Planning is fundamental to the long term success of any business, but people approach it in many ways, and with many levels of effectiveness.
The residential real estate industry in no exception. It encompasses a huge spectrum of individuals with very different talents, expectations. ambitions, and levels of business success. And, no doubt, lots of variations on how people actually do planning.
I'd like to mention two kinds of planning to start things off. One is the planning in which a brilliant and comprehensive plan is conceived and
then beautifully executed, leading to sustained business success.
This image of planning is of course, not reality. When we are fully engaged in a dynamic and creative process of crafting long-term success in a business enterprise, the reality is a never-ending set of opportunities and challenges, and nothing is entirely predictable all the time. We can't know the future entirely, and we get lots of surprises. We have a mix of successes and failures, and we get stretches of things going great and then there are times when things don't go as well.
Business life, like life in general, sends us a mix of stuff. But..we can learn to deal with the negatives. And this leads me to what I believe is one of the critical component of a truly effective planning process, and the business success that it will generate over time.
If we look at the most successful individuals and teams within the residential real estate industry - in terms of production, quality of their work, and longevity - would we find several patterns associated with exactly how these folks do their planning? I don't have an empirical study to prove it, but I would expect that we would find at least a few common patterns.
The one that I'd like to highlight in this installment of our Productivity series is the mindset of continuous learning.
The learning orientation is what enables planning to become brilliant over time. Planning, when it is really powerful and effective, is a never-ending process in which we learn from success and failure, and adjust our view of what works and what does not work accordingly.
Planning that works is a verb, not a noun. It is an ongoing and reiterative process of assimilation, reflection, and reconfiguration. Sometimes we have our plans confirmed and we keep doing what works. Other times we must turn on a dime.
Keeping a business successful in a dynamic context is a fundamentally challenging process that engages the full spectrum of our intellectual, emotional, operational and spiritual resources. That's business in a highly competitive environment.
But let's go one further. Business at the level of high performance - in which we make it over the long haul and develop a really fine, well-crafted enterprise - is a deeply challenging process that calls forth all of our capabilities, and many that we did not know we had. What enables all o this? What provides the grit and determination to overcome the setbacks? What provides the wisdom to not interpret a stretch of success as confirmation that we need not keep innovating?
All of these things, and a whole lot more, are powered by a mindset of learning. The orientation is one in which we are always open to new knowledge, and more than that, we are actively analyzing and reflecting on the results of our actions in terms of what we can learn.
Brilliance in planning and execution is a gradual process that accumulates over time. It is like the musician who goes on to a stage and renders a stunning performance. What you have just experienced is the product of years of discipline, practice, and a non-stopable commitment to getting better. Business success is similar. It never happens instantly or quickly. But we can all go a long way toward brilliance in our plans and our results with a mindset wherein we never stop learning.
Let's take a closer look at the operating characteristics of this mindset in another part of our Productivity series.
This post by Fran O'Neal.
[The Kathy O’Neal Team serves home buyers and sellers in Northern Virginia, with special focus on Chantilly, Centreville, and the communities of the Western Fairfax region.]
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