Getting Things Done (9 page)

The greatest need I’ve seen in project thinking in the professional world is not for more formal models; usually the people who need those models already have them or can get them as part of an academic or professional curriculum. Instead, I’ve found the biggest gap to be the lack of a project-focusing model for “the rest of us.” We need ways to validate and support our thinking, no matter how informal. Formal planning sessions and high-horsepower planning tools (such as project software) can certainly be useful, but too often the participants in a meeting will need to have
another
meeting—a back-of-the-envelope session—to actually get a piece of work fleshed out and under control. More formal and structured meetings also tend to skip over at least one critical issue, such as
why
the project is being done in the first place. Or they don’t allow adequate time for brainstorming, the development of a bunch of ideas nobody’s ever thought about that would make the project more interesting, more profitable, or just more fun. And finally, very few such meetings bring to bear sufficient rigor in determining action steps and accountabilities for the various aspects of a project plan.

The good news is, there
is
a productive way to think about projects, situations, and topics that creates maximum value with minimal expenditure of time and effort. It happens to be the way we
naturally
think and plan, though not necessarily the way we
normally
plan when we consciously try to get a project under control. In my experience, when people do more planning, more informally and naturally, they relieve a great deal of stress
and
obtain better results.

You’re already familiar with the most brilliant and creative planner in the world: your brain. You yourself are actually a planning machine. You’re planning when you get dressed, eat lunch, go to the store, or simply talk. Although the process may seem somewhat random, a quite complex series of steps in fact has to occur before your brain can make anything happen physically. Your mind goes through five steps to accomplish virtually any task:

The last time you went out to dinner, what initially caused you to think about doing it? It could have been any number of things—the desire to satisfy hunger, socialize with friends, celebrate a special occasion, sign a business deal, or develop a romance. As soon as any of these turned into a real inclination that you wanted to move on, you started planning. Your intention was your
purpose
, and it automatically triggered your internal planning process. Your
principles
created the boundaries of your plan. You probably didn’t consciously think
about
your principles regarding going out to dinner, but you thought
within
them: standards of food and service, affordability, convenience, and comfort all may have played a part. In any case, your purpose and principles were the defining impetus and boundaries of your planning.

Once you decided to fulfill your purpose, what were your first substantive thoughts? Probably not “point II.A.3.b. in plan.” Your first ideas were more likely things like “Italian food at Giovanni’s,” or “Sitting at a sidewalk table at the Bistro Café.” You probably also imagined some positive picture of what you might experience or how the evening would turn out—maybe the people involved, the atmosphere, and/or the outcome. That was your
outcome visioning
. Whereas your purpose was the
why
of your going out to dinner, your vision was an image of the
what
—of the physical world’s looking, sounding, and feeling the ways that best fulfilled your purpose.

Once you’d identified with your vision, what did your mind naturally begin doing? What did it start to think about? “What time should we go?” “Is it open tonight?” “Will it be crowded?” “What’s the weather like?” “Should we change clothes?” “Is there gas in the car?” “How hungry are we?” That was
brainstorming
. Those questions were part of the naturally creative process that happens once you commit to some outcome that hasn’t happened yet. Your brain noticed a gap between what you were looking toward and where you actually were at the time, and it began to resolve that “cognitive dissonance” by trying to fill in the blanks. This is the beginning of the “how” phase of natural planning. But it did the thinking in a somewhat random and ad hoc fashion. Lots of different aspects of going to dinner just occurred to you. You almost certainly didn’t need to actually write all of them down on a piece of paper, but you did a version of that process in your mind.
²

Once you had generated a sufficient number of ideas and details, you couldn’t help but start to
organize
them. You may have thought or said, “First we need to find out if the restaurant is open”, or “Let’s call the Andersons and see if they’d like to go out with us.” Once you’ve generated various thoughts relevant to the outcome, your mind will automatically begin to sort them by components (subprojects), priorities, and/or sequences of events.
Components
would be: “We need to handle logistics, people, and location.”
Priorities
would be: “It’s critical to find out if the client really would like to go to dinner.”
Sequences
would be: “First we need to check whether the restaurant is open, then call the Andersons, then get dressed.”

Finally (assuming that you’re really committed to the project—in this case, going out to dinner), you focus on the
next action
that you need to take to make the first component actually happen. “Call Suzanne’s to see if it’s open, and make the reservation.”

These five phases of project planning occur naturally for everything you accomplish during the day. It’s how you create things—dinner, a relaxing evening, a new product, or a new company. You have an urge to make something happen; you image the outcome; you generate ideas that might be relevant; you sort those into a structure; and you define a physical activity that would begin to make it a reality. And you do all of that naturally, without giving it much thought.

But is the process described above the way your committee is planning the church retreat? Is it how your IT team is approaching the new system installation? Is it how you’re organizing the wedding or thinking through the potential merger?

Have you clarified the primary purpose of the project and communicated it to everyone who ought to know it? And have you agreed on the standards and behaviors you’ll need to adhere to to make it successful?

