Plan for the worst, hope and expect the best!
Confession
I have a confession! I’m an internal optimist, which means that I tend to see the good and block out the bad. It has served me well through most of my life until COVID.
See, if I’m honest, I never really spent any time thinking about what could possibly go wrong. I was always reinforcing my goals and dreams and had a deep sense of gratitude for all of the good in my life. While this is incredibly important, the biggest lesson that I’ve learned during COVID has been the importance of planning for the worst but remaining in hopeful anticipation of the best!
Knock Out!
During one of our team huddles, the speaker (I cannot remember which one) said these powerful words and it knocked me on the chin!
“It's not the thing that broke you that broke you. It's that you never even thought about the fact that you could be broken.”
Hot damn! It’s true! I never considered failing. Failing was never an option. Going backwards was a foreign idea to me, one I never considered.
I recognize now how out of touch with reality that is. One of the daily exercises that I now do each day is consider something that might trip me up, set me back, or knock me off kilter. It’s not that I’m looking or wanting for something bad to happen, but what it does do is empower me to be ready for it!
Because I’ll be honest with you, I wasn’t ready for a major lockdown. I wasn’t ready for business to drop 90% when live tradeshows, conferences and events came to a grinding halt. I wasn’t ready to pivot and develop a fluid strategic plan.
Get Back Up!
Now I am prepared and I’m sharing this with you so you can be prepared too! Now we have a fluid and ever-changing 30/60/90 day strategic plan. In fact, we have nine plans – that’s right nine plans for every scenario. Now I know exactly what the game plan is if things are worse than they are right now 30 days from now, 60 and 90. I know my major moves!
I can think of major projects that we thought would be a HUGE success that “failed” and I was gutted because of the results. Now I know that if I had implemented this plan ahead of time, thought through the emotions, considered how I would deal with them and had a plan for my next move, I would bounce back faster. So, my question for you today is… what’s your next move?
How will you plan for your next big project, next quarter, next business? I would encourage you to write out all of the possible scenarios!
A simple plan for your business could follow this model below…
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Strategic Plan |
30 Days |
60 Days |
90 Days |
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Worst Case Scenario |
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Status Quo |
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Best Case Scenario |
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This isn’t about being negative, this is about being ready for the next time you’re knocked down but this time around you’re in a power position!
#roundtwo #letsgo #perserverence #resiliency
