Show Notes

Plan your work. Work your plan: The Cascading Planner Approach

In this episode of the Service Game podcast, host Julie Krieger introduces the concept of the 'Cascading Planner' to help listeners effectively plan their year. Julie discusses common pitfalls in goal setting and planning, and emphasizes the importance of a structured process. By using the 'rocks, pebbles, and sand' analogy, she highlights how to prioritize big projects, important tasks, and daily minutiae. Julie walks through the steps of breaking down annual goals into quarterly milestones, monthly plans, and weekly priorities. Listeners are encouraged to download the Cascading Planner tool from Onsomble's website to streamline their planning efforts and achieve a productive, focused, and less stressful year. Julie concludes with practical advice on integrating this planning method into personal and professional life.

00:00 Introduction to the Service Game Podcast

00:56 New Year, New Goals: Setting the Stage

01:55 Common Pitfalls in Goal Setting

04:08 The Power of Planning

05:01 The Rocks, Pebbles, and Sand Analogy

08:34 Introducing the Cascading Planner

09:02 Breaking Down the Cascading Planner

10:15 Quarterly and Monthly Planning

12:47 Weekly Priorities and Daily Tasks

17:49 Conclusion and Resources

www.onsomble.com.au

Show transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Service Game podcast. Brought to you by Onsomble. I'm your host, Julie Krieger. For the past 14 years, I've been helping associations to grow and thrive, establishing systems, writing policies and procedures, implementing membership and sponsorship strateg. Setting up operations, undertaking complete governance restructures, developing strategies and advising CEOs, presidents and boards.

I am driven to support the hardworking people who give their time, heart and soul in the service of their members and in the pursuit of the greater good. Join me as we delve deep into this innovative, creative, values based and mission driven thing. I call the service game. Let's get going with today's episode.

Hello, hello, and welcome to the [00:01:00] service game podcast. I'm Julie Krieger, and it's just great to have your company. As I record this, it is early January in 2025. And so I thought this topic that we're going to cover today would be of particular relevance because a lot of people are engaged in that process of thinking about what they want to achieve for the year and setting about creating some plans and some goals, maybe even new year's resolutions, dare we say it. And that's a process that's important but can often go wrong. Many of us start the new year with lofty ambitions to do things Differently this year, we might write lists. We might have some personal things on there. Like we want to lose weight. We want to exercise. We want to eat well. We want to see more of our friends or work less or cut back on our vices. All of those sorts of things are pretty commonly seen. And from a work point of view, sometimes we just don't even know what the goals [00:02:00] should be or how to link them to strategy. We know that there's a corporate strategy, but how does that actually relate to what I do within the business and what impact that I'm able to have across the space of a year? Sometimes we get stuck in a trap of writing what is effectively a list of action items that need to be done, rather than actually a plan for how and when to achieve the things that we need to achieve.

So whatever the plans are that you may have written, maybe you've written them year on year for the last several years. And for a lot of people, maybe you, they often fall flat. And that can be for a variety of reasons.

Maybe we're just not clear about the exact goal. We can't visualize it. Maybe we don't believe that we can. We've set goals that are just so seemingly out of reach or unrealistic or not [00:03:00] how we envisage ourselves finishing the year that we just don't believe it and therefore We don't buy into the process of actually setting about trying to achieve them.

Sometimes we get stuck in these perfectionist fantasies that give us a little dopamine hit when we imagine what it's going to look like when we actually achieve those goals. But that's as far as it goes. We don't actually then make those goals become a reality because we haven't taken the right actions at the right time.

We haven't been process driven about that. We haven't doggedly and determinedly gone after those goals. And when we don't achieve them, that can then leave us with a sense of shame and self loathing or

if that's a bit too extreme, just disappointment. Sometimes we set the bar too high and set ourselves up for failure.

