In previous posts, I talked about why we don’t like to plan ahead and why planning ahead matters. In this post, I’d like to share with you 8 steps that show you how to plan for success. They will help you devise a plan that will take you closer to fulfilling your goals and dreams and achieving success:
Have the vision in mind
You cannot plan ahead without visualizing what you really want. Holding your vision or dream in mind is the first and the most important step in planning whether in scope planning, time planning, cost planning, resource planning, communication planning, or any other area that planning may be necessary. When you have a powerful vision in mind, you can channel what you need to plan for without putting too much pressure on yourself.
See what others cannot see
The second step in how to plan for success is to see what others cannot see. This is one of the characteristics of visionary leaders. When you have your vision or dream in mind and when you trust in yourself, you can see the big picture and access what others are missing. By looking at the big picture, you can identify the bright points as well as the weak ones. You would see the roadblocks, the risks, and the rewards. As such, you can design response plans for various scenarios that, if implemented at the right time, will take you to the final destination and fulfill the vision or dream.
Consider important details
Although I do not like too much detail, I always recommend considering important details that make a difference in how to plan for success. Having abstract plans may create confusion about what to do or what not to do later on. Having very detailed plans, on the other hand, may prevent you from making decisions because you might caught up in too much detail. Therefore, I suggest keeping a balance between detail and abstraction at this step. By zooming out and looking at the big picture, you understand what is going on. By zooming in and looking at some areas in more detail, you can plan for what others normally ignore. This is your golden key to success.
My favorite book in terms of why little things can make a big difference is The Power of Small by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval. The authors say, “Our smallest actions and gestures often have outsized impact on our biggest goals.” Therefore, by planning to go the extra mile and taking some small yet important actions that others miss or ignore whether in customer service, conducting business, or leadership, we can make a huge difference and move toward success on the fast track.
Break down the deliverables
The next step in how to plan for success is to break down the planned objectives and deliverables into smaller chunks that are called work packages. You can use a tool called work breakdown structure or WBS for this purpose. Remember that very big goals that look impossible become achievable if we break them down to smaller goals through proper planning. That is why it is often said that a thousand-mile journey starts with the first step. Taking the first step fulfils the first small goal toward achieving the big one.
Prioritize
Once you break down your deliverables to small work packages, then you can prioritize your tasks and activities for taking care of those work packages. For this purpose, I suggest the 80/20 principle as one of the important tools in planning and the execution phase. By using the 80/20 principle, you come up with the top 20 percent of activities that, if fulfilled, produce 80 percent of your desired results or deliverables. In this way, you can focus on the worthwhile activities and become highly productive in your plans and course of action. How do you determine the top 20 percent priorities? Choose in favor of your vision or dream and listen to your intuition. Normally, the top 20 percent activities are the hardest ones and the most important. They are the actions that we tend to delay although we know that they are crucial for achieving our dreams and attaining success.
Be flexible
Those who know how to plan for success are fully aware that plans need not be rigid. By keeping your plans flexible, you can apply the necessary changes to your priority list once information becomes available about the unclear parts of the original plan. Sometimes we need to change our course of action in order to stay on track, and that is only possible if we are flexible in our plans. However, do not change your plans too often as this will negate the whole point of planning ahead and may blind you to the true value of planning. In this case, you might not implement the plans. Great plans are not easily changed unless the change is necessary to take us closer to our vision, dreams, and goals.
Make it a norm
Planning works best when everyone in your dream team plans ahead in what they do. Hence, in order to see the full value of planning, show your team members how to plan for success and make planning a norm. In this way, the productivity of your team will rise to a new high and improve over time.
Review and refine.
In A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) by the Project Management Institute (PMI), the planning process is described. The plans are continually modified, detailed, and improved as newer and better information becomes available. Therefore, always monitor your plans, review them carefully, link them to the big picture and vision, and refine them accordingly. The more refined and up-to-date your plans, the greater the odds of transforming risks into rewarding opportunities and achieving long-lasting success and fulfilling your dreams.
Now that you know how to plan for success, I challenge you to come up with a wonderful plan for achieving your dream or vision based on the above steps.
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