How Much Guesswork Is Hidden in Your Plan?
I cringed when I recently came across a project plan I wrote back in my TowerRecords.com days.
It was for our Expert Program, which found store staff who really knew their music and featured them on our website making recommendations. I'm sure I considered it a solid plan at the time.
Looking at it from my perspective today, I asked myself about each step, “When this is done, what will exist that didn’t before?” For a lot of them, I couldn’t answer. A line item like “Solicit initial recommendations” could have meant fifty approved picks ready to post or a few emails sent asking for participation. And “Conference call with Directors” could have meant almost anything.
The program never really took off. And I can see now how the ambiguity in my plan could have been a key contributor.
It’s fairly easy to see how plans like these get written. Whoever writes a step probably has a result in mind, and I’m sure I did. I failed to articulate that result, though, so the people doing the work had to guess what success looked like. Different people could have finished the same activity with very different results.
Ann Latham offers a fix I really like in her book The Power of Clarity:
“We need to redefine process as a series of specific intermediate outcomes that produce a specific bigger outcome. A series of specific results that lead to a specific bigger result. Each step must produce a tangible result itself. A process is a series of concrete, tangible outcomes, not a series of activities.”
Let's use that conference call in my old plan as an example. The result I was really looking for was “Get agreement on which stores will participate, who will recruit the experts, and when their first recommendations are due.” Stating that clearly would have given people something they could use to get the next steps moving.
A tangible result can be a decision, an agreement, or an answer to a question. But it's not just an activity completed.
The important part is whether the result gives the next person what they need. So instead of a step that might say, “Review customer feedback,” you could rewrite it as “Produce a ranked summary of the reasons former customers gave for leaving, with supporting comments.” That gives the next team something specific to work with. They can use it to decide what to investigate or change and then test whether those changes help keep more customers coming back.
But you definitely want to check with that team before deciding the summary is what they need. They might need the reasons broken out by customer type, for example. What seems complete to you may still leave them with unanswered questions.
I’d like to say I’ve outgrown this, but I just reviewed a workplan I put together for myself and found a few activities that should have been written as the results they were designed to achieve. Ugh. I’m still a work in progress!
Here’s how you and I can fix our plans:
Test each step by finishing the sentence “When this is done, we’ll have...” “Review customer feedback” doesn’t finish that sentence. “A ranked summary of the reasons former customers gave for leaving” does. If you can’t finish the sentence, ask yourself what the step is supposed to accomplish and whether it belongs in the plan.
Check each handoff with whomever needs the result next. If this step is finished exactly as written, will they have what they need to move forward? Agree on that together. The whole chain should connect to what you’re trying to achieve.
Use the expected results to drive status meetings. Ask what’s ready, what remains, and what’s blocking it. If anyone’s updates describe activities without explaining how close the result is or what’s in the way, bring the discussion back to the expected result. You may need a clearer definition, or you may uncover a problem that needs solving.
It’s so easy to slip into creating a plan that’s a series of activities. But those often hide assumptions that really need to be clearly stated so everyone understands what you’re trying to achieve and each handoff has what it needs to make the next stage successful.
Try pulling up a plan you’re working from this week. Pick one step and ask whoever needs its result next what they expect to have when it’s done. See if your answers match.
