It’s much more fun to look on the bright side of things. When strategic planning or project planning, it’s easy and exciting to get caught up in the anticipation of how great the plans will work out.

In the midst of the planning, and at the beginning of each quarter, however, it is smart to look on the dark side.

The main reason to look on the dark side on purpose is to minimize the disruption of changes you can anticipate.

You might even be able to capitalize on changes if you stop to think about what’s coming up—the good and the bad.

Whether the change is outside your control like the economy or weather or within your sphere of influence like a new client or internal process change, consider what's coming up and how it could impact your goals.

One example for me is a new term starting. As an adjunct MBA professor, a new term takes several hours to ramp up. It's not on the radar all the time so without anticipation, could throw off the week. If the work is not planned and scheduled, it is not done as well, other client work gets pushed back or rushed, stress goes up, and walks with our dog are shortened--real bummers all around!

These two weeks will be much better because the shift in time demand was anticipated and planned.

What's coming up for you and your team this quarter? Give yourself 15 minutes today to write answers to these questions:
⚫ List 3 changes or obstacles that could impact accomplishment of your goals. Ideas might be a key leader’s exit, a major client leaving, equipment breakdown, cybersecurity disaster, travel delays, merger or failure.
⚫ How can you prepare for or prevent each from happening?
⚫ How can you minimize the disruption of each? Remember, even when the change is desirable, such as a merger, it is still very disruptive. Think through how to minimize disruption for the stakeholders, and consider inviting them to get involved early to aid mitigation of disruption to keep business operations smooth.

May you be like these Florida windows this week: strong and sturdy in the eye of any storms that come your way.

Imagine the anticipation of challenges it took to do such a great job on these windows. May we all be as great at our work as this window company is at theirs.