Dwight Eisenhower said, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” That is because planning is not an event. It is a process. Once you put a plan in motion, you will be changing it. In this episode of By Your Life, we’ll talk about the benefits of planning in business and in life.
Mass Readings Audio
http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/2019/19_09_08.mp3
Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time – September 8, 2019
Welcome to the seventy-sixth episode of By Your Life. I’m Lisa Huetteman and I know that you have a hundred different things you could be doing right now, so I thank you for choosing By Your Life. If you haven’t already, please sign up for notifications on your favorite podcast app or on the right side of this page so I can let you know when each new episode is posted. If you know of someone who can benefit from By Your Life, I’d appreciate it if you’d forward to a family member, co-worker or a friend. You can also click the icons on the top of the blog page to share on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular, business world. It’s my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.
In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for the Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time. I am a planner. I spent my career in various positions in budgeting, planning, and strategy development. I have coached others through the process. It is how I think. So when I heard Jesus tell the great crowds who were traveling with him, “Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work the onlookers should laugh at him and say, ‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.” (Lk 14:28-30), he was speaking my language.
According to statistics by the Small Business Administration, only 78% of business start-ups will survive their first year. Only 50% survive their first 5 years and only 1/3 will make it to the 10-year mark. Insufficient cash is one of the leading causes of business failure. Startups often overestimate how quickly they’ll start making money and underestimate all the expenses they’ll incur. But startups aren’t the only businesses prone to failure due to insufficient cash. Once you are up and running, the failure to recognize the difference between cash flow and sales will cripple most businesses.
It is not just a lack of financial resources that can tank a business. Business owners frequently lack relevant business and management expertise in areas such as finance, purchasing, sales, marketing, production, and hiring and managing employees. As such, without proper planning, business owners don’t recognize what they don’t do well, they don’t seek help, and their companies fail. In short, they do not recognize and act on the proverbial wisdom that, “People don’t plan to fail. They fail to plan.”
People don’t plan to fail. They fail to plan. #leadership #wisdom #planningWithout planning, people have no vision of where they are going, why they are going there, what they are supposed to accomplish, how they will make decisions, and when all this should be done. In other words, you have chaos.
Vision without Action is a Daydream. Action without Vision is a Nightmare ~ A Japanese Proverb #wisdom #leadership #planningAnd this is why we plan. Planning is a process of gaining clarity of why you are in business (purpose), focus on where you are going (vision), what specifically needs to get done (mission), and guidelines for making decisions and conducting yourselves along the way (core values). Then, by identifying the details of who does what by when (goals and functional action plans), you can coordinate a team and manage implementation. Planning is nothing more than thinking through in advance all the areas of the business that need to be considered and how they impact each other. We plan to avoid the chaos that ensues when we fail to plan.
All that being said, let’s be clear about what plans are and what they aren’t. Plans are not a precise prediction of the future. The first reading from the Book of Wisdom nailed it when it said, “For the deliberations of mortals are timid, and unsure are our plans.” (Ws 9:14) “Scarce do we guess the things on earth, and what is within our grasp we find with difficulty.” (Ws 9:16) We don’t even fully understand things in the present, let alone know what the future holds, so our plans will always be unsure. Does that mean we shouldn’t plan? No!
A plan is not a prediction, rather it is an intention or decision about what you’re going to do and a detailed proposal for doing it. Planning is not an event. It is a process. That’s why Dwight Eisenhower said, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” Once you put a plan in motion, you will be changing it, or at least you should. What doesn’t change is the decision or the intention of what you are going to do. What does change is how you go about doing it.
A plan is not a prediction. It is a decision about what you are going to do and a detailed proposal for doing it. Planning is a process, not an event. #leadership #wisdom #planningEven though Sunday’s Gospel’s message about planning jumped out to the planner in me, it wasn’t the point of Jesus’ message. He was talking about the total dedication necessary to be his disciple. Great crowds followed him because they wanted the benefits of discipleship—miraculous cures, a place of honor at the table—but they were not necessarily ready for the costs. Jesus was providing a realistic assessment of the hardships and costs. He clearly laid out the obstacles—attachment to family and to possessions, persecution, and suffering—that can stand in the way of our total commitment. And that’s what Jesus wants from us—total commitment. We have a choice to make. Are we all in? I want to be all in, but I know that I fall short.
One problem I have discovered with being all in is that I have to give up my plans and that runs counter to how I’m wired. As I said, I’m a planner. Our first reading from the Book of Wisdom captured the issue in a nutshell: “For the corruptible body burdens the soul and the earthen shelter weighs down the mind that has many concerns.” (Ws 9:15)
I try to control the burdens and my many concerns by planning. The result is I have one foot that I’ve put in God’s control and the other I have firmly planted under my control. I’m not truly “all in”. If I want to be “all in” and fully commit to being a disciple of Jesus, I have to accept that I can’t do it on my own. As much as I say that I am a planner, I’m limited.
