Ep 47 | Contingency Planning - Why You Should Have a Plan B

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast. Today I am going to be talking to you about contingency planning. Now, what am I talking about when I say contingency planning? Here's what I'm, here's what I'm outlining for you today. We all have plans, we all make plans in business, we make plans in life, we make all sorts of plans for experiences. We map out oftentimes what we want to do, what we want to accomplish, the goals we have, the vacations we want to take. You take— there's a million different directions we could go with this. Bottom line is we map it all out, but I think what happens unfortunately is that while we map it all out, which is Plan A, which is best-case scenario, Rarely do we actually come up with a Plan B or a different route or a contingency plan. And as a result, when things go sideways, when things go haywire, when there's a disruption with the plan, we panic, we freeze, we get emotional, we have to pivot, but it's not clean, and it creates distress. So what I'm talking to you to— talking to you about today is about really kind of pre-planning for obstacles you may encounter. Pre-plan for contingencies, you know, pivots you have to make well in advance of in fact having to make that pivot. In my experience, 9 times out of 10, you do not have to enact these sorts of plans, but it's these sorts of plans that make you patient, make you calm in times of turmoil. They allow you to make decisions, make moves in a less emotional, more stable state. I want to give a few examples as to where this can in fact be applied. The first place could be applied, if you go back a month or two, you'll find an episode that I did around the Grow structure to conversation. GROW. GROW, as many of you may recall, stands for Goals, Reality, Options, and Way Forward. It is a conversation structure. It's a coaching structure. It's a leadership structure where you discuss what are your goals, what's your present-day reality, what are the options to get from present-day reality to goal, and of those options, which one are we going to choose, or combination are we going to choose? What's our way forward? Now, what I did not discuss that day with respect to the GROW model is an additional O to that acronym that was presented to me by a business partner of mine, Julie Youngblood, who said, Brian, it's not a GROW model, it's a GROW-whoa model. Now, Julie was being funny, but she was saying it's G-R-O-W-O. And she added an additional O, and that additional O stood for obstacles. So what Julie did was take the GROW model and plus it by saying, after you go through the goal, the reality, the options, and determine a way forward, the last question that should be asked is, what obstacles could get in your way, and what plan can we make to counter that obstacle? Or to account for that obstacle. So if you set a goal of signing 3 new clients this week, but your reality is that you usually only sign 1, and your options, you go through them all, but one of the options is, well, in order for me to get from 1 to 3, I need to make more outbound phone calls. And so you decide that that's your way forward. Julie would add that additional O, obstacle. She'd say, so tell me, I love your plan, What obstacle or obstacles could get in the way and disrupt the plan you just outlined? And whatever that obstacle may be, how would you counteract it right now? So let's say that if the plan was to make more phone calls, the obstacle may be distraction. Maybe some things that you haven't planned for came up in your week and would disrupt your momentum to making those, those phone calls. Julie would then say, well, if that's the obstacle, what can we do right now to make certain that disruption doesn't occur? And maybe an answer to that, maybe you, you choose a time during the day when disruption is least likely, which would probably be first thing in the morning. So we can go on and on and on, but in terms of this contingency planning, in terms of Plan B, this additional O is saying what could happen let's make a plan for it. It'll probably never happen, but if in case it does, we just pivot, we just make the move. Another example comes from a friend of mine, a guy I've known in business for a long time. His name's Craig Rieger. And Craig had a brilliant concept that he taught years ago. He probably still teaches it today. And he called it the 15th Protocol. See, Craig's business had a goal, a really, really big monthly goal. And Craig had determined for the team, for his sales team, gang, if we're not in line with our goal, if we're not on pace with goal by the middle of the month, by the 15th of the month, here are the exact steps we're going to take to immediately pivot and make certain that we account for our slower performance in the first half of the month and expedite the performance or elevate the performance in the second half of the month so that we hit goal. So Craig had this 15th protocol, and so it was built in, it was hardwired into that sales team that if we're off pace, no big deal. We do not need to plan, we don't have to have discussion, we don't have to be emotional around it, we don't have to debate. We are immediately going to enact these 3, 4, 5, 6 steps today, and we are going to counteract maybe the slower first half of the month. I love this concept. I really do. And I see it also apply— and this is the last place I'll mention for the day— I see it applied to business planning. Many of us have heard of the one-page business plan known as the GPS, which stands for Goals, Priorities, and Strategies. What are your goals? What are the priorities to achieving those goals? What are the strategies behind those priorities? I like to call it a 1-3-5. What's the one objective? What are the three priorities? And what are the five strategies to getting those three priorities? The 1-3-5. But one thing I really like to do with this one-page business plan is the exact same thing we talked about with the 15th Protocol and the GROW, now called GROWWO model. We get to that 1-3-5 and we say, okay, great plan. If there were to be things that disrupted this plan, what might they be? And what strategies can we put in place today so that they don't occur? Not so much a contingency plan in that particular case. We're just pre-planning. We're identifying potential obstacles today so that they never become obstacles down the road. So in the GrowWo model, in the 15th protocol, in the 1-3-5+ model, all we're simply saying is, hey, here's my plan. Here's how we're going to run it. It's hopefully going to be successful if we honor it. But just in case, if things were to come about, here's what they might be, and here's the steps we would take. For me personally, you know, I know that it's a learned behavior in that I tend to be calmer in times of chaos. This is a learned behavior though. I wasn't always this way. To be honest, I'm a rather emotional individual. And I know that about myself. So what I learned to do, what I was mentored to do, was to start pre-planning for scenarios so that if in fact they did come about, I could make a move and do so unemotionally. So I know that this might be a little twisted for some to hear, but I am, I am always black-hatting and contingency planning in my head. For if I'm going on a, on a family trip, for instance, and say that this family trip or the activity we're doing that weekend involves having to be outside the whole time, I will ask myself, What if the weather is sour? What if it rains? What would my move be? And I'm asking that not at the moment it could occur, I'm asking it days or weeks prior. I think through these things. Now, in Arizona, odds are the weather's going to be just fine. But for the one time it happens, I'm not going to be emotional, I'm not going to be, you know, all over the place. I'm not going to be concerned that my day's disrupted. I'm simply going to pivot. And I could do it rather easily. Why? Because I pre-planned. See, I said in a recent episode when I discussed Schwinn, the company that did not pivot their business model and therefore got passed up by everybody else, eventually forcing them to bankruptcy. What Schwinn failed to do was change. And what I mentioned at the end of that particular episode was that I don't know if it's so much built to last, it's built to change. And with that being said, I'm not one that thinks there's no such thing as Plan B. I know that's a very common saying, "There's no such thing as Plan B." I don't know if I believe that. I think there's a Plan A, but I think a savvy businessperson, a savvy individual, one who's honoring this No Days Off movement, is probably coming up with a B, C, D, E, and F that they're likely never going to have to enact, but they're planned for it, and they could, they could pivot, and they could do so expeditiously without emotion. So the focusing question for you today as we wrap up: what do you have coming up right now in terms of goals or experiences or anything that you're visioning for the future? What do you have coming up right now where you've outlined, say, best case scenario, or you've written a plan, or you've at least mentally written a plan? That a little contingency planning would be a really wise thing to do. A 15th protocol built into your plan or an obstacles analysis built in your plan would be very advantageous and worth your time. Something to think about today. That's all we have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.