We’ve all heard the expression, ‘Failing to plan is planning to fail’, haven’t we? In fact, we hear it so often it’s become a bit of a cliché. Like all clichés, there’s a lot of truth in it, especially in business. Running headlong into a project just because it excites us as individuals is no guarantee of success. Other people might not share our enthusiasm; there might be a lot of competition in the particular market – and if there isn’t, that might be because there’s no money in it. These issues would probably have come to light if we’d done a bit of planning – and we may even have found ways around them.

There is a real danger, though, at the other end of the spectrum, of potentially great ideas being strangled at birth by too much thinking. Listening to other people – especially those with more experience – is vital; but too much advice – and too much reliance on it – is as dangerous as not enough.

Then there’s the more personal kind of over-thinking which can destroy our own confidence – the kind that can start with, ‘I don’t think I’m very good at…’ and end with, ‘I can’t do…’

If you’re a thinker by nature – someone who likes to plan everything down to the last detail – you might well believe that’s just how you are and you can’t change. I know that because I’ve done it myself; but very recently, I broke the habit of a lifetime – had an idea and made it happen within a week. For the first time ever, I’m working on the basis that ‘done is better than perfect’ and I have enough business experience now to fine-tune the project as I go. Yes, I could have spent six months meticulously planning and refining. The control freak in me would have found a certain satisfaction in that; but this project is far more use to me – and my clients – out in the big bad world than it is on the drawing board.

Oddly enough, doing live radio has helped me to become less of a control freak. When everything is pre-recorded, there’s a real temptation to go on re-recording or re-editing indefinitely, in search of absolute perfection; but in a live situation, all you can do is make sure you’ve thought enough (but not too much) beforehand. Once it’s out there, it’s out there. I can illustrate that from very recent experience.

Aside from the interview with Steve, I did last week’s show on my own – without my regular colleague, Alison, who was on holiday. The whole three hours was live – no pre-recorded ‘packages’ to give me breathing space. There were several things in there which I had to do for the first time, like the weather forecast (which has to be fitted into thirteen seconds just before the news kicks in automatically), travel updates (which obviously have to be delivered clearly and logically – because people listening on the move aren’t giving you their full attention and the information you’re delivering could change the whole shape of their day) – and an interview which I didn’t know was happening until ten minutes before it went out.

Now, I interview for a living. At the moment, it’s the major part of my programme-making; but normally, I talk to the interviewee in advance, we prepare the questions together etc. This time, there was no such luxury. All I had beforehand was the girl’s name, where she was from – and the fact that she wanted to talk about ‘fish pedicures’! Still, I’m told I pulled it off.

The weather was interesting. Before the first forecast, I rehearsed it aloud three times –but the mouth went into reverse almost as soon as the mic was up. The next three were done without rehearsal – and went smoothly and to time.

The show as a whole wasn’t perfect – but what really mattered was that it got better as it went along, the feedback afterwards was great – and I learnt so much from the experience.

Steve’s parting shot last week was, ‘If there’s something you really want to do, just go for it.’ I’ll second that. Yes, do some planning and preparation. If you’re very passionate about an idea, it’s quite useful to make yourself step back a bit and try to look at it more objectively, to see it in the wider context of the market you want to go into, the trends and so on. Failing to plan without that knowledge really is planning to fail – but don’t plan it to death. If circumstances allow – if it doesn’t need too much investment to get started – there’s nothing wrong with testing the water by jumping in. Very few people ever learnt to swim by sitting on the side and watching.

I’m taking a couple of weeks off from the programme.  It all starts again on 14th July, with a brand new series: ‘The only way is enterprise’ – looking at the influence of the TV show ‘The Only Way is Essex’ on local business – should be fun!

I spent yesterday afternoon writing the outlines for two presentations. On the face of it, they couldn’t be more different.

The first was:-

“Who Is Fred? – and why did twenty-six seven-year-olds make friends with him?”, which I delivered this morning, at 4Networking in Ware. It was all about the children’s book, featuring a bear, which I produced with the Year 2 kids at the school where I’m a governor and the charity I one day hope to launch, to help disadvantaged kids discover and develop their potential through creativity.

The second was:-

“Whatcasting? – an introduction to using audio as an effective communication tool”, for the Business Café in Colchester, on 1st April … hmm .. I am slightly nervous about the date …

So what do they have in common? In one word, innovation and in another, potential.

The book developed in part from the need to find innovative ways of encouraging the kids (particularly the boys) to write. Several were from homes where reading and writing didn’t feature very much, so to them it wasn’t “cool”. One of the things we aimed to achieve – and I think we did achieve –by getting them involved in the book was to make it “cool” first to put their ideas into words and then to put them down on paper. Sometimes that began with a picture, progressed to a caption and eventually evolved into full sentences. Then at other times, they went straight for the pen – unleashing potential neither they nor their teachers knew they had.

My first foray into podcasting was in an effort to talk en mass to the clients and prospective clients of the law practice which I was running at the time, about legal issues. If they were aware and planned ahead, I knew they could save themselves time, money and aggravation. My challenge was how to communicate that. The people I wanted to talk to were busy. Their time was at least as precious as their cash – because it was in equally short supply! They were already bombarded with information leaflets etc – and if they’d been given one with “law” visible anywhere on the front, they would probably have switched off. Audio allowed me to talk to them directly, rather than at them, while they were doing other things.

So in both cases, a bit of lateral thinking about communication helped get a difficult and sometimes unpopular message across in a way the target audience actually seemed to enjoy! Well, they kept coming back for more, anyway.

In my experience, one of the biggest challenges we all face in business is around getting the right message to the right people at the right time – and, all-importantly, in the right language. The right people, of course, are the ones we want to talk to; the right message is the one we want them to hear; the right time is when they want to hear it; and the right language is theirs. That is, as I say, my experience – but what do you think?