SYNOPSIS IN POINT FORM
• Planning a project or campaign properly takes time
• Do not leave matters until the very last minute unless you have to
• Always leave additional time for unexpected problems and circumstances
• When a project is rushed, quality tends to suffer
• It is hard to negotiate with suppliers when you are late
• Final content may always be tweaked at the last moment to retain freshness and a contemporary feel to a campaign
• Devote an appropriate amount of time for each project and not more than it is worth
• Wanting to get things right should not mean getting stuck on trivial matters
• Plan out your projects against a set timeline
• Create a yearly business calendar of your recurring events and projects
FULL ARTICLE
Today the saying often goes that everyone wants everything done yesterday.
I would slightly modify this to saying that everyone who is disorganised and cannot plan properly, wants everything done yesterday.
If some people have turned this into some form of trend, then it does not promote them as being terribly professional people. If you are convinced that your managerial prowess works perfectly well, even in time of crisis, then save this for real times of crisis. Do not yourself create unnecessary panic modes, as this will only prove to be disruptive all round.
It causes unwarranted stress on yourself, your colleagues and collaborators, your suppliers and clients, and on your business as a whole.
If you keep on stretching things over and over, they will eventually break. So be proud not that you manage to pull together the impossible when it was not really required, but that you know how to plan things well in advance, calmly, professionally and without creating unneeded havoc.
Management is all about planning and planning is all time-related. Nothing exists on its own without the factor of time.
Earning €1000 means nothing unless it is qualified in time. If it is earned in a day is it pretty good, if it is earned in a year, it is negligible. Doubling your sales is excellent over a year and average to mediocre over ten or twelve.
Everything is based on time. Leaving matters until the last minute is the sign of bad planning. If something usually takes two weeks to complete, then you should start planning it six weeks in advance and set it in motion fours weeks before, giving yourself plenty of time for unforeseen circumstances which very often crop up.
If you are planning a Christmas marketing campaign, then as most serious companies do, you should start considering this in July and August, obtaining quotes in September or very latest October, if it is a very simple affair, and have it all wrapped up and booked by at most the end of October or the beginning of November. But don’t go asking around and contacting suppliers for complex jobs on the second week of December! This is incredulously shortsighted and badly planned. If you’ve missed the boat, just accept it and move on and learn from it, rather than trying to obtain the impossible.
Similarly, if you typically launch a promotion at Easter time, then start planning this in mid-Autumn, and if you take part in say the annual Trade Fair starting at the end of June, then January would be an excellent time to start planning this.
In today’s business world where much of marketing is campaign driven, rather than planned well in advance, and often happens at the spur of the moment, you will certainly give yourself a very big competitive edge if you are capable enough of foreseeing and planning it properly, before everyone else.
Then if you want your campaign to be fresh and based on the very latest events, all you have to do is tweak the content.
This is because there is no doubt that insofar as service, care and attention to detail is concerned, nothing has ever changed, and whatever is done in a mad rush still very much tends to be of inferior quality than something which is done slowly and carefully.
A professional project, being marketing related or not, is by far the best when it is discussed and considered in-depth, then planned accordingly, and handed over to your suppliers without excessive rush, hence focusing on quality and even price, rather than time. It is obvious that when doing things urgently, you are in no position to negotiate or ask for a discount either.
The other extreme is equally counterproductive, and when even the smaller less important decisions are taking up a disproportionate amount of your time, you are being even less professional. I am often astonished how so-called professionals will sometimes meet up repeatedly, discuss, consider and reconsider, an issue which pales in importance next to all the other things they are not doing during all this time.
Do not get stuck on petty issues. Afford matters the importance they deserve – no more and no less. The same arguments of time highlighted above apply here too. If you have planned and gone ahead and succeeded on a particular project, but this is a project which should have been turned around and completed in a fraction of the time you devoted to it, then it was not truly a success.
If you get stuck pondering over the tiny details for ages, justifying this in your mind by saying that you are a perfectionist and want everything right, then in all probability you are more of a low capacity slow performer and need to train yourself to move on faster. An efficient businessperson can do things properly and quickly and allocates no more than the right amount of time and effort to each process.
So as everything else in life, both extremes are odious. Learn how to manage your planning time accordingly and discipline yourself to stick to a set timeline.
It always makes sense to map out a project beforehand and this can only be projected against time. Time in turn must be related to allocation of resources and ultimately to profitability,
Make up your own business calendar with all the recurring events throughout the year and use it often as a guideline for effective and timely planning.