As a team leader, CEO, startup founder, or project manager, you know that planning is one of the critical skills you need to possess to achieve the team's goals, the business vision, the projected KPIs, or the established milestones.
Planning is, nevertheless, the first step. With proper planning, you anticipate challenges and minimize risks. Simply planning helps envision a particular situation and aspects that previously didn't exist and clarify the actions needed to achieve the expected result.
Planning can be short or long-term. With a team, you might have quarterly goals; however, as a CEO, you must have a long-term vision. We encourage business leaders to have a bold vision for where they want to take the company in 5-10 years, not just the next quarter. This is why planning connects with the company vision.
Although things have been carefully planned, we recommend you be flexible and willing to adjust. Bill Gates once said, "Life is not always predictable, so you must be ready to adapt." No plan survives first contact with reality unchanged. Build flexibility and adaptation into your planning.
Before jumping into planning, careful planning means deciding what NOT to do and focusing on critical priorities. Don't try to do too many things at once. By focusing on meaningful projects, you achieve the right things, not all the non-important ones.
Always think backward. Buffet, Jobs, and many successful people recommended reflecting on what needs to happen to transform the significant aim into reality. Thinking backward also means planning; you might call it strategic planning, others project planning.
We hope we made you excited with some critical thoughts about planning. Now, here are 30 famous quotes on planning and preparations:
"Failing to plan is planning to fail." - Alan Lakein
"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." - Abraham Lincoln
"A goal without a plan is just a wish." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
"In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable." - Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now." - Alan Lakein
"The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry." - Robert Burns
"A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week." - George S. Patton
"The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining." - John F. Kennedy
"It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan." - Eleanor Roosevelt
"To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not onlyplan, but also believe." - Anatole France
"Planning is an unnatural process; it is much more fun to do something. The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression." - Sir John Harvey-Jones
"A plan is what, a schedule is when. It takes both a plan and a schedule to get things done." - Peter Turla
"Before anything else, preparation is the key to success." - Alexander Graham Bell
"Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan." - Margaret Thatcher
"A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power." - Brian Tracy
"Planning is a process of choosing among those many options. If we do not choose to plan, then we choose to have others plan for us." - Richard I. Winwood
"Planning without action is futile, action without planning is fatal." - Cornelius Fitchner
"An idea without a plan is just a dream. A plan without action is a nightmare." - Japanese proverb
"You can't plow a field simply by turning it over in your mind." - Gordon B. Hinckley
"He who plans early avoids haste." - Chinese proverb
"A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow." - Proverb