We all are limited. We are burdened by things of this world and they keep us from being “all in”. Jesus warned us of this. Family, possessions and self all vie for the #1 spot in our lives and as long as they stay there, we aren’t “all in”. To make the commitment to discipleship, we must have a plan. We need to firmly decide and state our intention about what we are going to do and come up with a detailed proposal for doing it.
Like all good plans, this plan for discipleship is not a one-and-done event and it isn’t created on our own. It can’t be. Weighed down by many earthly concerns, the burdens of our body and its needs, we can never see beyond the things of this world. We can never detect God’s heavenly design and intention.
Book of Wisdom says: “Who can know God’s counsel, or who can conceive what the LORD intends?” (Ws 9:13) “Who can know your counsel unless you give Wisdom and send your holy spirit from on high? (Ws 9:17) The plight of humankind is clearly one of ignorance unless the Holy Spirit is sent from God. We all suffer from this human limitation. On our own, we are useless. We wander wasting time, resources, and energy. Only with the Holy Spirit, “[are] the paths of those on earth made straight.” (Ws 9:18) In his mercy, God does send the Holy Spirit. In his mercy, God does answer our prayers.
Six years ago, I chaperoned a group of teens on a mission to Panama. My roommate and fellow chaperone was also the co-leader of the mission, along with our pastor. Our pastor was known for taking advantage of the opportunity of the moment which often threw a wrench into the plans of the group, something that caused my roommate much angst. One hot evening, as we were lying awake, she asked me, “Does it bother you that Father changes our plans at the last minute.” I responded, “No, because they are not my plans.” I didn’t realize at the time how profound that response was.
Over the course of the next week, I lived each day moment by moment, being fully present to what we were doing and not worrying about what came next. The days were so long, and not because they dragged on, but because they were so full. It was wonderful. Toward the end of the week, I remember praying, “Lord, how do I take this—this feeling, this detachment, this ability to just be—back with me to my busy life? Lord, help me!”
In response to this prayer, I was blessed with a year of cancer treatments. Most people don’t think of cancer as a blessing, but if you gave me the option of having that year of my life back without cancer, I would say no because it would mean I’d have to give up my blessings. One of the blessing was recognizing, no matter how well I may try to plan, I am not in control of anything. Another was learning how to rely on God, who is in control. And I’m still learning. I still must consciously give back the reigns when I realize I’m holding them too tight.
Have I given up planning altogether? Absolutely not! That would mean chaos and a waste of time, resources, and energy. But I have given up worrying about when things don’t go according to plan knowing that God has a better one and it will be made known eventually.
If you are like me, your mind is still weighed down by many concerns. We need to plan but we need to pray first. We can’t abandon our work, but we can align it with God’s will. As I write this, I’m in the midst of leading a team that is launching the Welcome (CRHP 2.0) ministry at our parish. In the next 4 weeks, we’ll be hosting two renewal weekends, one for men and one for women. We have been working for months planning for these weekends. And even though Dynamic Catholic has developed a great team guide with a process to follow, there are still a lot of details to take care of and moving parts to coordinate. Last night, we had our last planning meeting before the weekends and at the end, we stopped to remember that the weekends are not about how the furniture is arranged or how many paper plates are ordered. They are about an opportunity for the participants to encounter the Risen Lord. That will happen whether or not we run out of food, forget to bring a tablecloth, or run a little behind schedule.
There is a lesson in this for all of us. We all have plans, for our projects at work, for our careers, for our families, for our lives, and we can get consumed by the details, the problems, the things we forget, and the things that go wrong. We can get so distracted by all of this, that we lose track of our lives’ purpose. These things are all important, but in the scheme of eternity, they aren’t #1. We need to stop and remember that as Jesus’ disciple, our lives are about encountering the Risen Lord and serving him by building God’s kingdom.
We need to make sure we’ve got the right #1. God will help us. He already has. In Dr. Scott Hahn’s reflection for this Sunday, he reminds us that “In his mercy [God] sends us his Spirit, his Wisdom from on high, to make straight our path to Him.” Jesus has already paid the price. We simply have to choose to be all in.
Let’s pray with the Psalmist from Sunday’s Responsorial Psalm: “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart.” (Ps 90:12) “Fill us at daybreak with your kindness, that we may shout for joy and gladness all our days.” (Ps 90:14) “And may the gracious care of the LORD our God be ours; prosper the work of our hands for us! Prosper the work of our hands!” (Ps 90:17) so that we may glorify the Lord by our lives.
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