13Operational Planning: Execution, Learning and Adapting
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
—Winston Churchill
When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.
—Confucius
Plans are nothing; planning is everything.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower
In this final chapter we will explore the last step of strategy deployment—operational planning. Operational plans are the investments in programs, projects, or product teams that will be executed over the short term, typically the financial year, to deliver the prioritized tactical initiatives that will contribute to business success. We will explore how to create an operational plan using the approaches as covered in the operating model components of Chapter 6, “How We Work,” and Chapter 7, “How We Govern.”
However, as Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” This is like another old saying, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” In other words, we need to be able to adapt when things change at a strategic level, whether the change is in in market conditions, suppliers, or competitors. A change may also occur at a tactical level if our assumptions are proved invalid on which initiatives will contribute to achieving a goal, or it may be a change at the operational level based on feedback on how effective our execution is. To mitigate the fact that our plans will ultimately be wrong, we will ...