So then the question is, how do we turn that around and make this year different? How do we make [00:04:00] this year the one in which we hit those goals? We make this the year that we set ourselves up for success. And the answer, I hate to say it, is planning. But before you switch off thinking, right, well, that was that episode.

I'm about to give you a very simple how to process that will mean you nail your planning and kick goals, not just by the end of the year, but right the way through the year. I'm not talking about strategy development. That is a very different process altogether,

what I'm talking about today is planning your work because there are those old tropes, but they happen to be true. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Everyone's heard it. And also, on the plus side, if you plan your work, then you simply have to work your plan.

[00:05:00]

 To understand this very simple planning process that I'm going to talk to you about, we first need to go through The analogy of the rocks pebbles and sand maybe you've heard this before but bear with me for a couple of minutes while I just Outline that again. You can use this in your business or in life generally So imagine that you have a big jar and that you're going to fill it with a combination of rocks pebbles and sand And sand, so big to small.

The jar represents your time, your available time, and it's finite. Once you get to the top of that jar, there is no more time. The rocks represent your big picture projects, the things that will move the dial in your business or in your life, and help you achieve your goals. The pebbles are important things, but they're less impactful in the long run, and the sand is the minutiae, like emails.

So it's the daily grind stuff, and it's often the stuff that can take people's time [00:06:00] and squander it away. So you've got your jar, you've got your rocks, your pebbles, and your sand. The challenge is not just to fill the jar in the quickest way possible, but to fill the jar in the smartest way possible, and in doing so, you make the most out of your time.

If you start by putting in the sand, you might find yourself with only half the space left of the jar for the pebbles and the rocks. If you then put in the pebbles, suddenly very few rocks are going to fit into what space is left and the space isn't necessarily used efficiently. There's lots of air around those rocks that isn't getting filled by other rocks because there's just not enough room.

The alternative then? Is you've got your empty jar and you start with your rocks. You put them into the jar first. Your big ticket items. They get planned and scheduled [00:07:00] before anything else. Now maybe you can get 10 rocks in that jar. That's 10 projects or big ticket items that are going to make a real difference in your business or life across the space of the year.

Then if you pour in the pebbles, you'll find that they're They find space around the rocks, so they'll take up those air pockets and the bigger spaces that sit between the big rocks. Finally, when you pour in the sand, the sand eases its way between the rocks and the pebbles to fill the space that remains under, around and between those bigger items.

You can fill your time with emails. Seeking that holy grail of inbox zero or just trying to stay on top and not drown in the tidal wave that emails are But is that productive with this? rocks pebbles sand Analogy in mind

we [00:08:00] can turn our attention to the year ahead And the process for planning in a way that focuses rocks first, pebbles second, sand third to make this your most productive and calm year yet. So what is this magical planning process? Julie, I hear you asking. I'm glad you asked. It is, drum roll please,

the cascading planner. And what do I mean by that? Well, what we're doing with this cascading planner is we're starting off with the big rocks. We're starting off with our goals and we're then trickling down the process of planning from A big picture level, a macro level right down to a micro level as we work through the planning process.[00:09:00]

So here's how it works. First of all, we're going to assume that you have some sort of strategic direction in mind. That you might have a strategic plan for your organization and that's great. If not, I'm hoping you've still got some big picture goals set in place. Across maybe a three year or a five year time frame.

And what that's going to mean is that you'll be able to distill that into a set of goals that you can apply to this year to the year you're in.

Those goals will probably sit in key thematic areas. Which is great. And you might only have two or three goals under each thematic area. That's plenty, because each goal is going to take some effort to achieve.

So you've got annual goals. laid out in theme areas. Maybe you've got four, five of those, and you've got two or three goals per thematic [00:10:00] area or strategic focus area, you might want to call them. So you put them on a page, digital page or a physical page, whichever works for you. The next thing we're going to do is think about this from a quarterly perspective.

