Planning with Intent - the Mindful, Reflective Approach

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong

~ H.L. Mencken

A good deal of the corporate planning I have observed is like a ritual rain dance; it has no effect on the weather that follows, but those who engage in it think it does. Moreover, it seems to me that much of the advice and instruction related to corporate planning is directed at improving the dancing, not the weather.
~ James B. Quinn Strategies for Change

Sometimes when managers do strategic plans, what they end up with is a list of planned actions, categorised into areas such as Customer Services, Systems etc. However, very rarely to they state explicitly and in detail what is the Intent of the planned action - what is it expected to achieve. Unless we know why we are doing something we cannot tell whether or not it has achieved the desired objective since there isn't one. All we can say is that it was we intended to do X and we did X. But whether this was a good thing to do remains open to question. We need first to identify what it is we are trying to change.

For example, we may want to change some metric of staff satisfaction. We may want the average score to increase. However, this isn't really what we want. A metric is simply a measurement. What we want to change is what the measurement purports to measure. So let's suppose that we actually want to change staff satisfaction. Then we need to be sure what we understand by 'staff satisfaction' - are we looking for fewer complaints? greater engagement? less turnover? Are we trying to engender an emotional state that will see positive changes in such areas?

Whatever it is we are looking for, we may first need to understand what it is that causes the behavior we want to either increase or diminish. We need to have a 'theory of causality': that these causes result in these outcomes. Based on our 'theory of causality' we can then develop strategies that we think will cause the outcomes we want.

This is important for two reasons.

Firstly, by identifying the desired outcome rather than just an activity, we have a better chance of seeing whether or not that activity achieved anything of value.

And secondly, if the desired outcome isn't achieved but we did the planned activity then it may lead to us having to revise our theory-of-causality. Note that I say 'may'. It may be that the planned activity was implemented poorly, that it was transparently manipulative, that other factors intervened to derail it. But if none of these occurred and the planned activity went off, well, went off as planned, but the desired outcome wasn't achieved then we need seriously to look at whether we have truly understood the causal mechanisms involved.

Maybe our understanding of human nature  doesn't match the reality of how people really behave, what they want and how they respond to various changes in the work environment. Maybe there is a delayed reaction: maybe the change that has been put in place will take longer to have an effect than we anticipated and we haven't failed so much as haven't succeeded as quickly as we thought we would.

The point of all this is that we can take a simple mindless approach:

-  Let's do X.

-  We did X.

-  Good job!

versus a mindful, reflective approach:

- What do we want to achieve?

- Based on what we believe to be true (theory-of-causality) what would we have to do to achieve that?

- Did the desired outcome occur?

- If not, why not? Did we implement poorly? Was our time frame too optimistic? Was our theory-of-causality wrong?

- What do we do now?

The mindless approach may give us a false sense of achievement: "we did it!". But with the mindful, reflective approach we gain a more nuanced understanding of the situation, we gain a clearer understanding of what works and what doesn't and we make genuine changes that matter, rather than cosmetic changes that don't.