The days get longer and the night get shorter as the plan work starts for the year 2012. The exercise used to be a period where we used or to look (at least tried to look) at our businesses from totally new perspective. It was not only the exercise to try and peep into the future but also to look and learn from our past. The targets were set and strategies and tactics were created to achieve them. Expenses are planned from zero level and every bit of it were challenged. On the personnel front it made me realize how business is done and a great learning exercise which made me the part of exercise to create organization's future. I felt extremely powerful and yet responsible as we created the pathway for the whole organization to follow.
Over the years as i grinned through this process I realized that at the end of the day the whole man-hours put in the exercise are wasted by whole lot of reviews which is not based on the facts and figures presented but only on the whims and fancies of the reviewer. The reviewee wants to hold back and reviewer wants to get to get maximum out of him. In the end nobody wins and most important organization looses big time. The whole exercise is also wasted into making sure that the reviewer can't catch you and not on making the company and businesses better...
As we get the same started again with an eye on 2013 goal I fear the same again. This time around the start has been from below to up that is the whole planning starts from sales manager and goes till the regional level. That addition also got stuck in the reviewee- reviewer stuff. The whole excitement of te exercise is all gone and its looks like its gonna be another life sucking exercise without any results. If I had a choice I would make it more meaningful by discussing business issues with pre-worked analysis and solutions to the same. Instead of targets, it should be taken it as on exercise where the whole organization steps back and re-looks at its business and takes account, make necessary changes and adds value to make it better and quicker. Now comes the problem if there are no targets how will you give incentive your people. Well the answer is on the same basis on which the shareholders or markets see it that is the growth over previous year. Its simple and straight forward.
