Quotes About Planning

ask both the manufacturing and the sales departments to prepare a forecast, so that people are responsible for performing against their own predictions.

Does that mean that you shouldn't plan? Not at all. You need to plan the way a fire department plans. It cannot anticipate where the next fire will be, so it has to shape an energetic and efficient team that is capable of responding to the unanticipated as well as to any ordinary event.

one of the manager's key tasks is to settle six important questions in advance: •  What decision needs to be made? •  When does it have to be made? • Who will decide? •  Who will need to be consulted prior to making the decision? •  Who will ratify or veto the decision? •  Who will need to be informed of the decision?

can think of no better way to make the decision-making process straightforward than to apply before the fact the structure imposed by our six questions.

Most people use their calendars as a repository of "orders" that come in. Someone throws an order to a manager for his time, and it automatically shows up on his calendar. This is mindless passivity. To gain better control of his time, the manager should use his calendar as a "production" planning tool, taking a firm initiative to schedule work that is not time-critical between those "limiting steps" in the day.

To use your calendar as a production-planning tool, you must accept responsibility for two things: 1.  You should move toward the active use of your calendar, taking the initiative to fill the holes between the time-critical events with non-time-critical though necessary activities. 2.  You should say "no" at the outset to work beyond your capacity to handle.

People who plan have to have the guts, honesty, and discipline to drop projects as well as to initiate them, to shake their heads "no" as well as to smile "yes.

we should try to make our managerial work take on the characteristics of a factory, not a job shop. Accordingly, we should do everything we can to prevent little stops and starts in our day as well as interruptions brought on by big emergencies.

But because you must coordinate your work with that of other managers, you can only move toward regularity if others do too. In other words, the same blocks of time must be used for like activities. For example, at Intel Monday mornings have been set aside throughout the corporation as the time when planning groups meet.

Manufacturers turn out standard products. By analogy, if you can pin down what kind of interruptions you're getting, you can prepare standard responses for those that pop up most often.

A real time-saver is using a "hold" file where both the supervisor and subordinate accumulate important but not altogether urgent issues for discussion at the next meeting.

In other words, one of the manager's key tasks is to settle six important questions in advance: •  What decision needs to be made? •  When does it have to be made? • Who will decide? •  Who will need to be consulted prior to making the decision? •  Who will ratify or veto the decision? •  Who will need to be informed of the decision?

The two basic managerial roles produce two basic kinds of meetings. In the first kind of meeting, called a process-oriented meeting, knowledge is shared and information is exchanged. Such meetings take place on a regularly scheduled basis. The purpose of the second kind of meeting is to solve a specific problem. Meetings of this sort, called mission-oriented, frequently produce a decision. They are ad hoc affairs, not scheduled long in advance, because they usually can't be.

Much confusion exists between what is strategy and what is tactics. Although the distinction is rarely of practical significance, here's one that might be useful. As you formulate in words what you plan to do, the most abstract and general summary of those actions meaningful to you is your strategy. What you'll do to implement the strategy is your tactics. Frequently, a strategy at one managerial level is the tactical concern of the next higher level.

management by objectives—MBO

A successful MBO system needs only to answer two questions: 1.  Where do I want to go? (The answer provides the objective.) 2.  How will I pace myself to see if I am getting there? (The answer gives us milestones, or key results.)

In other words, the output of the planning process is the decisions made and the actions taken as a result of the process.

For the feedback to be effective, it must be received very soon after the activity it is measuring occurs. Accordingly, an MBO system should set objectives for a relatively short period. For example, if we plan on a yearly basis, the corresponding MBO system's time frame should be at least as often as quarterly or perhaps even monthly.

But today's gap represents a failure of planning sometime in the past.

Thus I will assert again that a meeting is nothing less than the medium through which managerial work is performed. That means we should not be fighting their very existence, but rather using the time spent in them as efficiently as possible.

I have seen far too many people who upon recognizing today's gap try very hard to determine what decision has to be made to close it. But today's gap represents a failure of planning sometime in the past.

strategic changes doesn't just start at the top. It starts with your calender

You need to plan the way a fire department plans: It cannot anticipate where the next fire will be, so it has to shape an energetic and efficient team that is capable of responding to the unanticipated as well as to any ordinary event.

We must recognize that no amount of formal planning can anticipate changes such as globalization and the information revolution we've referred to above. Does that mean that you shouldn't plan? Not at all. You need to plan the way a fire department plans. It cannot anticipate where the next fire will be, so it has to shape an energetic and efficient team that is capable of responding to the unanticipated as well as to any ordinary event.