iPlan (Series)

Strictly speaking i dont believe in the long discussions around longitudinal and Cross-functional strategies. Coz both of them are much needed and are interconnected in an inextricable way. Well planning to me is the basic but the plan evolves everyday. But I know I sound to people in a way which makes them think I live by a rigid plan. I think the meaning of planning itself would take a hit if every people think planning is rigid.

Well before making the above statement I must have spelt this – that ‘plan’ too is a definition which man created, with certain attributes, characteristics & certain expected behaviour. But I believe definitions must be relevant otherwise it can mislead generations slowing down progress. Think what would have happened had we not tried to redefine and extend the boundaries of things when Einstein’s physics showed us a new version of reality which was little too far away from Newtonian.

Along the similar line, I think a plan must be something which at every point in time must manifest the best response to the constantly changing opportunity and risk profile. Creating a plan and sticking to it would have sounded the best sometime in the past where the environment had a huge response time or the environments were too distant & not so well connected to transmit the changes. So I believe strategic planning was very much relevant.

But lets not get involved in separating strategy and Plan. For the time being lets have them as one single thing.

So modern planning must be a framework rather than being a product with features/characteristics which would take another year so to change. The framework must contain enough valency to absorb all relevant environmental factors that would affect and also there must be room to incorporate new constraints & opportunities. Since the window of time for which opportunities exist are getting shorter because of the efficient information flow which has been creating an extremely competitive environment for almost all businesses, it is very much helpful to have a framework rather than rigid rules. Look, as people grow up they become very much contended with achieving business objectives they were given for the year. So when we have a set number of people arguing against a change or resisting it , it is very much understandable. And ‘change’ in-spite of it being advocated and sponsored at every level in organisations I have seen & heard people saying its execution is always going to be a challenge.  I would ask – why you expect the organisation to accept change so easily and quickly when the very way your organisation wants to achieve betterment is so rigid – I mean the plan.

So the first question that would arise now is – how you create an all encompassing framework which can give the organisation a great amount of transparency into its entities & resources, their responsibilities & targets, capacities & capabilities, opportunities & constraints? Here i must admit that it is going to be a little complex and information technology is gonna play a role in this. To start with the basis of the Framework according to me is based on, constantly transforming the as-is to a suitable to-be which would yield an optimal response if not the best. But going by the well understood definitions of transformation it would look like a mammoth of an exercise. By I mean to say a constantly improving organisation but what am talking about is something like this – everymonth every person does his things differently which in no way gonna meddle with his competencies, making the whole organisation look different every month.  may be that would sound a little outrageous. But its going to be fun. And for this every organisation must know every element of it and mustn’t be happy with letting silos thrive as long as some numerical targets are achieved. Well we all know about ‘continuous improvement’ a favourite and easily understandable phrase which has mixed with the mainstream so much that it is almost impossible to not spot that in any organisation. But am talking about ’continuous realignment’. Realignment – with the constantly realigning market conditions while constantly catering to the organisational needs that would enable an organisation to position itself to best exploit the available opportunities. From now on lets use CI & CR for continuous improvement & continuous realignment.  TbC…

Okay