‘Plan your plays and play your plan’

This is not my quote, but a quote from a football coach I once played for: "Plan your plays and play your plan." For some reason, it has stuck with me for a very long time and I remember it frequently. The reminder comes up in both my personal and professional lives, and I fully believe it is good instruction for life.

We spend a tremendous amount of time making a strategic plan for the association and our members.

In the association business, we spend a tremendous amount of time making a strategic plan for the organization and our members. Associations make their plans early so members can plan around the association's schedule. At ABC Greater Houston, we start each August by talking about next year's plans for the association, and we spend numerous hours debating over the next four months the actions needed for the following year until the plan is approved by the board of directors. Then we draw up the plays to conform to the plan. If we are successful, we will reach our goals and ultimately "win" the game. The plays are carefully designed to stay within the outlines of our organization's vision and make sure we are working to fulfill our mission.

Typically, we make a new play plan each year following the association's strategic plan. As the calendar changes, we change the plays. Sometimes these changes are subtle and more akin to tweaks while in other years, there are major changes, but the annual plan always changes from year to year. This is caused by changes outside the organization and beyond our control. Sometimes major changes happen during the course of a year. These changes force you to change your plan even more often.

Last year was one of those years. Almost as soon as we rolled out the 2020 strategic plan, we started hearing that a pandemic was coming. Since very few of us were alive in 1917, we pretty much ignored the warnings. How bad could it be? We had similar warnings about other pandemics in recent years and for the most part they were "much ado about nothing." I recalled all the hurricane warnings we get in the Gulf Coast and some of them are accurate while others are not.

Before we had time to react, everything was shut down in the ABC world. With little warning, we canceled our classes, events, meetings, business development opportunities and virtually everything we do for the construction industry. We were told it would take two weeks to flatten the curve. But those two weeks were extended countless times and, as I write this, we are still involved in new rules, regulations, procedures and restrictions.

Once we looked at the magnitude and length of this pandemic, we realized our 2020 plan was a total mess. All our plays were canceled or restricted, and I was reminded to "plan your plays and play your plan." The leadership of ABC met several times to redraw the plays for the balance of the year. We improvised a completely new strategic plan with new plays for the last half of 2020.

In August, we started the process of planning for 2021 just like we always do. Our dilemma in planning was whether 2021 was going to be the pre-COVID environment, the post-COVID environment or the ongoing COVID environment. We came to a compromise of sorts and drew up a set of plays for 2021 with a list of audibles in case the environment is not what we projected.

I think most of us realize successful people, teams and companies are all good at planning. It is the backbone of success. The takeaway here is that while all great organizations do a good job of planning, very occasionally, we all need to call some audibles.

For more information, contact Russell Hamley at (713) 523-6ABC [6222] or r.hamley@abchouston.org.