of a strategist

by Miroslav Šebek

December 2012

(not so grey, I promise)

1) Personal planning saves time of organization’s mastermind

2) Personal planning provides leader with necessary self- assurance

3) Personal planning provides leader with respect of his/her people

4) Personal planning allows leader to align him/herself with broader organization’s intentions.

Really strict MUST, no HAS TO or SHOULD

During a battle or crisis, physical time is running at the same pace for all players. So previous preparation gives you clear advantage over unprepared opponents. Is planning such useful kind of preparation? Yes, because while you are making your ´grand plan of battle´, hundreds of small considerations are made. Just the small thoughts will be at your hand even when the grand plan is already in ruins due to unpredictable circumstances.

If you have spent time on planning, you feel ready and you can gain advantage of first move. Otherwise, it´s almost impossible to pluck up the courage to do it. Note: first move needn´t be offensive one. Preparations for opponent´s attack may be even more demanding on strategist´s self-assurance. Awareness of effort already spent on planning protects you from temptations to break your discipline in plan execution. However, most important one is from the basket of negative motivations: There is no more stupid wasting of scarce time in crisis/battle than thinking about your own unpreparedness and well prepared opponent! Be sure your brain will not refrain from such thinking even if you had taken part in 100 seminars on positive thinking before!

Your people need to see self-organized leader. Otherwise, they think you are as disorganized as they are, with no moral right to lead them. A weak king dominated by his advisors and noblemen has already become an archetype of ridiculous figurehead! What does a marshal´s baton look like? It obviously looks like rolled-up plan, map or letter of authorization – archetypes of planning. People don´t believe in leaders with bare hands. For many people is event-oriented planning only one familiar way how to organize matters. Take symbols of Order away from them and they will start to believe in Chaos !

Personnal planning allows you not be inadvertenly in conflict with needs of your organization. Planning forces you to delegate, because needs of any bigger organization are usually 24/7. Remember sleeping Hitler and his confused generals during D-Day! Planning allows you avoid apparent ´butterfly effect´ which could inflict damage on your organization. Have you been postponing a buy of new shoes, hardworking commander? When battle is underway, you have the best time to do it! (Or would be better to conduct battle, having uncomfortable shoes? Really important strategic question!)

„No plan survives first contact with the enemy„ Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

NO ! NO! And once more NO!

But where are YOU now ?

Even more

Have more time (also)

for planning

Reduce worktime needed to meet goals

Increase your

productivity

Make your performance

more organized

Expand your

planning

ENTER HERE full of doubts

Are you still unsatisfied with your results?

Wait for me, I’m not as efficient as you

are …

NO YES

Where are trap doors to avoid? Be careful !

Reduce planning

Make your performance more chaotic

Lower your productivity

Be in need of extra

worktime to meet goals

Have less time for planning

Even more

You are right, all personal planning

is for nothing… Work more hard

instead!

ENTER HERE in good faith

If time for planning is still

> 0 If time for planning is finally zero

Where are secret doors to salvation? Think!

1) Units of time – are neither human nor strictly hierarchical

2) Efficiency is not constant (let alone constantly growing) – adjust always your planning for actual efficiency

3) Electronic schedulers – tempt you to creation of a quick and simple INAPPLICABLE schedule

4) Planning must be also planned at right time

5) Gaps are real, deal with them in your planning

6) When even good planning is counter-productive … – sometimes planning of an activity inherently collides with purpose of the activity.

7) When planning is impossible … – don’t try to schedule e.g. hours of creative thinking

8) Don’t fall in love with your plan - it’s just your tool

One second is defined as the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom. So one hour is just duration of 3600 x 9 192 631 770 such periods, NOT a natural length of a meeting, lecture or lunch ! How many weeks has a month? How many working days has a week? Such irregularities in hierarchy of time units comprise serious obstacle to copying and comparing of apparenly identical time units – obvious opportunity for capable planners and trap for inept ones…

So you cannot simply take in account past efficiency of yours (your people, your organization etc.) and use the data in a forecast. In fact, there is usually inverse relation between current and future efficiency : the more you are above your standard today, the more you will be below tomorrow. There is obviously vast area for self-delusion and cowardice face to face with your sovereign in the ‘higher future efficiency’. You must never accept current extra efficiency as new standard. Such panacea for all troubles simply doesn’t exist ! Do you want to climb Peak of Stupidity? – Then MOTIVATE your people to performance beyond their limits and enjoy subsequent unpredictable periods of their total exhaustion and falling morale ! Don’t forget to pay extra bonuses for such pretty instability !

Give me bonus ! Give me bonus !

Give me bonus !

Give me bonus !

Give me bonus ! Give me bonus !

