“People don’t plan to fail, they just fail to plan.” In a survey of 1,100 executives, more than 80 percent said they were dissatisfied with their career progress and level of effectiveness. Why? They lacked the planning skills to aim for and achieve reasonable, attainable goals.

Planning is central to the attainment of all goals. It’s true for short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals, as well as those of either a personal or professional development nature. And, needless to say, an individual’s effectiveness at planning often has great impact on that individual’s effectiveness at achieving goals.

But despite the importance of planning, many managers shy away from it, believing it requires too much time. (And yet, somewhat ironically, these same managers are often the ones called upon to help create five-year plans for their companies!) Planning does take some time, but it needn’t be excessive if approached correctly. In fact, when done effectively, planning represents time well spent in that the “benefits” well exceed the “costs”.

What Planning Is and Isn’t

Perhaps some common misconceptions of what a plan is and what it does have caused many people to shy away from the planning process. First, planning is not deciding each step in detail in advance and then blindly following through. Nor is it taking a leisurely stroll through the mind in hopes of coming up with a loosely connected stream of thoughts.

Good planning lies somewhere in between these extremes. What’s more, a good plan should be looked on as a means for achieving goals, not as an end in itself. As Eisenhower once put it, “Plans are nothing, but planning is everything”. While it’s impossible to completely avoid crises and unexpected events either in business or in your personal life, you should still try to plan as much as you can. Good planning pays off by creating direction, excitement, and motivation. It also increases your ability to manage those around you.

Turning Goals Into Action

A key consideration in effective planning is learning how to transform goals into attainable steps (actions). Many businesspeople have trouble with this; consequently, many of their goals (especially long-term goals) may never get addressed adequately (or at all).

However, there is hope. By developing effective monthly, weekly and daily plans, businesspeople can more clearly see the attainable steps needed to fulfill their goals. And there are several approaches that can be used for this. One simple four-step method for converting goals into actions includes:

1. Pinpoint intermediate “target” to hit.
2. Decide on tangible measures to identify when each “target” has been reached.
3. Create a plan to reach those tangible measures.
4. Break the plan down into daily actions.

A similar way to transform goals into a workable plan of action is with “planning inventory.” First, list five major goals you’d like to achieve in your lifetime either regarding your business or personal life. Select the goal you’d like to achieve first. Next, identify the steps you must take to reach that goal, moving in chronological order. Finally, break down the first step into one-day tasks you can accomplish. Subsequent steps can be used to develop subsequent daily plans.

What you can realistically hope to attain each day is a matter for your own judgment. But you can make it easier by regularly referring to your planning inventory, and carefully assessing the tasks that go into the steps needed for achieving each goal. In a sense, these steps are interim targets, and they provide a good measure of your progress.

• 5 Goal Setting Skills to Assure Success
• The Science of Achieving Your Goals