Focus on Scheduling For 13 Weeks but Plan For 12 Weeks

Do you want to know the best way of being able to achieve your goals this year?

I have been working with many people over the last few years. Achieving goals and aspirations for companies and individuals and one thing that I have found is that successful companies always have one of these in place. And those that don’t seem to keep stumbling along at various things, but nothing ever really joins up, and they don’t feel like they achieve those aspirations they are looking to meet. We are of cause talking about here is having a plan

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Now, we are not going to look at any planning. But in this article, we’re looking at one specific type of preparation. We are going to look at the 90-day plan. As with any plan, with this 90-day scenario in place, you still have something that you can check against and know if you are achieving what you set out to do and what.

A 90-day plan is precisely what it says on the tin. It’s a plan that’s going to last for 90 days and is still a series of tasks that are going to get you to a goal that you will set to complete within the next 90 days. Sounds very simple? This plan is split into three key sections. You have a part around understanding what it is that you’re going to be doing.  Another section that covers the implementation or doing of something. And then the final piece around how you optimise it.

Depending on what you’re trying to achieve, what objectives you have to reach the end goal. Will determine what it is you’re going to put into each of those sections. So, you might find the parts split down equally, so you have four weeks for understanding, four weeks for implementation, and four weeks for optimisation, or you might find the that your knowledge is quite good. So, you may only need two weeks for understanding, and then six to eight weeks for implementation and whatever remains for optimisation where you can make it even better.

The thing is if you didn’t have a plan then How would you know you’ve achieved something? How would you know you’ve got where you would be? How would you know if you’re behind schedule or Infront?  The whole idea of having a plan is that you can go through and understand the kind of steps you’re going to take to get to the goal. A plan on its own is worth nothing, but, the planning process itself is priceless.

Now for the more astute out there, you’ll realise that adding the weeks together; the first four weeks, plus four, plus the last four weeks. This only totals up to 12 weeks but infect our 90-day cycle is 13 weeks long. So, what happened to the extra week you may be asking yourself. Now for me, I always schedule for 13 weeks but only have a plan in for 12 weeks. Why do I do this? Maybe, you are you thinking that’s a waste of time?

I’ve come to experience the fact that in any quarter, any 90 days, there will always be things that go wrong, always things that cause you a problem. And this means that you must change or do something different. Whether that delay is an illness, whether that’s an additional cost coming along, or issues from the client’s side or something completely unknown, these are the things that you can’t predict. But yet may well affect your schedule and being able to deliver what you need to get done on time.

So why set yourself up for failure from the start, when you can always build this small allowance into your plan, and make sure you have that extra time in the project allowing for that unexpected contingency.

The other thing that you might be thinking is why 90 days? Why not 120-days. What’s is significant about 90-days? That length of time comes down to how people think and how people understand things. So, every 90 days, you can remind everyone about what your big audacious goal is, what it is that you’re moving towards; otherwise, people may forget what it is.  So, having a plan that is 90 days long means that you can also keep refreshing their memory, making sure they understand the more important goal’s behind why you’re making these changes, and what it is that you’re striving to achieve.

So, I hope you can take the idea of a 90-day plan and implement this to build out a great first quarter 2020 and understand where it is that you’re going, and what it is you’re trying to achieve.

A wise man once said, “a plan is only ever going to work if you have a set goal in mind”.