I learned something recently that is making a profound impact on the way I view the world ahead of me.
I call it, “Situational Planning”
I am discovering the usefulness of this philosophy and I think anyone walking down an uncharted path can use to help guide the way.
I happen to be in the pre-game portion of my startup, Uvestor.com. I have invested nearly 2 years of my life, 12,000 hours of programming and system design, every dime I could squeeze together and I have leveraged every relationship and asset around me.
Needless to say, I am pretty antsy to see around the corner to make sure I don’t screw it all up, make the wrong move, or just plain run out of resources.
My circumstances may be unique, but that antsy feeling inside me is felt by just about every small business owner, recent college graduate, relocated family or anyone else who is uncertain about the future.
You know that every step you take and every move you make is going to impact immediate future events. The domino effect of decisions and actions lead to great things, the same thing or a terrible thing.
So what do you do about this? In my case, I have been working on using a 90 Day Situational Plan to help guide my decision making.
Here’s how it works for me. I think you can use the same ideas with your own variables and your current circumstances.
First, you have to realize that big things always take longer than you expect and the little things come at you faster than you can manage.
In short, a 90 Day Situational Plan is your outlook on a variety of events related to your business/career/life over a continuously updated 90 day period.
There are things that you do that affect these situations. These things can have one of three possible effects on the situation.
- Marginal Impact
- Positive Impact
- Negative Impact
When you start laying out your 90 days, you have to determine where you want to get to. Though you may not reach that goal in 90 days, you at least have to know what direction you are aiming towards.
After you determine your achievable goal, then you can figure out some scenarios that would cause that to happen (realistic scenarios).
Once you figure out 1 to 3 scenarios that would lead to your goal, you can look for realistic ways to create those scenarios.
Because reality is filled with interruptions, unexpected problems and chance encounters, you need to build in assumptions that these things will occur.
Some call it “rolling with the punches,” I call it “staying flexible.”
You have to accept that you don’t know Situational Events will unfold. For example, you have no idea “where you are going to meet that perfect private equity investor who loves your deal, business owner who hands you your dream job, or that special someone who turns into your future mate…”
As long as you know how to get to a scenario where you have the opportunity for this to happen, then you have a plan.
Unfortunately life doesn’t always go the way we want it to. Maybe you do get into that well-planned scenario but the result is a Negative Impact.
What will you do next? Have you thought about it? That’s what “Situational Planning” is all about. Thinking about potential outcomes and how you will respond to them.
The reason that I have been focusing on the 90 Day version of Situational Planning is simple:
It is a complete waste of time to try and plan out scenarios very far in the future. There are just way too many variables.
Beyond 90 days is in the realm of “Goals, Hopes and Dreams”. While I fully endorse having these ideas and working towards them, I do not endorse detailed planning around them. When the time comes, you will have the action plan you need.
My advice is to stay focused on the next 90 days. Take everything into account and plan for Situational Events with positive, negative and marginal impact.
This should all be able to be accomplished on a single piece of paper. Just don’t let it go stale. This is about continuous improvements based on your current circumstances, resources and opportunities.
Stay flexible and keep moving forward!
