Planning is like the immune system – is yours resilient?
“Resilience” is a term often used in psychology when talking about mindfulness and taking care of your own needs. Within the last couple of years, the term has also been used in leadership concepts. Being resilient is considered one of the key treats of leaders in VUCA environments.
You will also find it addressed by urban planners in the context of disaster recovery, for example in case of earthquakes.
Just recently I stumbled over an article by McKinsey on “building resilient operations” in supply chain. On the one hand, I was disappointed, that the terminology had been claimed by McKinsey to some degree. On the other hand, it shows the relevance of the topic and of our approach. And, our focus is on planning and not on operations – an in planning resilience is just as important!
Compelling analogy – our immune system
Planning needs to be durable yet flexible at the same time. It needs to be able to cope and react to ever changing external influences. But how can that work?
I like to compare planning to the immune system. Luckily our immune system has some knowledge already from the very beginning. But there are also diseases which the immune system needs face on its own and then learn from it for the next time. Thus, becoming resilient.
Planning, to my mind, is really the same. In the end, it comes down to being able to cope and adjust to changing requirements. It is not sustainable to repeatedly throw in some antibiotics – like short-term optimization every two years offered by various experts. You need to consider optimization of planning as a transformation – train the immune system and change habits.
Our offering
The above said is the reason why our “resilient planning” offer consists not only of anamnesis and immediate medication, but also of support to develop the capabilities to adapt to changing external influences on your own.
We have created a short video podcast presenting our consulting offering in more detail. Please register to gain access.
You will also find some more information on our webpage.
If you would like to learn more or discuss the topic, please feel free to contact me.
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