Liquid Planning

In this crazy world we live in where things change faster and faster. Your products, your technology, the market landscape, your competition, your customers. Is your planning keeping up? I found that a lot of CEOs are still planning their business like it’s 2001. I’m gonna make a case here for what I call Liquid Planning, and that is changing your planning process to match the same dynamics that you’ve changed your product development and go to market process.

Waterfall Planning
One way to describe the current state for you, you might recognize this in your business is Waterfall Planning. You likely have an annual plan that you’ve really leaned into and you’ve done a lot of detailed work and invested time to come up with budgets, priorities, initiatives. And the problem with that is, while you do need that direction, that batch approach, doesn’t work when the world changes two months into your year. And you have to rethink things. So I’m not saying don’t do an annual plan, but treat it with a lighter touch.

MVP: Minimum Viable Plan
One way to do that is start talking about MVPs in your planning process. Minimum Viable Plans. How much detail do you need? How much time do you need to create an annual plan that is sufficient to point you in the right direction and manage the business, but is done in a way that it acknowledges that that plan is temporary and that it will need to be adjusted frequently as things go on, you’re gonna iterate on your planning. I do recommend a decent amount of time being done on your three year plan, and that’s because direction is everything. Start with the end in mind, right? So that’s more of a directional plan. It doesn’t require as much detail to make it quality plan, but that helps guide these iterative changes to your more frequent plans.

Planning Horizon Portfolio
I also recommend that you have a Planning Horizon Portfolio. So you wanna have a collection of plans that range from that three year plan to that annual plan, to your quarterly planning, to possibly all the way down to a daily standup, which is a form of planning, right? You wanna be able to look at how you manage the business at these different time periods and use that portfolio to manage risk, to manage effort, and to keep everyone aligned without over rotating on the planning process.

B2B Clarity
So planning is so important for your business. That’s all. The more reason you don’t wanna overinvest in a rigid plan and build your plan in a way that keeps up with the dynamics of an accelerating market.