I was visiting friends a couple of weeks ago and went to the county fair. It wasn't what I hoped. There were no farm animals - always a favorite of mine. There was very little in the way of interesting arts and crafts. There was no shortage of amusement rides that didn't look to be well maintained or were certainly not for adults. And for some reason, it was bring your "motorcycle to fair day" - noisy and a little creepy for me. But there were two things that I appreciated; food vendors that offered corn dogs, (yes, I guiltily enjoyed one) and a Frisbee catching contest where the dogs were either really cute, funny, really good or all of those things. And they were all shapes, sizes and breeds.

As I watched some of the best dogs perform I noticed something; they had to anticipate where the Frisbee would be. They couldn't see it as it flew and follow it, they had to run like crazy and somehow get a sense of when it passed over their heads, and what seemed miraculous to me, jump up and catch it mid-air. It requires speed, accuracy, coordination, timing and agility. I saw dogs that were running down the course seemingly as fast as they could, somehow sense the Frisbee as it was approaching them from behind, shift into another gear - you could see the burst of speed and somehow be right where they needed to be as the Frisbee slowed and started to descend to within their leaping range for a dramatic catch mid-air!

It got me thinking about how our jobs, our companies, our projects require us to plan so we can be there at the right time with the right plan and make the catch!

So there are all kinds of planning that we have to do all the time, right? We have to plan our day, we have to plan projects, we have to plan how deals will progress, we have to plan how we prospect for business, and of course the big one - strategic planning. As a dear friend of mine who runs an incredibly successful technology company shared with an audience the other day, "Designing, implementing, managing security solutions, and strategic planning is important." You can and should spend time and money on it, but the most important part of being successful at it is creating viable options. She and her company is laser focused on planning and executing, and they know it's more than firewalls and encryption - it's planning, preparing and reacting. I think you can appreciate and better understand the concept through this analogy she draws: You have a large airliner to land. You have options about where to land it based on variables such as time, fuel, air traffic, passenger load and more. Your job is to put together the best plan for landing that aircraft, giving yourself options that are viable, should something change before landing time that you couldn't have foreseen. It's like the dog having a well-practiced plan to catch that Frisbee, but knowing and ready to execute options should a gust of wind or a bump in the grass cause for an adjustment. As my friend describes it, you need to have sufficient planning incorporating options because things change.