Podcast Episode 34 (part 7): When A Plan Falls Apart

This week’s episode builds on Monday’s article, part seven in the series titled “Complementary Contradictions.” Here is the transcript of the podcast.

Sometimes, you get conflicting words of advice, one which is good and the other which is not, and it requires discernment to determine which is the right advice to follow. But often, these seeming contradictions are, in reality, complementary and, when used appropriately and in the right way, can work together to help you make better decisions. In this series of articles and podcast episodes, we are looking at different leadership ideas or principles that seem to contradict, are opposite sides of the same coin, or at least differ from each other, and we are pairing them up to see how they actually complement each other to make you a better leader. Last week, in part 6, we talked about what happens when a plan comes together, and this week, in part 7, we talk about what happens when a plan falls apart.

In the last discussion we established the importance of having an intentional and methodical process for assessing where you are, determining where you need to be, and drawing the map that shows how you will get there. The map is your plan, and therefore it is crucial for getting from here to there without getting lost. If you do it well, you will experience the joy of arriving at the destination that you have been eagerly anticipating. And it happened because a plan came together. However, sometimes (to continue the road trip map analogy), the car breaks down, there is road construction and detours, or the rest stop is closed. Everything you planned out starts to fall apart, and you have to figure out what to do. You may have had the best of intentions, but it just doesn’t work out the way you wanted it to.

I experienced a great example of this during a Christmas season, when I attempted to get my wife a special present. For some time, she had wanted a record player so that she could get some old jazz records to listen to. There was one particular color and style of record player that I knew had drawn her attention, and when I went to the store to purchase it, to surprise her with it as a Christmas gift, the only one left was the display model, and that’s when the adventure started.

Because it was the display model, the power cord – a DC adapter – had been misplaced, and the store manager could not find it. I agreed to purchase it at a discounted price and then planned to go to Radio Shack and find a cord. However, much to my dismay, Radio Shack did not have a power cord that would work. Desperate, I emailed the manufacturer to order a replacement cord, but by this time, I accepted the realization that it would not arrive by Christmas, and so I was forced to wrap a gift that she wouldn’t be able to use when she opened it.

So, of course, when she opened it, I immediately had to explain what happened. The cord arrived only a few days later, and without telling her it had arrived, I plugged in the record player and put on a record to surprise her with the sound. But then, again to my dismay, I could hear no sound coming out of the speakers!   I opened up the record player, and everything inside seemed to be properly connected and in working order, so I put it back together. Then I discovered the source of the problem – the arm had been bent and broken right at the base and then bent back to appear as if nothing had happened. Finally, I accepted the inevitable, that the record player was a bust, and I would need to buy another one. My wonderful plan had fallen apart. 

 Sometimes, that happens in leadership (and in life). You have great plans and good intentions, but then everything falls apart, and nothing works the way that you had planned. You find yourself in a quandary, and in spite of all the work you put into preparing your next steps, starting your big change initiative, or creating your strategic plan, you feel like you need to go back to the drawing board or give up altogether. Much like my attempt to make this meaningful purchase for my wife, you ended up running into unexpected challenges or obstacles that threw off your plans and forced you to have to rethink it, redo it, or let it go.

What matters after that is how you respond, and I think that you probably have five options.

• The first option is that you can try to fix it. Sometimes that’s possible, with minimal damage or loss, but it’s also just as likely that you’ve gotten to a point that is beyond fixing.

• Your next three choices are to blame yourself and beat yourself up; blame someone else, react in anger, and take it out on others; or put on an act and pretend like it works, even though it doesn’t. In my experience, these three seem to be the most common responses people take. The reality is, though, that none of these make things better, and in fact, they will most likely make things worse. So that leaves the final option:

• The fifth option is to acknowledge the failure and start over.

In the end, that is most often going to be the best answer: to decide to accept reality and learn from it. Now, the best thing you can do is to do things differently, or start again, or make adjustments and corrections, or even throw it all out and move on to something else. In any event, your plans fell apart. Regardless of what happened, sometimes the best of intentions come to naught, and all you can do is accept the circumstances and move forward.

Incidentally, the following week I found a similar record player in the exact same color. I had needed to accept the fact that the first one was broken and that I needed to find a different one. When I did, I found what I was looking for, and I was finally able to give my wife the gift she had wanted. While it is important to prepare a plan, sometimes that plan falls apart. At that point, accepting the reality becomes the first step in moving forward to a new plan that will work.