What should you do when a plan doesn’t execute.
Posted on Mon, Feb 04, 2013
Recently, I watched some young men setting up a domino track. You know, where a series of dominoes are set on end in a fashion that lets the first one fall in to the next and ultimately create an amazing pattern or jaw dropping avalanche. These young men planned to make it in to the Guinness Book of Records.
I gather they had planned the domino track carefully and had taken days to amass and set up the dominoes. The plan was executed with one push of the first domino. About thirty seconds in to a several minute process, something happened. One of the dominoes moved sideways when struck and that began to cause problems down the line. I watched five bright capable people freeze and a sixth person casually walk over to an area ahead of where the dominoes were tumbling. Just as casually, he shoved his shoe at several dominoes, pushing them aside. The domino cascade moved ahead to that point and stopped.
One person with courage interrupted the plan and ended the faulty process. Wish he had been on some of my management teams! I am just as sure that their next attempt will succeed. Where have you had a plan/process go wrong and let it keep going, possibly feeling helpless to correct it?