Episode 413: Thinking Time - Everyone Has a Plan Until...
Bradley Hamner argues that annual planning's real value is the forecasting process, not the finished document. He describes a framework called 3190: a 3-year vision, 1-year objectives and key results, and quarterly targets, built in a one-day workshop. Plans work like an aircraft's curved flight path, meant to be adjusted when markets shift or unexpected events hit.
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Hey everyone, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face, which is an ironic saying given the fact that— what are we, a week or two out from the Mike Tyson-Paul fight, which of course was staged? But I think it's applicable to our annual plans. How many times have you done an annual plan, whether it's in December or maybe whenever it's between Christmas and New Year's? You get into January— I mean, I can even remember starting to put together plans for the year all the way into February. And when I look back on it, there were times that whenever I would, you know, spend a day or a couple days or probably sporadically over a week beginning to kind of put things together, put together the goals that we were going to attempt to achieve and basically how we were going to do that. And, you know, use all kinds of different words for that. But inevitably, we would get punched in the face. Things would change, team would change, market conditions would change, things inevitably would come up. And of course, yes, you can throw in COVID as a big example of things that we would never know, but inevitably in business, things are not going to go the exact way that we expect them to go. And so you get into this idea of like, well, what then is the value of putting together a plan? And I think that there, uh, is one big reason, but I'm going to give you kind of another way to look at it. Number one, it's not— the value is not necessarily just in the plan, but it's in the planning. It's in the taking the time to actually forecast what you want to have happen. Look, we, we talk about like becoming the architect of your business and thinking like an architect. How do you want to design your 2025? The process that you go through of planning for the year is invaluable, even if the year— and likely it's not for any of us— going to play out exactly the way that we want. Number 2 is if planning is done correctly, and we know that inevitably there are going to be hiccups along the way, Is it possible to build a plan that allows for that flexibility? A plan that when things go awry, as they inevitably will, that we can come back to it and use it more as a roadmap to get us back on course? I talked about this in a podcast recently, how planes will begin to get off course or, or actually always off course except for the time that they're initially taking off and from the time that they land. And they encounter all kinds of different things that are unforeseen, and it's never a perfect straight line. As a matter of fact, I think I saw a graph, possibly it was on YouTube, I think Cooper might have saw it, where actually the way the planes fly whenever they're going from say New York to London, they don't fly in a straight line, they fly in the arc. And it's actually, even though it visually looks like it's longer, it's actually shorter in, in mileage because of the curvature of the Earth. And so, well, that's a unique thing. But I think for us specifically is we know that it's never going to be a straight line. It's easy on paper or in an Excel spreadsheet to be able to map out Hey, this is how many sales we're going to make this year. This is how many this we're going to need to do. These are the leading and lagging indicators, as they talk about in 40X. But is it possible for us to have and build a plan that gives us more like a roadmap? More that when we do get off target, that we're able to kind of come back to that. And instead of just throwing the plan out, so to speak. Is there a way to look at it specifically as more of a guide throughout the year? Things that allow us to almost recenter, recenter ourselves throughout the year. And I think that that can be done, but we have to have that mindset. We have to have that understanding that there will be things that are unforeseen going into next year. There will be things that I look back on this year and say, you know what, I just did not see that coming. But there are also some things when I look back on our plan, I thought, okay, that actually did play out the way that I wanted it to. And so number one, the value is in the planning, not just in the plan itself. Number two, build your plan in a way that allows it to act more as a guide, a roadmap of something that you can come back to so that when things are not going the way that you want to, you don't just throw out the entire plan. You go back to what did we say that we were going to do? What were the things that we were committed to? So I hopefully that gives you an idea of basically how to approach your planning. I think December is the best time to do that. I think part of a really good plan is closing this year, looking at the wins, looking at the lessons you've learned, and looking at the challenges that you faced, the, the stocks that you had, the things that did not go as well. And then let's pull forward those lessons into the next year. At the time of this recording, actually in about a week and a half, we're going to be doing our annual planning workshop. We've usually done this workshop over 2 days. This year we're going to do it in 1 day, in 1 day over a series of about 4 hours. So it's the majority of the day. We're going to walk you through exactly how to do that. We'd love for you to come. It's free to register, free to attend. If you would like to get a copy of the workbook that we're gonna be using with our members and guests, um, as well as, uh, the, the replays that we're gonna have, then there'll be an option for you to be able to, uh, get, to get access to that. But the workshop itself is free to attend. We're gonna do it all in one day. Now look, I just attended a two-day workshop myself. I may end up doing a podcast on this later. And, uh, over that two-day workshop, it was like almost 8 hours on Zoom both days. And so look, it can be a long day. That said though, I got so many things accomplished. It wasn't an annual planning session per se, but it certainly had elements of that. And so it was good for me to be a participant, but I'd love to guide you and lead you through how to do it. We look at the 1-year— this is part of what we call your business blueprint. So your business blueprint is made up of 3 things: it's your 3-year vision, your 1-year objectives and key results, and your quarterly targets. Or sometimes I'll say 3190. Your 3190 is your business blueprint. And so in this one, we're going to be taking a look at the very first one, or the, the middle one, uh, which is what do we want to get accomplished in 2025. I hope to see you there. I look forward to it. But if not, hopefully what I shared with you today gives you some insight. So whenever you're going through your 2025 plan, realize things are not going to go exactly the way that you want them to. Build your plan in a way that allows it to become more of a roadmap or a guide throughout the year and not something you just toss away whenever you hit some roadblocks or pitfalls along the way. And also remember, the value is in the planning, not just in the plan itself. All right, everyone, lead well and go be great.
