Making It Easier for Others to Do Flawless Planning for Their Challenges

The more we listen to people in our lives and world, the more obvious it becomes that everyone has challenges. That some people talk more frequently and dramatically about their challenges doesn’t necessarily mean they have more challenges than others.

Social, intellectual, and economic status is also no certain indicator of how many or what kinds of challenges people have. Spending time in public spaces is interesting. While no one necessarily looks or sounds like they have specific challenges, everyone does, in their own ways.

One kind of challenge is not having a good plan for any specific challenge. This is based on not having a good planning model in the first place. Most of us have learned flawed rather than flawless planning. Good plans are flawless plans. They make sense and feel productive.

We can make it easier for others to do flawless planning. Others could be people in our lives, at work, or in our communities. Doing this means giving them some new questions to consider. We’re offering these questions, not needing immediate answers. The power of new questions is that they work on people’s subconscious minds even when they’re not specifically thinking about them.

One good starting place is asking them what their plan is, relative to any challenge they’re experiencing. It’s fine if they describe a detailed timeline of actions or say they really “don’t have a plan.” Either way, we can break the question into two sub-questions: What do you imagine feeling and doing in this situation? and What are you assuming and wondering? These make up the essence of their plan. These will be useful as they develop a flawless plan. This is plan mapping.

Just asking somewhat what their plan is for any challenge or opportunity gives them a sense of agency, of being at cause rather than being at effect in their life and world.

Then we ask about possible scenarios they can consider planning. The question is Could you see things going different ways? If they’re unsure or unclear, we can prompt them with asking if they can imagine any favorable scenarios they would look forward to or unfavorable scenarios they would not look forward to. Then we ask which they would like a plan for. We move forward on any scenario they want a plan for. This is scenario mapping.

Planning different scenarios instead of just one gives them access to more new options of ideas, questions, and opportunities.

We take a scenario and ask them what matters to them in this scenario and why. Every answer is a good answer. We ask them to visualize what they would like to feel and do in this scenario. We get as many details as we can. Then we ask them what kinds of abilities they already have that could support feeling and doing what they want to. We ask them to recall times when they engaged these abilities and what they remembering seeing, hearing, feeling, and doing. This is scenario composing.

When people compose being their best in an any scenario, it makes it more obvious to them that the future they have is the future they imagine, and that the quality of their present is primarily shaped by the quality of their future.

We ask them, when they think about feeling and doing what they want in this scenario, what kinds of questions this raises for them. We give them prompts of questions like who, what, when, where, why, how, what would would it look like to, and any others we can think of.

We suggest options for them to consider. If they need more prompts, we ask what they’re assuming in this scenario and then help them turn these into new questions. We can also ask what they think is unpredictable and then get these translated into other questions. This is question composing.

Working from questions allows people to be their best in any given scenario.

Then for each question, we ask them to decide how they could answer any questions they could answer. We prompt this by suggesting they could do some kinds of researching, decision making, experimenting, or implementing to answer questions. Finally we ask when they think they could answer each answerable question. This is their flawless plan.

Checking in on people is simple. We ask how their plan is going. We ask if they have or need to change anything‒knowing that change is one of life’s constants. We ask what’s next and offer options for them to consider when they want some. What are you learning? is a great reflective question that acknowledges their efforts and supports their momentum.

When new problems, issues, and challenges come up, we always begin at the beginning with What’s your plan? and engage them in any questions to move them forward. They will quickly learn and internalize the model in their supporting their own planning progress and success.

We can use this process with anyone as long as they have the basic thinking abilities to think about the questions that form the planning model. It doesn’t matter how they feel about the situation or themselves. It doesn’t matter whether or not they have a history of making decisions and solving problems well. It doesn’t matter what kinds of challenges they’re planning for.

Helping them learn and do flawless planning will give them access to their unlimited inner resources. It will help them turn uncertainties into prime planning assets instead of obstacles. It will make it more possible for them to trust themselves to be their best in any situation.

For more about Flawless Planning, visit FlawlessPlanning.org. The Flawless Planning model is an open source model under the Creative Commons license: Flawless Planning © 2023 by Jack Ricchiuto is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Join us for the online Flawless Planning Webinars on 1.24.24 and 1.31.24.