Why Plans Often Fail

Many plans fail. Why? We’re told that “failing to plan is planning to fail” yet many people create plans and still fail. In many cases, people start following their plan and then at some point they abandon the plan. People create plans in order to help them achieve their goals so what causes so many people to abandon so many plans?

The typical approach to planning is that a goal is created, some milestones may be created, a series of steps are written out that if followed, will produce the desired results. The person starts following the plan and then something unexpected happens which derails the plan. Maybe something is delayed, life gets busier, one of the steps in the plan leads to a dead end, a team member quits, or some other obstacle that wasn’t part of the plan. The plan is then abandoned. The real cause of the plan being abandoned is that most people create plans that only work if everything goes perfectly. As soon as things stop going perfectly due to something unexpected or unplanned, then the plan becomes useless and is abandoned. While some people will resume following the plan where they left off after making some adjustments, many do not. The world is imperfect and when people create plans that only succeed when they go perfectly, they are set up to fail unless they get very lucky.

For example, I want to lose ten pounds in 2 months so I create a plan that includes a routine of daily exercise. Let’s say that something comes up such as I get sick and I don’t exercise for a week. My routine and timeline has been thrown off. Can I catch up? I’m busy so I can’t increase the amount of exercise to make up for the lost time and it might not compensate anyway. I don’t think that I can hit this goal anymore. This is the point where a lot of people abandon their plans. The approach was that I created a plan that had to go perfectly in order to succeed and then I took action. Thinking first and then acting. When something unexpected happened and interrupted my plan, I was put in a position to think of what to do while still needing to act if I wanted to avoid falling further behind my original plan. Thinking while acting is difficult compared to thinking first and then acting afterwards.

To prevent the situation of having to think and act at the same time while dealing with an imperfect world, we need to do what we call “imperfect planning.” Imperfect planning is planning for an imperfect world where things go wrong sometimes. To do imperfect planning, we have to think of what could go wrong and create solutions for each potential obstacle when we are planning. When this is done, we are prepared to handle the unexpected situations that life may throw at us because we already have a plan for overcoming, going through, or going around each obstacle.

Imagine going on a 5-hour drive to another city to visit family. Many people would do some preparation such as putting gas in the car, accomodations, clothing, planning the route to drive, where to stop along the way, and maybe some snacks or food. Most of the time the trip would go without any major problems however the trip could be interrupted or derailed by many events such as a flat tire, the engine overheating, the car breaking down, running out of fuel, a collision, road construction, detours, the gas station that you planned on stopping at is closed, stormy weather, and many more. Imagine being prepared for each of these potential situations such as having a spare tire and knowing how to change a tire, having a container of coolant for the radiator in the trunk, having a membership for roadside assistance, making sure the car is in good working order before starting the trip, having a jerrycan of extra fuel in the trunk, jumper cables, having a paper map incase the GPS stops working, etc. The purpose of being prepared for the unexpected is that it’s easier to get back on track when something unexpected happens.

Here are the steps for doing imperfect planning:

1) Break the plan into pieces or milestones.

2) Identify all of the things that could go wrong along the way.

3) Create solutions for each potential problem. If needed, create multiple solutions in case something goes wrong again.

4) Estimate the amount of time that each step of the plan will take. Each step could take more or less time that you expect so if the timeline is important, create three estimates. Optimistic is for things going really well, estimated is the realistic timeline, and pessimistic is how long it will take if things go wrong.

5) Execute your imperfect plan.

Imperfect planning was created so that goals can be planned and achieved in the real world. Many of the solutions to potential problems won’t be needed when you execute your plan but some of them will be needed and they will be ready for when you need them. It takes extra effort to create those solutions however they significantly increase your chances of success and your goals are worth achieving.