Have you envisioned success and considered all the innovative things that might result if you achieved it?

Have you gotten all possible ideas out on the table—everything you need to take into consideration that might affect the outcome?

Have you identified the mission-critical components, key milestones, and deliverables?

Have you defined all the aspects of the project that could be moved on right now, what the next action is for each part, and who’s responsible for what?

If you’re like most people I interact with in a coaching or consulting capacity, the collective answer to these questions is, probably not. There are likely to be at least some components of the natural planning model that you haven’t implemented.

In some of my seminars I get participants to actually plan a current strategic project that uses this model. In only a few minutes they walk themselves through all five phases, and usually end up being amazed at how much progress they’ve made compared with what they have tried to do in the past. One gentleman came up afterward and told me, “I don’t know whether I should thank you or be angry. I just finished a business plan I’ve been telling myself would take months, and now I have no excuses for not doing it!”

You can try it for yourself right now if you like. Choose one project that is new or stuck or that could simply use some improvement. Think of your purpose. Think of what a successful outcome would look like: where would you be physically, financially, in terms of reputation, or whatever? Brainstorm potential steps. Organize your ideas. Decide on the next actions. Are you any clearer about where you want to go and how to get there?

To emphasize the importance of utilizing the natural planning model for the more complex things we’re involved with, let’s contrast it with the more “normal” model used in most environments—what I call unnatural planning.

Have you ever heard a well-intentioned manager start a meeting with the question, “OK, so who’s got a good idea about this?”

What is the assumption here? Before any evaluation of what’s a “good idea” can be trusted, the purpose must be clear, the vision must be well defined, and all the relevant data must have been collected (brainstormed) and analyzed (organized). “What’s a good idea?” is a good question, but only when you’re about 80 percent of the way through your thinking!
Starting
there would probably blow anyone’s creative mental fuses.

Trying to approach any situation from a perspective that is not the natural way your mind operates will be difficult. People do it all the time, but it almost always engenders a lack of clarity and increased stress. In interactions with others, it opens the door for egos, politics, and hidden agendas to take over the discussion (generally speaking, the most verbally aggressive will run the show). And if it’s just you, attempting to come up with a “good idea” before defining your purpose, creating a vision, and collecting lots of initial bad ideas is likely to give you a case of creative constipation.

If you’re like most people in our culture, the only formal training you’ve ever had in planning and organizing proactively was in the fourth or fifth grade. And even if that wasn’t the
only
education you’ve had in this area, it was probably the most emotionally intense (meaning it sank in the deepest).

Mrs. Williams, my fourth-grade teacher, had to teach us about organizing our thinking (it was in her lesson plans). We were going to learn to write
reports
. But in order to write a well-organized, successful report, what did we have to write first? That’s right—an
outline
!

Did you ever have to do that, create an outline to begin with? Did you ever stare at a Roman numeral I at the top of your page for a torturous period of time and decide that planning and organizing ahead of time were for people very different from you? Probably.

In the end, I did learn to write outlines. I just wrote the report first, then made up an outline from the report, after the fact.

That’s what most people learned about planning from our educational system. And I still see outlines done after the fact, just to please the authorities. In the business world, they’re often headed “Goals” and “Objectives.” But they still have very little to do with what people are doing or what they’re inspired about. These documents are sitting in drawers and in e-mails somewhere, bearing little relationship to operational reality.

The unnatural planning model is what most people consciously think of as “planning,” and because it’s so often artificial and irrelevant to real work, people just don’t plan. At least not on the front end: they resist planning meetings, presentations, and strategic operations until the last minute.

But what happens if you don’t plan ahead of time? In many cases, crisis! (“Didn’t you get the tickets? I thought you were going to do that?!”) Then, when the urgency of the last minute is upon you, the reactive planning model ensues.

What’s the first level of focus when the stuff hits the fan?
Action!
Work harder! Overtime! More people! Get busier! And a lot of stressed-out people are thrown at the situation.

Then, when having a lot of busy people banging into each other doesn’t resolve the situation, someone gets more sophisticated and says, “We need to get
organized!
” (Catching on now?) Then people draw boxes around the problem and label them. Or
redraw
the boxes and
relabel
them.

At some point they realize that just redrawing boxes isn’t really doing much to solve the problem. Now someone (much more sophisticated) suggests that more creativity is needed. “Let’s
brainstorm!
” With everyone in the room, the boss asks, “So, who’s got a
good
idea here?” (Thank you, Mrs. Williams.)

When not much happens, the boss may surmise that his staff has used up most of its internal creativity. Time to hire a consultant! Of course, if the consultant is worth his salt, at some point he is probably going to ask the big question: “So, what are you really trying to
do
here, anyway?” (
vision
,
purpose
).

The reactive style is the
reverse
of the natural model. It will always come back to a top-down focus. It’s not a matter of
whether
the natural planning will be done—just
when,
and at what cost.