Let Go of Doing Everything Yourself
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About three months ago now, I was working with a company who briefed me on working with their business to build a 12 month strategy. And what they wanted to avoid was just creating tasks that can be done by individual departments.
The big problem they had was that when they create strategy, people go off and do their own thing, and they don’t talk with one another in execution. What I created for them was a framework where you can do business planning to minimise the creation of silos. I’m going to talk that through so that you can do business planning with your department.
The Challenge
The challenges when you do business planning is you have:
to reduce the task down to a level at which you give people individual clarity, but you also have to help people collaborate to deliver the work
you need to deliver now, a current set of results, but you also have to build a platform for the future.
Breakdown the Silos
Over the years I’ve been trying to play around and reconcile the four competing dimensions.
When this client came to me and said,
“You know what, can you do this thing that helps us break down the silos, as well as give us clarity of the future?”
I racked my brain about how to do this, and this is what I came up with. I think it’s worth sharing so that you can use it. First thing to recognise is that when you do business planning, there’s going to be some business as usual stuff, some core stuff that you’re just going to have to do in the next 12 months.
But you’re also going to need to build a platform for the future. And the really important thing is to recognise that there’s going to be some things that people are going to need to do together. And there’s going to be some things they are going to need to do apart, individually.
So then what I would get you to plan is in the next 12 months:
1.What are the core things that you just need to deliver?
2. The BAU, things that you’re already doing that you’re going to continue.
And I’ll get you to list out those things. Then I’ll get you to list out your BAU stuff that you’ve got to deliver with other people. Where do you need to work with other departments or other areas within your department, or within the business to deliver them, and list out what those things are? Ideally what you do is then build those with them. So you know where you need to collaborate.
3. What new projects are you going to create linked to the vision or the direction, the big picture, vision or direction of the business, that will help you move and create the future in the next 12 months?.
4. What are the collective tasks that you need to work together as a complete organisation or department?
Now, you can break people up into individual teams to do it, but then I would get them rotating with one another and talking about their individual plans so that they build connections and awareness.
Summary
Here’s the challenge. How do you do business planning so that people don’t separate away and do their own thing? And how do you do it in a way to manage now in the future? Here’s the framework to consider the four things:
- Bread and butter
- Deliver with others
- The collective tasks
- And what new projects you’re going to work on.
Remember the process, which is in creating these, don’t make it a boring process, get people up and moving and documenting this stuff. But also communicating with one another.
Leave me a comment or Get in Touch
I hope that’s been a useful way for you to do business planning, to avoid silos. If you want to do business planning with your team, get in touch and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to work together. Talk soon on The Reason & The Road.
