The Five Year Plan — A Moving Target

As the end of another year comes, everyone is talking about new goals and setting plans in place to start fresh. I am also reading that people are evaluating their five year plans to see how they are doing. In principle the three or five year plan seems like a good idea. Businesses use this model of operational goals all of the time. Since I work in corporate America, I see that those plans never survive the implementation of them. As soon as the plan is formulated, and then implemented, it gets modified and becomes something completely different.

I have been in and out of corporate America for quite a long while. It has been the same everywhere I have worked. Its also true when you set up your own business, which I have done, and you decide to incorporate, also which I have done. I was required to submit a business plan of long term goals for the state I live in before being granted my business license, and tax id. Pretty much as soon as I was done, my plan had to change due to various circumstances, most beyond my immediate control.

In addition to the business world, there are many books and articles about creating a five year plan to keep on task and accomplish our goals. Like in the business world, unless you are an excellent planner who can think of every possible scenario, and unless you are a genius when putting together your plan so that the rate of success will be very high, its likely to bust on you within the first 30 days of implementation.

Why? We live in a messy world. Very little goes according to plan. We have to be highly flexible, agile in our planning and thinking in order to adapt to changing circumstances that fall both within and outside of our control. We use the words we are highly adaptable, and flexible, but usually we struggle with change and are resistant to it. We fight against change because it means we aren’t going to get exactly what we want as we thought it through. We have to modify our plans and usually thinking, in order to get to the goal we set ourselves.

As a life example, early in 2019, my husband and I decided to move, downsize, and build. We chose a path that I thought was going to be less stressful, and give a bigger reward for long term goals. I made my plan, and sure enough, within the first 30 days that plan had to completely change. Over that time frame more information came to light, and that meant some of what I wanted to do wouldn’t work. The plan had to be re-worked to modify the steps. Anyone who has ever had any training, or experience with project management knows that variables in plans always happen and you have to build within your plan what you are going to do to be flexible and handle the necessary changes.

Am I saying anything new here? No. Most of us know the truth of plans never working like we envision them and having to be changed. So why bother to bring it up? We are getting ready to roll into a new year and we are once again talking about making plans. Those plans could be a yearly plan, three, five or ten. Apart from the new year, and that type of planning, I am also getting ready to start a new path, and its going to require planning to accomplish my goal. What kind of planning do I need to do? Planning is after all important. Otherwise we would be flying by the seat of our pants, and only accomplishing things based on a large amount of luck.

I have become a firm believer is setting plans up around mile markers. My ultimate goal is going to take me one and a half years to accomplish. I know what that goal is, and have investigated the time frame to get there. That is the end goal, but I have to take a lot of steps between here and there. Many of us cannot handle the big overarching picture. We need to see more immediate goals to accomplish. Step by step we work a plan until we have hit all of the needed mile markers and the end goal is achieved. Its like taking a long walk on a beautiful afternoon. I have decided to walk 5 miles and enjoy the scenery. The first half mile is invigorating. After that, I start watching the mile markers to see how far I have gone before I can turn back and be done. Those markers keep me on task to accomplish my goal. I need the short goals to help me achieve the long goals. I cannot see what is in front of me two markers down the road, I can only focus on the next marker.

Planning, even long term planning, isn’t bad. Its actually important. It helps us stay focused and gives a sense of accomplishment when goals are achieved. Sometimes long term planning is detrimental because we get locked into a path and when the circumstances change, we are not flexible enough to adapt as needed. We try and force our way into following the plan and actually cause our ultimate plan to fail. I have seen this again and again. We try and practice agility while actually being extremely rigid and non-adaptive. In other words, we speak but don’t apply what we say we believe in. Its like that old parental adage, “do what I say, not what I do.” In order to combat the rigidity problem of planning, I have come up with a plan for myself to tackle my upcoming project. My mind tends to think of everything I do in the form of projects. That makes sense as I am a trained project manager. Even before I ever got the training though, I still thought this way as that tends to be how my mind processes and accepts information.

1. Research merit of idea.
2. Determine viability.
3. Set 1 over arching goal.(If more than 1 goal is needed, do this for each goal to compartmentalize them and keep forward momentum from being locked down).
4. Determine steps (mile markers) to get to that goal (keep steps simple, and very high level).
5. Set up any infrastructure needed to accomplish those steps (lay your foundation).
6. Start working your mile markers.
7. Re-evaluate on a pre-determined cadence to make sure you don’t need to change anything. It is important to go into the project with the full expectation that things are going to change and you will need to tweak your plan in order to adapt. Its completely a mind set thing. Most of us lock our mind set down before we start, and when we make the plan and set ourselves up for failure.
8. Make any needed changes to keep moving foward.
9. Reach the goal
10. Do a retrospective of the project (goal) plan in order to learn from the process and tweak how to accomplish future plans. Always take time to seek to learn from your successes and failures in order to become better at researching, designing and implementing future projects (goals).

I have watched companies, and individuals set large five year goals, and then change or add to those goals, sometimes scrapping them completely at the end of each year. Those are not legitimate five year goals if they can be scrapped like that at year end and the management, or person can simply start over all together with a whole new set of goals. Whether originating from fuzzy logic in the first place, or a lack of having any kind of over arching goal that drives the steps, these kind of plans, ones that can be modified beyond recognition, or scrapped all together, should never have been a large picture goal in the first place.

Wrapping this up, I acknowledge there are many thoughts on this subject. My thoughts are not meant to set a definitive base line for how long term planning should be done. Its to add to the pot a perspective of planning during a time of the year we are thinking about setting new goals for the coming year. I personally want to have every opportunity to accomplish what I set out to do. I have learned to greatly simplify my expectations and approach it from a route that gives me the highest likelihood of success. If you benefited from this, give it a like.