Cherish The Possibilities

Plans, we all make them.  Making plans is something most of us do, and most often those plans can be good for us.  We create business strategic plans, marketing plans, vacation plans, or even plans to create a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday!

When we create and execute plans well, it can be a beautiful thing!  Those well-executed plans usually result in us feeling satisfied, proud, and perhaps even prosperous.  On the other hand, we've all found ourselves (at least a time or two) in a situation where in fact our best laid plans didn't work the way we wanted them to.  It could have been a partial failure of the plan, or the plan could have just totally bombed out!

My question is what do we do when our best laid plans, be they business or personal plans, don't go as we hoped?  When those plans don't immediately yield the results and provide the benefits we are looking to achieve?  Often times, we get frustrated, feel defeated, lose momentum, throw in the towel and chalk it up as a loss.

As a business and personal development coach, I offer this perspective to consider when your plans go south:

1.  Acknowledge your disappointment that the plan didn't work.
2.  Evaluate if the initial goals of the plan are still worth achieving.
3.  Determine the root cause(s) of why the plan failed.
4.  Keep the working parts of the plan.
5.  Modify the failed parts of the plan.
6.  Gain another trusted perspective on the validty of the reconstituted plan.
7.  Execute the "re-tooled" plan.
8.  Enjoy Success and a well-executed Plan!

It's not complicated, but it's often times the non-complicated things that we overlook when trying to achieve the goals of any plan for our personal or business success.