You can’t do that. It’s not in the plan.”How many times have you heard that line spoken at work?
Business plans, contingency plans, succession plans, project plans and the planning that goes into them are all good—until they aren’t.Plans bring order and continuity. They can also be obstacles to innovation, inclusion, and creativity.
Think about the colleague who has a detailed plan for everything and refuses to deviate from it, no matter how compelling new information may be. Think about the company that fails to recognize the institutional bias that’s been embedded in its long-time succession and promotion plans.
It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date. ~Roger von OechA few years ago, I served on the inaugural steering committee for a new community conference intent on becoming an annual event. The first conference was a roaring success; the second even better. The third not so much.
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