What are the advantages of great planning?
Welcome to today's episode, my name is Tom Rolley for systemio.dev, helping entrepreneurs introduce systems and processes, so they have more profit and more time back in their life planning, I did not really appreciate the value or the importance of planning, but I have had it drilled into me by Garrett J. White
And in preparing for today's episode, I look at how much effort I now put into making plans.
It's a lot of work.
It's a lot of work and building software right now.
And the amount of detail that we're going into is nuts, I had no appreciation for the amount of work that goes into making sure that when it comes to the actual coding, they are not having to think this is pretty funny.
It's like, what do you mean? No, not yet.
We are, we are taking care, right now, all the thinking all of the decision making all of the design so that when it comes to coding it, it's just a clean code experience, developers are not having to think about decisions, they know what every single button does every single option.
And this has been fascinating to me, like the level of planning before we go to code is insane.
And there are a lot of reasons for that.
There are a lot of reasons for that.
And this applies not just in building software, but in business in general.
Well, when you've got great plants, there are several massive advantages.
Number one, you get an overview, you can see the whole Battlefield, you're like, ah, yeah, if we execute this, then that needs to be taken care of, that needs to be taken care of.
And those two are going to impact this.
And so we've got to deal with that.
So you can see the overview.
You can also see the specific details like you can drill down into a particular area and look at the planning for that.
And this means that when the execution comes there is no questioning, it's been thought of it is infinitely easier to think and document a plan than it is to go out into the real world and execute.
And sure, in your business, a lot of execution, execution is going to be digital, it's going to be by your teams, it's not actually physically doing stuff unless you're a builder, and then you will be building in the real world.
But that analogy is so true, like how many builders are going out there without clear plans.
Now, I have built a house or two, I've actually built two houses, and fascinatingly challenging experiences, because my wife is less planning than me, she's like, You know what, we'll just kind of make it up as we got.
But I was like, You know what, I don't want that.
Because it's so expensive to fix problems, it's way better to deal with them in the planning stage.
So we've got an advantage of an overview, being able to see the whole Battlefield, we've got an advantage of detail, being able to drill into fine detail.
Number three, we can sort out problems beforehand.
Like the ease is significantly higher, ie whether it's building or coding or the business itself, it is much easier to sort out problems beforehand, like oh, I can see that is going to be a problem.
The illusion that you will not have any obstacles or blocks in the execution of what you need to do is an illusion, there will be blocks.
And you must think about these beforehand.
So you can take them out and go, Okay, I can see the obstacle, what we're going to do think about that beforehand and have a plan for it.
So when it crops up, as it invariably will you like I know what we're going to do, we're going to go around it, we're going to go under it, we're going to go over it, whatever the plan is that you've thought about it.
You've included some contingencies.
This is important, this is valuable.
Next up, when it actually comes to execution, it's clean.
You're not discovering the problems, you're not having your team come to you and ask you what do we do now? What
do we do now? What do we do now? And then if you have seven people and you're now being asked by seven people what to do, and you're telling them what to do, but you are now lost and didn't consider the impact of telling team member one What the impact on that team member five would be.
And now as they come in, and they're like, Well, when you told us to do this, but that caused that now we're going to problem What are you doing now you're into firefighting.
Now you're into firefighting.
And this is frustrating, this is exhausting.
This is expensive.
This is not clean.
But planning beforehand allows you to have a reasonable shot at execution that is clean.
Your team's all on point.
Everyone's like, Yep, I see the big picture, and I see my PA in executing that.
Here's a little tip, though, don't change your plans, after you finalize them.
The time to change the plans is before the execution.
In the software, it is so tempting to go into project creep and go you know what, let's do this.
Let's do this, let's do this.
But there is a cost to changing that.
And like, you know what I'm going to draw a line and execute on what we planned.
Now, this may not always be the case, but usually, it's usually it is you must have some way of assessing whether a decision needs to be made about changing a project, particularly once it's being planned.
And then making changes, it's like it better be important, it better be life or death decision making for the business.
Because otherwise, if you continually change plans all the time, it's going to be very expensive.
The cost of changing plans is high, the time to change the plans is beforehand.
Let me give you another advantage.
Before you go and deploy, having clean plans allows you to get something that is extremely valuable.
And that is external feedback.
You can have somebody else look at your plans.
With a clean set of eyes.
Yes, there will have been a lot of work that goes into making these plans.
And then they come in and go have you thought about this? Have you thought about this? What about when you do this? And then that causes that this is going to clash with that other aspect of your plans? Have you thought about that? And they might see things that you haven't seen, they might confirm that this is a very good plan.
They might even say, Dude, what are you thinking this is not good.
This is not going to work? This has already been tried three times before.
And each time it ended in disaster.
Why do you think that this is going to go differently this time, this feedback is infinitely cheaper than finding out at the end of the execution.
At the end of the execution, very expensive, very expensive.
And this is the last value of the plants and that is that you can decide clearly when you have good plans and you get feedback on them.
Then you can make the decision cleanly.
That's all I got for you today.
Hope you got some value out of the value of great plans.
Making sure you plan before you execute it is totally worth it.
I look forward to seeing you on the next episode as we continue this journey into the power systems that create results.
See you then.