Electronic schedulers are perfect for controlled people. However, there are some traps in their use for leaders: 1) To be dominated by an electronic device looks even worse than to be

dominated by an advisor. 2) The device is usually preset to offer you ‘standard’ time intervals for

your activities and ‘standard’ cycles for its repeating. It requires much energy to overwrite permanently suggested ‘1 hour’ to ’55 minutes’ !

3) If you miss one ‘deadline’ in your daily schedule, the device will put into your head for the rest of the day that you are inept, no matter how unimportant the missed ‘deadline’ is. I feel the lack of function ‘postpone all scheduled events for the rest of the day’ !

4) Electronic scheduling represents serious obstacle for delegation. You cannot simply hand the device over to your deputy and fall down into bed!

To conclude: only your small personal issues could be scheduled in your personal scheduler. The issues related to your organization must be embedded into collective mind of its leaders.

Planning can save your time, but also some time takes. See pyramid below: Top two levels are too rare conditions of your brain for mere planning. Third level (orange) is suitable for planning, but cannot be scheduled. Fourth level (green) you can usually put into your daily schedule. Fifth and sixths levels are unfit for planning due to low quality of thinking Check continually quality of your thinking ! (not only for planning purposes !)

Great enlightments (complete strategic synthesis, deep insight, sudden understanding) – interrupt all and write it down !

Creative mind (your brain wants to play with useful ideas) – interrupt all non-urgent activities and let it play

Bored mind (your brain is not busy enough, so you can think about links between future events in your plans) – you can execute your current activity without interruption Fresh mind (you can think

systematically in logical way) – common state of mind, you can prepare rough structure of your plans Tired mind (you are unable of systematical

and flawless thinking) – make only technical preparations for planning or collect hard data

Almost sleeping mind – do not perform any changes in your plans, do not bother your fresh colleagues

So they (gaps) must also be present in every schedule. What really represents ‘8:00-11:00 meeting; 11:00-12:00 lunch; ’ ? In my view it represents pressure for forced ending of the meeting, queue in dining room, hasty eating and nervous atmosphere. Do you think that ‘8:00-10:50 meeting; 10:50-11:00 leave for lunch; 11:00-12:00 lunch; ’ would be better? No, you would still have the same problem – you would force a lot of people to change their activity rapidly in the same time and place. Good recipe on stampede ! The only rational solution is to leave gaps in the schedule: ‘8:00-10:50 meeting; 11:00-11:50 lunch; ’ . Then some people are ‘SOONER’ and nobody is ‘LATE’ for scheduled events … Behind every nervous queue is one accurate planner !

Planning may be counter-productive at least in two ways: 1) It may destroy creative and relaxed atmosphere (or condition of

your brain) which you need for solving of a problem. You can obviously schedule meeting of your team in any detail, but WHY ?

2) If your schedule (or its parts) is public in your organization and your subordinates take it like a ´Holy Word´ : Stop machines and start to clean up, our CEO is going to visit our factory!

Note: the two points are still only about PERSONAL planning of strategist (like rest of this presentation). Strategic and organizational planning can also be counter-productive in many other ways ! Too obvious to be an independent point, but too important to be omitted :

Planning must never consume more time and resources than it saves!

You can’t plan: a) such activities which are random by their nature b) actions of your opponents without adequate data from intelligence c) some time intervals of creative thinking, because you can’t switch your

brain’s hemispheres at your command

You can’t plan the things above and you can’t be fully prepared for them. Nevertheless, you CAN ALWAYS be prepared better than your opponents are ! And the preparations could be and must be planned !

Naturally, there are some proven ways how to become creative instantly … See pictures below and become feared Psychedelic commander !

Your plan is just your tool, it is neither your lover nor your baby ! Let your plan die when change occurs. Otherwise, your organization or even your people will die. This is not a metaphor ! Too many leaders lost all but their plans… Make your opponents love their plans. Give them illusion their plans are perfect. They will be completely blind and defenceless as young lovers…

Personal planning of strategist http://www.slideshare.net/kerimek/personnal-planning-of-strategist

My glosses to famous Sun Tzu’s The Art of War http://www.slideshare.net/kerimek/the-art-of-war-glosses

Surprising roots of bad organizational culture http://www.slideshare.net/kerimek/roots-of-badculture

Surprising roots of bad organizational culture – shortened version

http://www.slideshare.net/kerimek/roots-of-bad-culture-shortened-version

Strategic management as group of human beings http://www.slideshare.net/kerimek/strategic-management-as-group-of-human-beings

Enlargement of a small power plant http://www.slideshare.net/kerimek/enlargement-of-a-small-power-plant-project-and-strategy