Sunday, April 18, 2010

Planning Shouldn’t Be a Chaotic Process but Often Is – Without the Right Authorization

Why? Because it involves the commitment of others. You can create a plan for yourself; that's fine. But it almost always—especially in business—has dependcies on others. If you are the planner, the doer, the leader, the driver, the actor, then oftentimes your presence and energy makes people uneasy. They see you as frazzled, needy, and chaotic. But are you? Yes, but only because that is your perception. As a leader and doer, you have to be able to be calm, cool and collected and communicate effectively with others about what you need from them. If you have a plan and your hell-bent to execute on it you'd better be very careful about how you come across to and approach others. You have to be patient and communicate very well. You have to sell them on what you're doing and why, how they're involved and necessary and how their lack of commitment or engagement impacts the organization. When you get push-back or lack of cooperation from people it is your job to do two things A) try to convince them to partake B) find alternate courses of action to continue to drive the program forward and get commitment and C) be ready to communicate about lack of participation and engagement to senior leaders. Doing Item C will most likely give you more power to engage with these people. Having support of your senior leadership gives you the power of coercion rather than influence. This "real" power can help you get very far in organizational projects.

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