Maybe Pack a Parachute
Imagine hiring a brilliant, highly qualified employee then giving them zero onboarding, no job description, and dropping them into a filing room with no labels.
Sounds crazy, right?
And yet, it’s not far off from what many companies look like these days. Sometimes that “highly qualified employee” is a person, sometimes it’s a system or technology, and sometimes it’s a product or offering.
- People get added to teams and are expected to absorb the slack of an organization without SOPs, poorly constructed training programs, few resources to enable collaboration, and a slew of duct-taped together technologies.
- Organizations buy licenses for a shiny new tool, thinking it will solve all of the problems the rep pitched them. But then they underinvest in the setup, ignore how much training people will actually need, and think mandates are synonymous with change management.
- Businesses confuse thinking of a new offering with actually launching it. They neglect to plan out how it will be delivered, who will deliver it, or even how they will let their target audience know it exists.
What we’re talking about is the price of speed, the cost of a culture that has encouraged everyone to “move fast and break things” or jump and build a parachute on the way down. Somehow, taking the time to pause, think, and plan has fallen out of favor. Either that, or progress stalls entirely as “setup-by-committee” takes over.
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Sharpen the Axe
There’s a quote widely attributed to Abe Lincoln, though it’s unknown if he ever said it:
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe”
The second half of that quote however should probably be:
“…and if I don’t, then I should assume that 6 hours later I will be exhausted and staring at a still-standing tree.”
But in business, that’s often different from what we see. Instead, we tire ourselves smacking the dull blade against the thick tree and blame the people holding the axe.
It doesn’t need to be this way. A little extra time in our setup can yield immense results on the other side and help us to avoid profound frustration.
The Plan Challenge
There is no magic formula for the appropriate amount of planning across every endeavor. I can’t give you a framework that will always work.
What I can do is offer you a simple challenge. Whether you are a solopreneur, an employee, a team leader, or the leader of an organization, challenge yourself to have two things in place before committing to anything: a new hire, a new tool, or a new offer.
1. A Plan
This doesn’t even have to be anything elaborate or crazy. But for your sake and the sake of those around you, at least know what you’re trying to accomplish, and how you intend to get there.
A plan isn’t just a meeting to talk about it. It’s a document that outlines the destination and the road to get there.
Challenge yourself to take a full hour figuring it out.
2. The Setup Steps
Once you have the plan figured out, identify what the minimum steps are to be ready to launch.
This is critical. Too many initiatives fail because someone decided it wasn’t going to work before ever having done the basic setup steps to give it a chance.
Maybe, it doesn’t need to be this hard
The urge to move faster and skip this preliminary work comes from fear. People are scared that if they don’t move faster, someone else will. They are scared that if they don’t show activity and movement, their colleagues and managers will accuse them of being lazy or procrastinating.
Even on the outside, it comes from fear. Consultants fear that if they don’t say yes and start doing things, the client won’t be happy.
But in order to become superhuman, we need to consider the implications of running without knowing where we’re going.
- At best, we guess right and happen to get where we intended to go.
- Equally likely, we run into something and change course and get where we intended, but slower.
- But the most likely scenario is we run the wrong way and need to spend the time getting back to square one before making progress.
For everyone’s sake, let’s agree to have a plan and do the setup before we get too far down the wrong road.
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