A word about planning
Written on April 22nd 2009, filed under Life & Work with 0 comments.
I’m not too fond of detailed schedules. Some people spend most of their days planning things numerous months or steps ahead. They love their Excel sheets and their schedules. They go absolutely berserk when they’re a minute behind.
Society calls those traits “planning”. I disagree. To me it’s obsessive compulsive behavior and you notice that when something doesn’t go according to plan. People just freak out.
I witnessed an example today at the supermarket. Someone in front of me payed with meal vouchers but fell about 4 Euro short. He apparently also didn’t have any cash on him. All of this was happening 18 feet from the customer service desk.
The cashier saw the long cue and wanted to appear as if she was handling the situation. She picked up the phone and called her supervisor at the service desk (18 feet away). She walked over. Now we had two people “handling” the situation.
They continued to argue with the customer about how big a problem they were facing. Meanwhile, I’m desperately looking for a fiver just to get things moving again. The usual plan fell apart and instead of taking care of it at the customer desk, they were creating a bigger problem so they could get back on schedule.
That’s a lack of planning. You receive flowcharts, processes, Excel sheets, project plans and other paperwork. None of these have anything to do with actually planning a project. They aren’t set in the real world, they exist only on paper.
Real planning is creating a mindset to take on problems head on. There’s no Office tool that will translate that into a schedule. If there was one, you’d most likely abandon it five minutes into the project.
No comments so far
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.