Key to making Plans Implementable - What does it mean to me?

In the world of decision making if there is one question you can ask before deciding to on a new operation plan for your company what would it be? Most people might say, What is the bottom line or what is the ROI?

But beyond anything the most crucial question you should be asking yourself and on behalf of other employees who are reporting to you is "What does it mean to me?" Supposed you are the head of a 100 person department/organization, what does the Plan mean to me to you? Probably you already factored that in because you strategized the whole working plan, after careful consideration of what you thought was in the best interest of your company and in turn for you. But what does the business plan mean to the other Managers in your department/organization? What does it mean to the executives who would implement the plan? Did you put yourself in their shoes? Or were you highly motivated by the overall organizational positive impact from the successful implementation of your envisioned plan and what is in there for you only? Most rational plans often fail to succeed because the rationalization is already constrained in the thinking of the person who envisioned plan and what is in it for that person. The rationalization works only when combined with aspirations of the people who will be executing the plan. So ask the question what does it mean to me? Not only for yourself but on behalf of those who get affected from it.

Business Scenario:
A leading firm in was overhauling their IT systems to introduce a Portal and Web Content Management System. They called the top tier vendors who presented the state of art software solution that at the time were on the Leaders quadrant of Gartner Magic Quadrant. While most of the analysts were busy figuring out what is the best of breed system that could technically and functionally meet the entire requirement, one Executive evaluated the product from a different point of view. His argument was, "look, all these products are best of breed top tier products. If we are to rank them on a percentile they all will rank in 90's. We do have to look at how well they are able to meet our requirements but more importantly we need to see what does this mean to people concerned. It is going to change their jobs, it is going to introduce new roles, scrap some roles, so let’s think about what does it mean to them?

Conclusio

So, in summary, identify the key people who will be implementing your plan, think what the plan means to each of them, and introduce necessary changes to make the plan executable as opposed to a one that’s brilliant on paper with lack of support from anybody else in the organization.