The Planning Mindset: Learn to Love it When a Plan Comes Together

Do you dread planning? If you dread it, you are unlikely to do it. Here’s the problem – those who fail to plan, plan to fail.   What to do? Start by changing your mindset.

For many of us, we never learned how to plan. Our experiences of planning came on the job, often in a stifling corporate planning process. Every year, it is the same drill. Fill out your budget worksheet. Submit your action items. Or we were drowned in the gobbledygook of mission statements that were vague and meaningless.   We grew to hate planning. So we naturally avoid it – we would prefer the pain of disorganization and chaos to the pain of planning.

We must start by shifting our mindset. To what?

I suggest Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith from the A-Team as our model.

One of my favorite shows from the 1980’s was “The A-Team”. This show starred Mr. T – the big guy with the Mohawk haircut who also appeared in Rocky III. The A-Team was about a team of Special Forces operators from the US military. When they were accused of crimes they did not commit, they went into hiding and became soldiers of fortune. Every episode presented a unique challenge for them to take on a group of bad guys – drug dealers, arms smugglers, kidnappers. About midway through each episode, the team would come up with a scheme to defeat the bad guys.   At that point, Col. Hannibal Smith would grin into the camera, chew on his cigar, and say “I love it when a plan comes together.”

There are several keys to the Hannibal Smith planning mindset:

1. He approached planning as a huge opportunity for creativity to meet a challenge. He recognized planning as a big puzzle. When you think about planning this way, it is an incredibly fun and rewarding activity.
2. He approached planning as a way to engage his team in solving problems. Every person on his team had a special skill. He always looked to the team for solutions rather than coming up with them himself. He always made sure each person on the team knew their specific role in executing the plan.
3. A good plan is a good story. The plans of the A-Team were never boring. Note that boring means you know exactly what is going to happen – there is no risk or adventure. If your plan is boring, how likely are you to get fired up about executing it?   In many planning exercises, we try to overcome this problem by creating “stretch” goals. But I stretch when I yawn. I’m still bored. Instead, let’s pick something with some edge to it, where we don’t know exactly how we will do it.

Learn to be like Hannibal Smith. Learn to love it when a plan comes together. A great plan gives you the opportunity to discover what you are really made of. If that doesn’t put a smile on your face, what will?