書摘：The Business Analyzer and Planner 4

Chapter 4 Stay on the Right Path
Phase 6: Closely Monitor the Success or Failure of the Plan
To reduce the anxiety associated with tracking a comprehensive business plan, phase 6 comfortably channels your thinking into areas critical to progress: schedules, costs, success indicators, failure indicators, and overall perspective.

Schedules
The time frames so carefully constructed for the primary alternative are the first to be scrutinized:

• Are targets being met? Is everyone completing assigned actions on time, based on your Gantt chart?
• Where are the bottlenecks? Are there specific internal or external obstacles that keep you from staying on track?
• Is it time to use contingency plans? How far can you fall behind in your primary plan before you can't recover and must pursue one of the other alternatives from Phase 4?

Costs

Next line for review are the projections you made for the preliminary, implementation, and recurring costs outlined in the primary alternative documents:

• How do actual costs to date compare with original targets, by timme period?
• Are costs balanced across categories? A cost overrun in one category might be offset by an under-run in another category, in which case you might be on track overall.
• Are costs in line with changing conditions? Even if you are within your budget, have your needs changed up or down such that you should revise your estimates?

Success Indicators

If the overall status of schedules and costs continues to be positive, you should start seeing the expected results described in the primary alternative. This will strongly suggest that you are on a successful path. However, in order to stay on this path until you reach the finish line, you must:

• Stay objective by evaluating the logic of your goals frequently so that even success is questioned against changing conditions that could or should affect your plans. Take nothing for granted.
• Stay vigilant by determining how sustainable success is, given the resources you have allocated. you don't want surprises resulting from lack of foresight.
• Stay prepared for minor failures so that you can recover quickly and minimize their temporary effect on progress.

Failure Indicators

The success section of a monitoring checklist includes assessing the possibility of failure. This section deals with the implications of actually failing:

• Is the failure correctable? Many setbacks are actually opportunities for minor course corrections that avoid major problems later. If this is the case, the effect on the plan might be positive.
• Is the failure recurring or singular? You do not want to overreact or under-react; your solution should fit the situation in terms of cost, complexity, and duration. If the failure is singular, a quick one-time fix should be sought. If the failure will probably recur, a more complex long-term solution might be needed. You need to decide which situation you have.
• Is the failure acceptable? You must objectively extend the consequences of the setback to their logical conclusion and decide now whether you can accept that conclusion. If not, contingency plans should be set into motion without delay.

Overall Perspective

After reviewing your checklist notes on the schedules, costs, success, and failure of your plan up to this point, it is time to consider all of these parts together and determine whether the overall status is positive or negative. Three basic questions help you to do this:

1. Should you review other alternatives from phase 4 to ensure that you have not become enthralled with success (or stunned by failure) to the point of overlooking well-constructed options?
2. If you have a crisis. By discerning exactly when and how a crisis reaches its end, you will more quickly return to your basic plan of action and resume controlled progress toward your goal.
3. If the situation is hopeless. The best way to deal with this unfortunate dilemma is to have ready a contingency plan with a well-defined exit strategy.

Blindly following a plan to the letter is no better than totally ignoring it, especially if there are dramatic changes in either the internal circumstances (e.g., resources, priorities) or the external circumstances (e.g., customers, competitors, the industry, the economy).

In using phase 6 to its fullest potential, you need to define the most appropriate frequency for completing the monitoring checklist (Fig 4-1). This is always a difficult decision because it involves finding the right balance between over-managing and under-managing the plan. In general, however, there are three factors to consider:

1. Key milestones. These are indicated in your primary alternative and any supporting documents. Completing the checklist at these points is an absolute necessity.
2. Calendar of fiscal quarters. This should be your minimum review frequency because they are general performance checkpoint in most business.
3. Crisis situation. Monthly, weekly, or even daily checklists might be necessary in a crisis, depending on its severity.

Fig 4-1. Monitoring checklist.

