In this month’s webinar, Joel “Thor” Neeb covers the final step in the Six Steps to Mission Planning – Planning for Contingencies. When properly planned and communicated, contingency plans will strengthen your strategic business plan or even save it from failure.
Below is the full-length webinar recording followed by a summary of the presentation.
If you have built out Mission Plans with us in the past, then you know there are many uncontrollable threats that will arise throughout the Execution of your Plan. These threats are what we will build the contingency plans from as the threats become more and more predictable.
Contingency Creation
If the top 5 threats are uncontrollable, contingency plans make the team feel better and more assured as they move to the Execution phase.
These uncontrollable threats are why it is so important for our teams to build out contingency plans. We build them because when the uncontrollable threats do emerge and we do get pushed closer to those challenges that can derail the mission we have a team that we believe can actually navigate those threats. Contingency creation is about building a plan that gives your team peace of mind.
For example, when I was flying my F-15, I knew exactly what to do if the engine ever caught fire. There were exact steps that I knew to follow. This was an example of a contingency plan and one that I flew with and could execute immediately. Now, how many times do you think I had an engine fire in my aircraft? Never. Not one time. But I knew exactly what I was going to do if the engine ever did catch fire. It was contingency plans like these that allowed me to fly jets faster than the speed of sound with less than a half inch of glass between me and the wind, confidently. This is what we have to begin doing with our business teams in order to succeed.
The Triggers
The trigger is the earliest known opportunity to recognize that a plan may be derailed.
Once you know what contingency you are up against, you can begin to prepare for the what-ifs. Each of the what-ifs has a trigger you need to identify and plan contingencies for. If you do not clearly identify the triggers and take action when necessary, they will not do you or your team any good during Execution.
Conduct Initial Steps
Once the trigger has occurred, take action!
Have your checklist ready to act once you’ve identified the triggers. This is having the initial steps to take lined up and ready to Execute. It’s not necessary to have a full plan established. You don’t need the start-to-finished full plan.
In the initial the chaos and confusion I want you to have the first initial steps mapped out so you can pause, take a breath as a team, then assess your surroundings to determine what you need to do next with a clear head. You can start to build some of these things into standards and checklists and automate some of these processes that we can continue to see ourselves exposed to. Pop up resources, access to a new team of people, new operational team, new partners in the ecosystem that they will be able to leverage and be more successful and raise the bar and level of success of the mission.
How to Accelerate Your Performance With Flawless Execution
We all operate in a market where the environment is changing rapidly.
At the end of the day, it is about accelerating your performance. How do you apply this with your team right away? First of all, I want you to talk about what the uncontrollable threats are. The next time you plan out a project or create a mission objective ask the crowd, what are the mist likely things that can throw out plan off track and keep us from success. The worse thing you can do is brush the what-ifs under the rug. If you can predict it, you can plan against it. Once you identify an initial trigger, at a minimum have the net few steps you are going to take outlined. As a leader, so you can inspire confidence and credibility with your team that you can lead them out of this scenario. Give them breathing room once they have got past the initial stage. After you have built the contingency plans, revisit the plans during
About the Speaker:
As an Air Force pilot, Thor flew thousands of missions teaching pilots from 25 countries around the world. At the center of each mission’s success was the upfront planning for contingencies.
As Afterburner’s President, Thor leads our team of more than 60 elite military professionals. He has helped Fortune 100 companies within all industries achieve strategic objectives and tactical goals through Afterburner’s Flawless ExecutionSM methodology.
