Effective Planning for Performance

This video centres on effective planning for performance.  I think its one of those things where people will say, “Yes, I plan.” But do they? Particularly if they’re in stressful situations or the work’s piling up and stress levels are high.  The intuitive thing is to fire on in there and put out fires when sometimes it’s that stepping back, planning part, which is largely counter-intuitive but can really save time, reduce overwhelm, reduce stress and make us more effective.

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Planning for Performance

The military are renowned for thorough planning. In Special Forces operations the planning process was key to the success of our operations . The plan and subsequent briefing process made it clear to people what their tasks are within the plan to achieve the aim, to achieve the mission.

So in your organisations, is there a planning process? Does planning take place? And does that really add benefit? Is it a process that is actually working so that people know more clearly what they need to do and so on? The process itself, the key points really are the what and the why.  What do we need to do and why? And getting really ,really clear on that.

The next step is to look at key tasks. Who can do those tasks and what resources are available. Sometimes it may also be necessary to look a task from a negative perspective. What are the eventualities? What potentially could go wrong?

Planning is not to make us rigid, but to have all informed people who know what’s taking place, what they need to do, why they need to do it and everyone hopefully a little bit more clear in what it is they do, leading to increased levels of performance.