What’s the Plan? Leading Your Team from a Dream to Reality

“Wake up, kids!” their father bellowed with enthusiasm. “It’s time to leave for Disney!”

Rousing quickly from their slumber, the children hustled out of bed with excitement. Both mom and dad laughed, wishing the kids stirred with the same energy on school mornings. But this morning was different. The family was headed to Disney! They’d planned this trip for months, and the children’s minds were filled with visions of Mickey Mouse, Cinderella, magic, and wonder. All that stood between them and bringing the dream to reality was a car ride.

While the children scarfed down their breakfast, Dad loaded the suitcases in the car while Mom collected snacks and drinks for the road trip. After one final check to ensure they had everything necessary, the family loaded into the car. Go time!

Now, the rest of the story is that there are actually no stories to tell of the family’s adventures at Disney. They never got there.

Oh, don’t worry, nothing bad happened. Everybody’s just fine. The kids are back in school. Mom and Dad are still going to work. They just never made it to Disney that summer. Turns out that Dad never filled the car with gas or plotted the directions from their house to Disney. If he had, he may have realized it was a two-day drive. Worse yet, they’d never purchased tickets to get into the park nor could they afford them. So, the family just sat there in the driveway, imagining a future destination at which they never arrived. They sat there in the driveway as if the excitement alone would propel them down the road. It didn’t, of course, and the children just wandered back into the house, wondering what might have been. Despite their excitement, the parents’ plan for seeing the trip through was neither feasible, acceptable, nor suitable. Maybe next year.

All too often, organizational leaders do the same tragic thing to their teams. They visualize a positive future for their organization and describe it in a way that energizes their people. They set big goals and explain the benefits of achieving them. But then they fail to develop a feasible, acceptable, and suitable plan to achieve the achieve the goals they set. The result of this failure is predictable.

To give your team a fighting chance to achieve the goals you’ve set for them, you must develop a plan and direct the actions necessary to succeed. When developing your plan, compare it against these three criteria.*

1. Feasibility: You have the time and resources necessary to achieve your goals.

2. Acceptability: Those executing your plan are willing and able to participate. Factors such as costs and risks should be balanced against the potential advantages of achieving your goals.

3. Suitability: The plan stands a reasonable chance of leading to success.

Have you cast an exciting vision of your team’s future but failed to develop and initiate a plan to get there? Have you set goals but stopped short of establishing a plan to achieve them? In short, is your family sitting in the car waiting to go? If so, consider the value of developing the plan necessary to get from where you are to where you want to be. Otherwise, don’t be surprised when your team wanders hopelessly back into the house feeling let down.

*Derived from US Army Field Manual 6–0, Mission Command.