COACHING TEAMS TO BE BETTER BUSINESS PLANNERS ‘K

hun Kriengsak, I want you to coach me on how to do better planning this year,’’ says Tom, an expat executive in his second year in Thailand. ‘‘Last year was the first time I led the Thailand operation. We did an annual business plan together, and I wasn’t happy with the outcome.’’ ‘‘What happened, Tom?’’ I ask. ‘‘What we did was not a strategic business plan in the way that I’d wished to see done. My team just used numbers from previous years and added in new numbers across the board, starting from target revenue, expenses, manpower and other resources,’’ he explains.

‘‘Later, I read in your book that Thais are not keen on planning. So this year I am determined not to make the same mistake about the business plan again.’’

‘‘What do you plan to do differently?’’

‘‘First, I’d like to give an overview of the business plan concept to my team before we start the process.’’ ‘‘And what is it?’’ ‘‘Well, the first thing I need to explain is what it is not. Based on the experience last year, the majority of my team seemed to view the business plan as a ‘fill in the template’ exercise. We were given a business plan template from our strategic planning office at headquarters. We filled in the blanks and come up with some narrative support. It’s a very reactive approach.

‘‘What I’d like to see is a proactive approach. A business plan is a roadmap and a blueprint in which we anticipate what the future environment will look like. Then, we come up with goals and action plans.

‘‘To do that smartly, we have to do a very good job on the analysis part. We have to be able to anticipate the future as much as we can.’’

‘‘Tom, it’s not easy to anticipate the future, particularly in the fastchanging world of today.’’

‘‘That makes the anticipation even more crucial. Because the world is harder to predict, we have to be cautious about it in the planning process. Once the team gets the concept right, we have to do good scenario planning.’’ ‘‘What do you mean by that, Tom?’’ ‘‘In the template from headquarters, we are asked to identify three scenarios for the next year: base case, worst case and best case. From last year’s experience, my team spent a lot of time and effort on the analysis of a base-case scenario. They didn’t put much time and effort into the other twos. Once actual events deviated from the base-case plan, we didn’t have many good contingency actions in hand.’’

‘‘Tom, how would you make your team create a better plan this year?’’

‘‘I want them to do more analysis on the worst- and best-case scenarios.’’ ‘‘What else?’’ ‘‘Next is about challenging the sources of information. My team relied a lot on only one or two sources. I want them to be more open.

‘‘For example, last year we relied a lot for our planning process on figures from government agencies and other global institutions. We assumed that they were good at their predictions. It turned out that their predictions were not so accurate. Hence, other assumptions that we based on those figures were miscalculated as well.’’

‘‘Tom, I know one of your strengths is planning. How did you do it?’’

‘‘Usually, I will not use data that points in only one direction. In the above example, my team relied on a few sources but they all pointed in the same direction — upward. I want to learn the views from other directions as well. For example, what about downward direction predictions?

‘‘In this case, I have to learn from more sources — contrarian and neutral ones. For example, if the government says next year GDP growth is X%. I want to know what the opposition party is predicting — let’s say it forecasts Y%. I won’t stop there. I’ll check with a neutral source. In this case it could be a research house from a well-recognised institution — let’s say the figure is Z%.

‘‘Based on these three figures, I have to gather more insights from other angles such as export growth, currency exchange, oil price predictions and world GDP, and so on. Then, I will consolidate all the information and use my own judgement to come up with my prediction figures.’’

‘‘Tom, that means you have a lot of work to do.’’

‘‘It does, Coach. That’s what we’re paid to do, right? As managers, we have to allocate time and resources on three time zones: present, future and the past. Most of us spend time only in the present because we didn’t do a good job in planning for the future.’’