Planning during Disruption

Last week, in the midst of making cascading decisions to keep people safe, a client encouraged us to help them find ways to continue planning for the future. Even when their daily work had become exclusively focused on TODAY’S work they were committed to the LONG TERM.  It was an important lesson for See What I Mean about leadership, planning and disruption.  

Organizations want and need to sustain long term progress while addressing immediate needs. 

Our client's planning process will go on, but it can't go on in the same way.  We’re changing logistics and changing approaches to help our clients cope with today and adapt for the future.  

Changing Logistics:  

Taking care of people right now, enacting safety and contingency plans, is priority one.  

• We’re flipping to virtual meetings, changing from groups to one-on-one interviews, and postponing when that’s what’s called for.

• We’re adjusting timelines so we don’t overburden leaders who need to focus on safety.  It’s okay if the planning process needs to extend.

• We’re keeping our commitment to engagement, but some people are changing seats.   Clients are considering who is now more available and less available to engage in the thinking about the future and we’re onboarding new leaders.

Changing Approaches: Changing logistics is only one part of the challenge. How can we think long term when today’s challenge – COVID-19 - fills up our heads? It would be disingenuous and ineffective to go forward with planning pretending as if the sea was smooth when we are all caught up in the massive waves of information and uncertainty. 

However, it is often in crisis that we see the most resilient and creative sides of ourselves and our organizations. We think it is important to try to capture that ingenuity, and hold on to it for when the waves calm and you have kept yourself on course towards your future goals. 

We’ve created a tool for Planning During Disruption. We’ve tried to balance people’s need to talk and work on today’s challenge, while making space to consider the longer-term effects, opportunities and side effects of short term choices. It focuses on three areas:

1. What’s the context? How is the disruption changing the world for our clients/community?

2. What should we do, what should we stop?  Immediately, in the short term and in the long term?

3. What must we protect or sustain during this change and in the future? What are the cornerstone values we will not move away from?

Download the Planning During Disruption tool for free.  It includes instructions.

Let us know how it goes and if you adapt in ways to improve it.  We’d love to share that with others.

NOTE: This tool is designed to help leaders explore ways to sustain long-term progress towards important goals while addressing immediate changes required by disruptions. This tool is not designed to serve as an emergency response plan to protect your clients, customers or employees.  We urge you to follow safety plans you’ve put in place or to reach out to your colleagues and public health experts to borrow and replicate a safety plan.  For some people it makes sense to use this tool today, for others you’ll need a week or a month until you have time and bandwidth to use it.

Author: Stacy Van Gorp