If You Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail Part Two
There’s More Than One Right Way
One hint is to be concerned more with the outcome (results) than with the path (method). If the deviation is simply a different way of producing the same or a better outcome, it’s a positive deviation. If the deviation results in missing an important goal or deadline, it’s a negative deviation.
This is why building a successful business is more of an art than a science.
Dishonest Partner(s), inconsistent employees and unreliable vendors are all negative deviations. If you find yourself in business with these types of people, you need to make big changes. You cannot build a successful business surrounded with these kinds of people.
Missed goals, surges in orders, running slightly behind schedule, an ad campaign that under-produces. These are all deviations that can be worked around, and overcome. You need to evaluate them as part of the “big picture” and decide whether they are heading you down a dead end, or pointing to another path that will get you to a better result.
Here’s a technique that will help you evaluate deviations and help you overcome them:
Have ten backups for each major part of your plan and five backups for the minor parts of the plan!
As a kid, I was enthralled with the Apollo space program. I watched every launch, every moon landing and every moon walk on T.V. During one of the press conferences after the Apollo 11 mission, a reporter asked Neil Armstrong, “Sir, suppose you were sitting there in the Lunar Module about to blast off from the moon and the rocket didn’t fire. You’ve only got 2 hours of oxygen left at that point. What would you do? Would you pray, would you ask to speak to your wife on the radio? How would you spend your last two hours?”
Armstrong answered without hesitation. He said, “I’d spend the two hours fixing the problem.” That’s the difference between success and failure. Successful people solve problems; unsuccessful people get stopped by them.
Many people now realize that a big part of an astronaut’s training is working in flight simulators responding to problems. In fact, those simulators are programmed with every imaginable problem they can encounter and the astronauts are trained to “work the solutions” one at a time until the problem is solved.
Business is no different. You will be faced with problems. A big part of handling them effectively is thinking them through ahead of time and preparing your responses in advance. The more alternative solutions you can develop, the better prepared for setbacks you will be.
If you want more confidence and certainty, you can do this process with every area of your business plan. Sit down and brainstorm each issue. The more alternative solutions you have, the better prepared you’ll be.
Pathfinder is offering consumers who visit their website a free tax savings special report & CD titled “Tax Secrets of the Rich”. For information about these tools visit http://www.taxsavingconcepts.com
