5.1.1. Exit

One of Murphy’s Laws (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_A._Murphy,_Jr.)  states “No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy” and it is true, but how then to prepare for success?

The key is to make multiple plans and determine your course of action based on the info you get as you go along. In decision theory this is known as a decision tree. Although you cannot know what the future holds for you, you can think about alternative futures. Once you know what the alternatives are, you can determine what your course of action would be in any and all of them. This way you don’t have single, but multiple plans and if your preparation has been good and you have defined exhaustively the scenario’s you are certainly be better prepared than if you hadn’t.

Off course even then it is still possible that something happens (LUCK) the can disturb your plans in the good or the bad sense and there will be times in which you will have to improvise. However, I have learned that the better you plan, the more time you brain has to be creative on the actions that require it.  Full freedom is as restrictive to creativity as full restraint, but finding the optimal structure boosts your creativity.

Anyway, the reason of this intro was to talk about a specific personal experience that supports this. In 2010 I was working for a large Business-to-business Travel Agency. During the previous years 2008-2009 we had gone through a major restructuring after the financial crisis impacted the global economy.

During the budget process for 2011 I had analyzed the different scenario’s and had come to the conclusion that there were to many responsibles in my function for my region. Thinking about my role and future roles within the company and the options for the company within the budgetI had figured out that of 3 board members had to move to another function.

At that time I had itemized 6 scenario’s 4 in which I took over a part of the region, 1 in which I moved to another role within the company and 1 in which I was going to be asked to leave. At this stage the two latter options seemed little realistic, but I took them into consideration anyway.

During my PREPARATION I had defined what I was going to do for each scenario. The first four included different territorial splits and responsibilities within the region. The 5^th one allowed me to look out for alternative roles and urged me to proactively seek contact with one of the key stakeholders for which I wanted to work in the future. Finally the 6^th option allowed me to chart 2 sub-strategies, one in which I would work for another company made me contact several head)hunters and one in which I was going to start up my own company again made me focus more of my spare time in browsing the environment and thinking about some of the ideas I had had in the past.

Although scenario 6 was the least likely it allowed me to have a higher sense of security in the planning and in the period in between the start and end of the budget round. The first 4 scenario’s, although likely at the time, were my least preferred. However because I had made the analysis I could clearly identify the tasks at hand and prepare for those. And as the 5^th was my most wanted at that time, I could clearly take a proactive attitude towards seeking the success and making my desired future come true. During the process I had been working on some business ideas and it became clear that more and more however I was leaning towards starting my own company again.

Ultimately, the first 4 options were closed because I myself had stated not to be interested in a long future within this role and option 5 had been  closed due to the lack of resources within the company to start the function I was aiming for which didn’t exist before. So it was decided that I was going to be let go. Now, what for most would be devastating news was for me merely a branch of my preparatory decision tree. And as I already knew what I was going to do in that case, I could immediately engage to execute on that plan.