Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail

By Kelly Perdew

By plan, I don't mean have some idea in your head about your business or your career. When I say plan, I mean have a REAL plan. A written plan... that you work on frequently.

People always ask me how to get started on their plan. It is really quite simple. For my planning processes, I like to use what's called heuristic, or backward, planning. I learned it in the military. Basically, you start with your objective in mind and then work back to where you are now.

Heuristic planning can be distilled down into three basic steps. Let's take a look at each...

* Step One: Identify Your Overall Objective

Hopefully, you've incorporated your passion into your overall objective. That objective can be anything from getting a job in a new industry or new company to owning a major league sports team. Whatever it may be, just make sure it is something you're passionate about and that it is defined. Once you've identified your overall objective, you can begin the processes of achieving it!

You need to be specific about defining the objective. What constitutes success? How do you define failure? What are all of the components of the objective that you want to achieve? Truly understanding the answers to all of these questions will help you develop your plan more effectively.

* Step Two: Determine Intermediate Milestones and Supporting Tasks to Reach Each Milestone

For any objective you identify, there will be many milestones. And for each milestone, there will be many supporting tasks. For instance, if your objective is to find a job in a new industry, say real estate, then you'd have many potential milestones that could include:

1. Obtaining some level of formal or informal education about real estate
2. Developing an understanding of the different jobs available
3. Conducting a self-assessment and comparing that to what you've learned about the industry to determine the roles for which you'd be best suited; and
4. Developing a structured network to assist you in finding, closing, and excelling in your new job.

These are just a few potential milestones. Based on your ultimate objective, there can be many, many milestones, and they need to be individually mapped out. Many milestones can be worked on simultaneously. For instance, you might be getting your formal education in real estate at the same time you are increasing the size of your network in the real estate industry.

For each of your milestones, there are supporting tasks that must be accomplished. The supporting tasks are basically all of the actions you need to accomplish in order to reach your milestone. The more specific you are in identifying tasks and timing for them to be completed, the better you'll be able to track your progress.

* Step Three: Measure Your Performance and Adjust Your Plan

Tracking your progress is critical to success. You can't know how you're doing if you don't measure against your plan. The milestones act as measuring points where you can assess your development and gauge your progress. As part of the process of measuring your progress, you may find some interesting things occurring: You may learn that there are new milestones that you need to put in place to reach your objective; some of the milestones you thought you needed to reach may not really have been necessary; or you may even find out that you need to adjust your overall objective. Adjusting your plan is all part of the process and will ultimately enable you to achieve your objectives.

On "The Apprentice," I took a lot of flak for being on the laptop a lot during the tasks. One of the interesting aspects of the show is that the complexity of each task does not come through to the viewing audience. Before we filmed the show, I remember watching a couple of episodes of season one, and I remember thinking to myself that it looked pretty easy.

Well, I'm here to tell you that it isn't! We were given very little time and money to accomplish some very significant tasks. That required meticulous planning. Not only did we have to account for every penny, we had to manage some very strong personalities. By tracking our objective, milestones, and supporting tasks on the laptop, I was better able to lead my teammates and contribute to our ultimate success. So think about that...we created a detailed written plan for one task on a reality show. Isn't your career, your business, your life more important than a task on a reality show!? Or course it is. Start building your plan!

Planning is one of the most critical leadership that will contribute to your ultimate success in business and in life. Remember: identify your objective, set appropriate milestones and list their supporting tasks, and measure your performance so that you can adjust your plan as necessary.