Leadership Perspective: Reverse Paradigms – Planning vs Spontaniety

You must plan to be spontaneous. – David Hockney

I work with many creative leaders with brilliant ideas. Some run charities. Some run businesses. And some are leading educational, governmental, or religious organizations. Often when interviewing potential clients, I discover a pattern in thinking that discloses their short-sighted vision: thinking that planning limits their creativity.

The opposite is true – careful planning releases the creative energy! This is the opposite of thinking that spontaneity and creativity fit as the only option to planning. Leaders who hold information in their mind without a shared plan are controlling what everyone is doing. This is an example of autocratic leadership, which limits activity to what the leader can approve and control. It’s a bottleneck limiting progress. These leaders are the very people who complain about underfunctioning teams, without the awareness that they have caused the problem.

Having a clearly written plan allows each person in the culture to understand the ultimate objectives and the pathway to achievement so they know where they fit. People are engaged when there is a shared strategy defining roles and responsibilities for each member of the team.

As a part of my unique methodology, I have created a proprietary planning structure and process that integrates strategy and performance and unleashes the synergy of creative engagement.

We tend to segment our processes and activities, such as the planning and the implementation. Those are parts of the same thing.

There is a place for spontaneity in this scenario. Spontaneity is the adaptation to actual circumstances. We are creative within the structure. It’s the factor that counters the process some leaders have in following the plan blindly without adaptation to what’s happening – good or bad. We must adapt to the actual circumstances.

We do our best job of planning; however, things will change – we discover new things, we learn more about ourselves and our product or service, or the market changes. We must adapt a process to ensure that the plan we develop is the only plan we create. We migrate the plan over time with the following steps:

• Evaluate: Review the process, the skills applied, and the results. Here are some categories to prompt analytical thinking:
  • What Is Working
  • What Needs to Be Changed
  • New Things to Consider
  • Action Steps
• Revise the Plan: The plan may be good, but it remains relevant when updated. Commit to a regular schedule for this process.
• Recommit to the New Plan: Get buy-in from the team.