When You Fail to Plan You Fail – Period

Way back when I was a journalist, a common phrase we heard in the newsroom was “when you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

The client I’m working for has been around since the 1960’s – almost 50-years. They were voted one of the top 20 best small and medium sized companies to work for this year. And they have an amazing work environment to be in – everyone is so happy and fun to work with.

Surprisingly they never plan anything ever.

I’ve been working this gig now for over three-months and I have yet to see anyone plan anything. I have never seen any team or project meetings, never seen any project plans, and product development lifecycles – they don’t follow any developmental cycle life or death at all.

I’m a planner. I have always believed strongly in the power of setting aside some time to create a blueprint with manageable realistic and achievable goals. As there are no plans here, everything is done on the fly, last minute rush here, there. . .

Take today for example. I was planning – PLANNING – to go to the gym after work. I even lugged my gym bag to the office so that I could escape to the eclipse machine all that quicker. But at 4:35pm, my manager comes over to me and tells me the changes we received on some documents have to be done by noon tomorrow for a meeting that was just called.

She said, don’t worry if you can’t get it done, it was last minute and all.

Everything I’ve ever done at this company is last minute – because they don’t plan.

And I’ve been at this company long enough to know if I didn’t stay late and finish this last minute project, I’d be rushing around in a panic trying to get it done even more last minute tomorrow. They have told me not to rush things before, only to come back later and tell me they need it now.

So, I stayed until 6pm AGAIN to get something done at the last minute. No eclipse machine today, I was too beat. I just headed home, wondering how the hell this place has been able to survive for almost 50-years without ever planning anything.

Everything comes from the top down. So this lack of planning comes from the executives and managers failing to plan. And when the higher-ups don’t plan, everyone else is caught in their last minute rushes to get their unrealistic, unachievable, inhumane deadlines met.

At lunch we were talking about contract and staff work – I’m a contractor. We got talking about negotiations and how employees can’t negotiate too much when it comes down to pay raises and year-end bonuses.

But I can – I’m not an employee I boasted. I’m a contractor. If they offer me something which I don’t like, I simply walk. I mentioned how they’d have to offer me something pretty impressive to keep me aboard on contract or on staff.

Truth is nothing is that impressive. They could offer me a mansion with a Porsche in the driveway and a few million dollars up front – I’d still turn them down.

This lack of planning really goes against my work ethics. I don’t fit into their workplace – and fit is the most important element in the office.

I am always rushing projects through and feeling guilty about all the mistakes which they say we’ll fix in the next round. They never fix anything in the next round. Everything is rushed, so once a project is completed, they are rushing to do the next project. There just isn’t time to fix up and clean up the mess from the previous rush.

And even if there was time to clean up the rushed project, that too goes against my work ethic. I believe in doing the best job possible the first time through, so that you don’t have to go back and clean up your mess. Do it right the first time, or don’t do it at all.

So, my new plan is looking for my next gig – one where having a plan and sticking to it is part of their standard way of doing business. Because that is my way of doing business.