Recent posts have approached the idea of “getting things done” from a variety of angles.  Progress with Tedium analyzed how a detailed strategy, then following those plans to the letter, might make for boring summer blockbusters, but a completed task.  Plan Well Now to Execute Later looked at MAVEN on its way to Mars.  It also realized the value of getting your spaceship’s flight path set ahead of time.  Arriving with less frustration, fewer adjustments, and more fuel makes everyone happy.  Waiting, Done Different sought to understand how Apple decides when is the right time to engage a new product segment or idea. Being first isn’t always best, and being best might mean you are last.  What’s the happy medium?  Who’s Your Imagineer and R&D…Not Just for Tech Firms combined the strategies of Disney and Apple for advice on ensuring innovation and eliminating stagnation in your processes/operations.

Whew!  That’s a lot of reading and even more planning.  Guess it’s time to set up another meeting…hold your horses!

There’s an enemy lurking, and it disguises itself so well, we might miss it even when it’s staring us down: Perfection.

You may have heard the phrase, “practice makes perfect.”  I disagree.  A more accurate, if less concise, version would be: “Perfect practice guides you on the endless journey towards perfection.”

That program, no matter how much time and teamwork you invest, will never be perfect.  Launch it.  Take feedback, positive and critical alike.  Improve.

My favorite musician, Jimmy Buffett, looked at the destruction following Hurricane Katrina.  He described the approach of residents of New Orleans, deluged emotionally and physically, with a six-word phrase: “Breathe in, breathe out, move on.”  One can argue planning failures led to much of the destruction, but on an individual basis, there they were, flooded out of their communities.  But they had each other.  It was about as far from perfect as they could get, yet still, they were pushing ahead.

We are in the midst of many credit unions’ planning periods.  Creating a strategy for a perfect 2015 is on many minds.  And it is wrong.

Create a living plan for a 2015 where you achieve specific goals.  No amount of planning will make perfection, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you…ah, well, you know the rest.