All Plans are Tentative – Part 1
This is the seventh tool in the Mindset Toolkit where this post if the first of a two-part series…
What is it?
This is simple yet extremely powerful tool that when used can alleviate stress and pressure while also providing the opportunity to kindle honest and transparent relationships.
All plans are tentative is a mindset.
Often more overtly applicable in a professional context where you are asked to commit to delivering something to a particular deadline, this mindset can be applied to any area of our life where we need a plan of action. Be that planning to buy a house or car or saving for our future.
All plans are tentative does not mean that we have a tentative commitment to achieve our desired outcome, just that the path to achieve what we want may have hidden bumps in the road or shortcuts.
This is about honestly appraising our plans based on known information and having a confidence rating about the probability of achieving them. If confidence is low and we know why, we can choose (if appropriate) to focus our efforts on the areas with the most uncertainty to raise our confidence and as such the probability that we will achieve the desired outcome.
All plans are tentative goes hand in hand with the practice of honesty and transparency.
How does it work?
Quite simply accept that all plans are tentative.
Despite all our best efforts we can only ever really control our thoughts and behaviour in any given situation. Other people and the natural unfolding of events our quite simply outside of our direct control. Yes, we can excerpt influence, but we cannot directly control these things.
Accepting this means accepting that all plans will always be tentative no matter how hard we try to make them 100% certain.
What is key though, is that while nothing is ever 100% certain, the degree of uncertainty can massively differ.
Accepting that all plans are tentative does not mean we relinquish any attempt to diminish uncertainty, but quite the opposite, we instead choose to focus on the uncertainty and the unknowns in a bid to increase confidence in achieving the desired outcome.
Applicable both personally and professional (sometimes more one than the other); here are some tools and tips that will help you push forwards with your tentative plans:
Focus on What you Can Control, and be Clear about What You Can’t
Control, influence, no control…
All plans are tentative because we can never fully predict the future and cannot fully control anything other than our own choices and behaviour.
There is a sliding scale of control, influence and no control.
Where we have no direct control over something, we simply need to identify this and then monitor the thing for signs of change. This while important sits at the bottom of our priority list.
Where have influence, we can actively prioritise engaging in these areas but the key is first having something to influence with. This is where what we can control comes in.
In any bid to achieve something our primary focus is best placed on the things we can control. That means our mindset and the actions within our power to take. If we do this and choose to apply ourselves with positive intent, we begin to demonstrate that change and achievement is possible. This then not only turns the dial towards success, but provides us with the subject matter to influence others with and build momentum in our direction of travel.
Every now and then we can lift our heads to survey the things we cannot control, but our key focus should be on applying ourselves to what we can control right in-front of us in the present moment.
When climbing a mountain plan for the weather at the summit,
then put your head down and just keep taking the steps.
Tomorrow’s problem will never be a problem if we don’t make it there.
Kaisen
Constant incremental improvement…
Kaisen is the Japanese approach to creating continuous improvement based on the idea that small, ongoing positive changes can reap significant improvements over time.
Kaizen is often applied in business by teams looking to refine their ways of working, but the mindset can also be applied to refining the scope of what it is that we are working on – this means iterating on a tentative plan.
The application of Kaizen is pretty simple; once a week or every two weeks pause to review the period of time that has just elapsed exploring the following areas:
- REVIEW: What actions did we agree last time, and have we done them?
- Are we doing anything that is wasteful that we should stop doing?
- What has gone well that we should continue to keep doing?
- What have we learned?
- What uncertainty have we removed?
- Where have we uncovered new things and increased our uncertainty?
- What do these learnings mean for what we should be doing next?
Identify the actions, then immediately implement them.
Kaizen is about having a consistent checkpoint to tweak your actions plans in response to new information and learnings. It is absolutely key to the all plans are tentative mindset as it is this drumbeat that enables insight to allow effective management of expectations for both yourself, your team, and your stakeholders.
Trust the process and keep tweaking over time. Be transparent with everyone during this process and build trust in your relationships.
Slowly slowly will you then increase the confidence in your plan and become more certain about the achievement of your desired outcomes.
Learn from the Past
Being open to learning…
With Kaisen being more of the moment, learning from the past is about being open to gathering experience from people that have walked a similar road before.
Asking for help and insight is not a weakness.
It is effective use of your time!
Depending on your context, reach out to family, friends or colleagues to search out people that have done something similar before and find out what worked well for them, or more importantly, what did not work well so you can avoid or build on it.
Having tentative plans is all about accepting your responsibility to make them less tentative tomorrow than they are today. Learning from the past is an effective way to do this.
What’s Next?
Now we are familiar with the concept of the all plans are tentative mindset, in the next post we will go on to explore insights to help cultivate this approach when you are working as part of a team…
Enjoy, for now.