Monitoring Checklist	Criteria	Status
		Positive	Negative
Schedules	·    Are targets being met? ·    Where are the bottlenecks? ·    Is it time to use contingency plans?	Five supervisory candidates found, and two consulting firms contacted None yet Not yet
Costs	·    Actual vs. targeted costs? ·    Are costs balanced overall? ·    Have conditions changed?	Salaries will be less than planed. Yes, so far Not yet	Counselors will be over budget.
Success	·    Are the goals still logical? (Stay objective.) ·    Is success sustainable? (Stay vigilant.) ·    What level of failure is possible? (Stay prepared.)	Yes, morale must improve. Yes, we are very optimistic that we can find the right supervisors.	We might succeed in hiring only two new supervisors during the next 3 months.
Failure	·    Is it correctable? ·    Is it recurring or singular? ·    Is it acceptable?	Yes. We should manage to hire third supervisor no later than month 5. Singular Yes. A 1-month delay is not critical. Morale should improve after the first two supervisors are hired.
Perspective	·    Review other alternatives? ·    If it’s a crisis, when is it over? ·    If it’s hopeless, when do we pull out?	Not yet Not applicable Not applicable

Overall status = positive.

Phase 7: Identify and Establish Failure Avoidance Procedures

Failure avoidance is a type of insurance policy on your business plan. it protects you by keeping your alter to the future -- where the next surprise is undoubtedly lurking. 

Successful failure avoidance is based on three interrelated concepts: failure recognition, risk assessment, and assognment of responsibility.

Failure Recognition

Being able to identify failure is the initial step in correctly anticipating and avoiding it. Typically, it is too unpleasant or too time consuming to examine the past, especially when the present is so demanding. It is often easier to conclude that bad luck, poor timing, or factors beyond their control kept them from achieving their goals. In reality, however, failure -- like success -- has a structure and a progression.

The detailed review, or postmortem, should occur within a week after a major setback, and it should involve all principal parties who have information and insights to exchange relative to that setback.

Another way to understand failure is to recognize it as the absence of known success factors.

In many ways, the postmortem resembles the symptoms analysis that you did in phase 1, except that here you have the benefit of hindsight. Instead of dealing with opinions, you are reviewing fact:

• History of symptoms and causes. Review the initial symptoms of your latest success or setback and categorize them as signals to watch for in the future.
• Specific impact on all aspects of the organization. Once the anxiety or euphoria subsides, you need to take a broader scan of the situation to see the true extent of its influence.
• Financial effects on the company. This is perhaps the most concrete and objective indicator of how the organization has been affected. 
• Lessons learned. Here is your opportunity to ask what, if anything, you would do differently the next time. On the other hand, if you actually did it perfectly this time, this is your chance to record every detail so as to ensure that you repeatedly follow that exact path toward success in the future.

Risk Assessment

The procedures can take many forms: 

• Regularly scheduled meetings that serve as brainstorming sessions to flush out latent problems or opportunities and evaluate their upside and downside potentials.
• Detailed studies that compare various risk factors in an attempt to rank them.
• Business procedures, such as the ones used in the primary alternative, that can be used to provide detailed steps for specifying, quantifying, and ranking risk elements.

In spite of the many ways to design and implement risk assessment procedures, certain characteristics are essential to each type:

• The procedure must be formal, documented, and mandatory. Each major plan must include a risk assessment because all major decisions have some element of risk.
• The procedure must be focused on the impact and likelihood of failure. Two criteria must be included: 

1. The impact on each area at risk (e.g., revenue, cost, labor relations, litigation, community relations) must be clearly defined in concrete terms and understood by all potentially affected elements of the company, and 
2. You must assign a probability or likelihood that the impact will actually reach the magnitude defined; this can be expressed in words (e.g., high, ,medium, or low probability of occurrence) or mathematically (e.g., a 30 percent likelihood of happening).

• The procedure must be a primary source of contingency plans. The value of risk assessment procedures is maximized when they produce backup plans, including worst-case scenarios.

Assignment of Responsibility
One or more individuals must be responsible for:

• Monitoring key indicators (success or failure).
• Developing and disseminating the contingency plans.
• Implementing the contingency plans.
• Coordinating all participants.

(Zambruski, M.S. (1999) The Business Analyzer and Planner. AMACOM, p132~140.)