The President Needs Basic Training

I don't mean boots and olive drab. I'm talking about basic training in successful planning. I suspect that waiting around the Whitehouse for Teh Call about the miraculous turnaround in Iraq is getting on Dudya's nerves. I know as I have been waiting for a call from Ed McMahon for years.

Anyway, last weekend I went out to a local Vietnamese restaurant. After my wife and I had finished our meal, the waitress brought the check and fortune cookies. I don't care much for the cookie but I like the fortunes. The one I got that night was something that reminded me of what is so wrong about the administration's stance on timelines.

I like the fortunes because they come with lucky lottery numbers and teach you Chinese. I don't know how learning Chinese is going to help me in a Vietnamese restaurant but I still think it's cool. I've usually heard the fortune before and that night was no different. It said:

A GOAL IS A DREAM WITH A DEADLINE

It's actually a quote by Napolean Hill, one of the pioneers in self-improvement and personal success literature. Back when I was employed at a different firm we had a seminar on project management where we studied a bookthat uses that quote as the title. Perhaps Bush should invest in a few copies or have a NSA flunkie do a Google Search. Now I'm thinking that as a businessman turned Leader of the Free World, Bush probably has heard all this basic motivational mumbo jumbo before but he should be able to check with his many successful corporate friends as to the validity of the priciples of goals and planning. Let me offer a simple refresher.

First, goals should be put into writing. This helpful if you say, for example, you are going to invade a county to take away their dodge balls because they might cause someone to lose an eye. Now after the invasion and the dodge balls are all confiscated (or heaven forbid none are found) then you can declare victory and go home. Without a specific goal in writing you can just change things at your whim which makes it hard to determine success. It seems to me the Congress is just trying to gets in writing.

The second thing a goal needs is specific measurable objectives and not be too open-ended. Think of the goal as the top of the stairs and the stair treads on the way up as your objectives. You need these objectives, aka benchmarks, so you can measure how well the plan is working. The objectives make expectations clear to the whole team when the project is a collaborative effort such as war. For instance it is not enough to say I want a piece of peace in Iraq. You need to say what that peace looks like. No more free-ranging death squads would be nice.

And finally, as Mr. Hill stated, a goal needs a deadline. Deadlines are important because the lack of one tends to just push back the date when the real work actually starts. It's hard to finish something when it doesn't get a good start. A goal without a deadline just becomes another thing we plan on getting around to one of these days and that day never seems to come.

Evidence can be found that one of the things that causes failure is fear and Bush seems to fear admitting that he is wrong. But his approach goal setting is just plain wrong in the face of accepted business practices.

Let me recap. If you have a goal but no objective steps and measurements then you don't have a plan. If you have a goal but no deadline, well then: You're Just Dreaming.