Planning is where strategy becomes resource allocation. A good plan creates focus, makes tradeoffs explicit, and gives teams enough context to make good decisions without asking for permission every day.
Bad planning usually fails in predictable ways:
- Leadership gives no context and asks teams to invent plans in a vacuum.
- Leadership over-specifies the work and kills team creativity.
- Every team plans in a silo.
- The company funds too many priorities.
- The final plan is announced without buy-in from the teams who have to execute it.
Fund Fewer Bets
The biggest planning mistake is spreading resources across too many reasonable ideas. Most companies would do better by putting real weight behind three important bets than by lightly funding ten.
Good questions:
- What absolutely has to work this period?
- What is perishable and must happen now?
- What is strategic but can wait?
- What looks attractive but does not differentiate us?
- Which projects only exist because someone already started them?
If the plan does not force anyone to say no to a good idea, it is probably not a strategy.
Planning Template
Use this structure for each major initiative:
- Problem
- Why now
- Desired outcome
- Owner
- Strategy
- Workstreams
- Metrics
- Timeline
- Resources
- Dependencies
- Risks
- Things we are explicitly not doing