When Should I Plan?
You need to start your planning now. If you
don’t have a direction to go in, then you won’t know what to do to
help you get there, or recognise when you’ve got there!
The period that your plan covers is up to you. Generally
plans fall into three categories - long term, medium term, and short term.
However, what is long term to you might be quite different to someone
else’s view. The norm is that short term is about one year, medium term is
up to five years and long term is up to 10 years. It is difficult for anyone to
plan for longer than 10 years in today’s world.
The amount of detail in your plans will vary too. Longer
term plans might just be ideas or visions for the future, while your short term
plan should have specific milestones and deadlines for you to work towards.
You will need to think about planning regularly - at
least once per year. Once you have done your first plan, subsequent planning
sessions will consist of a review of the past development period, and adding
new actions for the next period.
It is important to plan for review periods. You need to
review for two reasons, to make sure you are keeping to your plan, and to make
any necessary amendments as circumstances change.
Sometimes it is not possible to guess what the future
will bring. At times of uncertainty, such as company insecurity, or when you
can see many possible options ahead, and don’t know where you will end up,
you will need to keep your plan flexible. Make sure you review your situation
regularly and consider alternative options and contingencies.
However good your plan, it cannot take account of
unexpected opportunities that arise from time to time. Just because something
is not in your current short term plan doesn’t mean that you can’t
take advantage of it: you might just need to change your plans to take the new
opportunities into account.
It is very important to always keep your plans firmly in
mind, and to keep a watch for opportunities arising which will help you meet
your goals - not just for the things in your current plan. If an opportunity
arises that will help you towards one of your longer term goals, but it’s
not in your current plan, just adjust your plans and go for it! This shows that
it is possible to work to more than one plan at a time.
Conflict between personal and job goals may also mean you
need to have two plans active at any given time. You may have an action plan
which is the result of your appraisal, and contains only job specific goals. At
the same time you may have a personal goal which requires you to develop
additional skills to the ones identified for your work. Obviously you will need
to carefully balance your activities, so as not to stretch yourself too far,
but you should be able to work to both plans in parallel.
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