KISS Your Plans
They found themselves sitting together in a dining tent at the base of Kilimanjaro – 10 strangers from all parts of the globe. They were about to embark upon the adventure of a lifetime by climbing this African giant.
“Why are you here?”, was the question that really got the conversation going.
Ten people, ten different reasons.
They had already heard the declaration of their guide that half of them would fail in the attempt. They had also heard that staying hydrated, moving slowly together, and climbing beyond where you were going to sleep, then climbing back down to sleep was the best way to increase their chance of success.
“Wouldn’t it be great if we beat the odds and everybody got up and got back down again?!”
They all agreed – “10 up, 10 down”, became their battle cry.
“How are we going to do that?”
They agreed on 3 key actions: drink lots of water, stay together at the pace of the slowest person, and climb high and sleep low.
My friend, Bob Murray a highly successful international business strategist, was one of the 10. He immediately saw what had just transpired: this was strategic planning at its finest.
Strategic planning is critical for the success of any business – any organization for that matter. Sadly though, for small businesses, strategic planning is seen as an overwhelmingly complicated process requiring copious amounts of time and money spent with a consultant yielding a document of significant thud factor, which ends up sitting on the shelf unimplemented due to its complexity.
Keep It Simply Simple – KISS – needs to be our strategic planning battle cry.
What transpired in that dining tent at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro was a strategic plan crafted by 10 strangers. Purpose – Why are you here? Vision – 10 up, 10 down. Plan – Drink water, stay together and move slowly, climb high, sleep low.
They were all crystal clear on their vision. They all knew why they were there. They understood and knew how to implement the plan. They had kept their strategic plan simply simple.
Bob Murray uses this story to demonstrate the power of a simple strategic plan that everyone understood, memorized, and worked together to implement. They key to implementation is KISS the plan – Keep It Simply Simple.
Simple plans implemented beat complicated plans unimplemented every day of the week and twice on Sundays.
I really like to keep things simple and have used 4 straightforward questions to formulate strategic plans:
- Who are we? (What are the values we carry as a group? And, therefore, what is our identity as an organization?)
- Why are we here? (What is my purpose for doing what I do? What is the organization’s purpose for doing what we do?)
- Where are we going? (What is the vision for the organization? What do we want to accomplish?)
- How are we going to get there? (What is our plan? What is the strategy? What are the tactics we will implement?)
Whatever format you choose to utilize for your planning purposes make sure that you keep it as simple as possible. On the side of Kilimanjaro 10 strangers kept reminding each other, “10 up, 10 down.” Simple crystal clear vision.
“Make sure you keep drinking your water! Hey, hold up, Bob is getting sick – let’s stick together. We can’t stop here, we need to climb high and sleep low.” They knew the plan and constantly reminded each of other of it.
And, they would celebrate the little victories. Every stage of the climb was worthy of celebration as they were that much closer to achieving their ultimate goal.
Sadly though, 4 of the female members on the final ascent were passing out from elevation sickness and had to be helped down the mountain. The plan now needed to be adjusted. The vision shifted from “10 up, 10 down” to “Let’s do it for the girls.” Welcome to reality – plans need to be flexible in order to be agile.
Remember, a simple plan implemented trumps a complicated plan unimplemented. To create widespread implementation by your team, make sure you KISS your plans – keep them simply simple.
