number of reasons. Carry out a top-level risk analysis of all areas of your business and create a mitigating plan. For example, if you buy a key component for your product or flowers for your shop from one supplier, find at least one other supplier just in case.

I refer to this as a top-level analysis because some of the goals you set could come from the findings of this analysis and so should be carried out during the strategic planning Think phase.

But even with this analysis in place, you can still miss milestones and what then? Do you, as many companies do, only find out during a quarterly review that targets have been missed and then react? At this point management will quickly get together to thrash out ideas, rally their people to try and get them to work even harder, spend money on extra promotion, announce price deals to try and spur interest and so on. Whatever they do, they are reacting to a situation after the event.

It is so important to correct missed targets, not least because of the potential ripple effect throughout the rest of the business. Missed sales or profits could impact re-investment and a company’s growth strategy. A missed product development milestone could result in a missed launch window which could seriously impact the success of a product and even threaten the future of the company.

Because some milestones are that important why don’t more companies have a plan in place in case it is missed rather than react to it after the event?

What if ?

For these important milestones carry out a second-level risk or “what if?” analysis which link to the objectives as the top-level analysis links to the goals. Now, if milestones are missed the relevant “What if?” plan that has been pre-agreed can be set in motion.

Let’s go back to the Plan phase where the objectives, tactics, milestones and responsibilities are set. Some milestones will be particularly important, especially those linked to breakthrough and vital goals (See 5 Steps to Setting the Right Goals) and not meeting them can have a ripple effect on other areas of your business.

Take as an example a company that develops hi-tech products such as cameras, phones or printers. A senior software engineer (let’s call him Brian) is developing the software for a new, flagship product and so the schedule cannot be allowed to slip as it could impact hardware development, manufacturing and launch.

If Brian misses a software delivery milestone like an alpha release, instead of reacting by pulling another engineer off what they are doing or by bringing in a consultant, both of whom will be cold to the project and have a learning curve to climb, could this “What if?” scenario have been planned for?

If the schedule slips Brian is going to need help to get back on course but this help cannot add to Brian’s workload and so whoever is brought in to help must know the project well enough that they can help Brian with a minimum of disruption. Mike is a younger, less experienced engineer working on an upgrade of a current product. This is important work but not as important as the new flagship product that Brian is working on.

In the planning process Brian was tasked with making sure Mike understood enough about the project (specification, functions, updates, regular discussions and so on) so that, with guidance, Mike would be able to help Brian get the project back on track.

What about the work that Mike was doing? In planning for this “what if?” scenario it is agreed that a graduate engineer (or consultant) will be hired to take over Mike’s work with guidance from Mike.

Now there is a plan, which has been budgeted for, in case the schedule slips.

What if Brian delivers on his milestones without the need for Mike’s help? Has time and money been wasted? Keeping Mike up-to-speed has little impact on Brian’s workload because his software code has been developed in a modular fashion, is heavily commented and well specified. In keeping up-to-speed with Brian’s work Mike’s project will be delivered later than his original milestones but not later than his revised milestones based on this mitigating plan and besides, this is a lesser evil than delivering late on Brian’s project.

On a positive note, Brian will have given Mike insight into a project that Mike might need to work on in the future and might have felt less pressure knowing there was back-up help if needed. Mike would have learned from Brian and appreciated the opportunity and responsibility to be his back-up. To both, this would have been a positive and motivating experience.

From this slightly sugary example you hopefully you see the benefit of not just carrying out a top-level risk analysis during the Think Phase that link to your goals, but also in creating “What-if?” mitigating plans when developing the objectives and milestones in the Plan phase.

You won’t be able to plan for every eventuality but if, for the important ones, you can switch on a pre-approved mitigating plan that has been set before the event, then that must be preferable to reactively figuring out what to do after it.