Over 30 years in resource planning – and I love it, always have, apart from one period which taught me more than any other time of my career. And what it told me was painfully simply – always trust your instincts.
As a planner, that’s an interesting thing to say. Because we’re a numbers world, a fact based world – right?
Whilst that may be right, it is only true to a certain degree. I firmly believe (and will never be persuaded otherwise) that the best planners, the ones who add real value are those that add a massive dose of instinct and intuition to the numbers.
What happened to me, many years ago, long before we had set up Select Planning was a real case in point. As a relative youngster in my first senior role in a very traditional corporate environment, I was (over) eager to make a positive impression.
They were tricky times; an organisation making significant cost cuts – slash and burn some might say – and in areas where resource planning had hardly got off the ground. Operations “planned” themselves and the doors were traditionally closed to outside influences. They held all their own data and kept it mostly to themselves. They knew best!
Of course, I wanted to make a difference. I worked long days and nights with the Ops Director to try to put together some coherent numbers and supporting insight. I thought I was building a decent relationship that would build a platform for future working together between my planning function and their operation.
Throughout, my instinct was screaming at me that their numbers simply did not stack. They were not credible. Clearly, they were being very selective in order to drive a narrative they wanted to present. But I no alternative data to disprove that narrative and I wanted to build that relationship. So, against all my instincts I went along with it, and it was such a BAD decision.
When we got to present that narrative to the CEO – they utterly destroyed it. Worse still, the Ops Director suddenly distanced themselves from it and left me to defend it on my own – in fact, they joined the attack. As the new kid on the block, I took a hell of a beating.
I had never felt so broken, so humiliated, and so let down. But, most of all, I had never felt so disappointed in myself. However, as cheesy as it sounds, from that day onwards I promised myself that I would never find myself in that kind of situation again.
I’ve stayed true to that ever since and it’s proved its worth time and time again. Not least in my time planning for the vaccine deployment in the pandemic – in unprecedented times and many madcap requests from government, media, and the public alike with little (or no) data to use, my intuition got me through many a tricky situation and helped to deliver credible plans throughout that programme.
Our industry will never disassociate itself from data and numbers – and nor should it, though I hope the over-obsession I often see will reduce somewhat.
Speaking specifically of resource planners though, I hope that stakeholders’ respect for our instinct and intuition will grow further. Instinct, intuition, and opinions are what make good planners into brilliant ones.
Since we’ve been running Select Planning, we’ve encouraged every planner we’ve worked with to look beyond data, to have and share their opinions with their stakeholders. It’s how they can make a difference and have an influence.
Get in touch if you’d like to hear more.
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