So if you've got four quarters of the year ahead, you're going to have to achieve certain milestones by the end of each of those quarters in order for those goals to reach fruition by the end of the year. Sounds pretty straightforward, but it's in this thinking process that the magic happens, this is a really simple process for planning But it's deceptively simple in the sense that it does take brain power up front and it's brain power well spent because it saves you not only having to do that thinking all the time continuously throughout the year but it's actually going to stop you potentially wasting a lot [00:11:00] of time and a lot of opportunity chasing things that come past at the last minute that might or might not set you towards your goal or derail you.

So we've got our annual goals. We've then got our quarterly milestones. If I want to achieve X by the end of the year, by the end of March, I'm going to have to have done Y and Z for example. And I will come back and go through a bit of an example

paint this picture a little bit more clearly.

Once you've got your quarterly milestones set out, then this next section I find super duper helpful. It's literally. A month by month plan for what you're going to do in terms of the big ticket items. Obviously on a daily basis, weekly basis, every day of your life for the rest of your life basis, you might be answering emails.

Sorry, I didn't mean for that to be such a depressing sounding [00:12:00] concept, but it's true. The emails don't stop. The more you dig a hole in the sand, the more it fills in again.

 So this month By month plan is going to highlight some key activity and key outcomes that you need to achieve within each month, within each quarter, within the year. So you're gradually breaking it down into smaller and smaller chunks of work as you go through. Hence the name Cascading Planner. It is your In the true sense, a funnel from pretty wide and broad, and as I said macro, at the top of the funnel, down and down and down, narrower and narrower, until you are looking at small tasks on a weekly basis.

And that brings us to the fourth stage of this process, and that is a week. By week priorities plan and in the cascading planner that I've put together that you can use in [00:13:00] your business and life, the weekly goals or weekly priorities can be laid out again in strategic plan areas or monthly priority areas, whichever way you can make sense of it in your brain.

But these are the things that you're going to list down. That you need to finish the week having achieved. So it's not things like I'm going to have zero emails in my inbox. That's not relevant to you achieving your goals by the end of the year.

So what does it look like then? Well, that is a great question. Let's jump into an example. I've written down. One or two examples on a document that is the Cascading Planner example sheet. And this is available to you if you want to download that from our website, onsomble. com. au slash resources. Look for Cascading Planner and you'll be able to grab the whole planning kit, as well as a [00:14:00] replica of that kit with some examples written in it to give you a sense of how it works.

So let's say our first strategic area is membership and our first goal under strategic area one of membership is to increase membership by 20 percent by the end of the year. So that's our high level goal. If we then scroll down to the quarterly milestones. I might have a couple of milestones for Q1 that are, I need to have cleansed my current membership database and data to make sure that what I'm looking at is actually the cleanest version of my information possible.

And I'm going to, for example, Put a proposal to the board for a new membership category to harness a sector of the potential market that we've never looked at before. So those are the Q1 goals for that annual goal of [00:15:00] increasing membership by 20. In Q2, maybe I'm going to develop a comms plan for the new membership category, or I'm going to develop all of my collateral and update my website.

That's the goal for Q2, for example. And then if we drill down even further, let's look at January. We might review all of the member data in January. We might do

a campaign to our current members to have them jump into our database to update their own details. So we're starting to get the nitty gritty details together for That higher level quarterly milestone of cleansing the current membership data. In February we might draft the board proposal and determine the budget impact.

We might begin setting up the learning management system that we're going to use to entice new members in. So again, just a little bit more detailed and a little bit more detailed. And then if you come to January, for example, and you've got week one or the [00:16:00] first week that you're back at work, your actions that you cannot leave that week without having achieved might be review the current data, do a sample test, check for duplicates and flaws in the data or flaws in the way the system is pulling the data. You might draft an email to the membership in your email system, calling for them to update their details in the system. So it trickles down from the big picture. We want to grow our membership to smaller and smaller and smaller task based activities. And then, of course, you will have your own daily task management process, which, you know, might be an online system.

I personally use Microsoft ToDo. I use actually a multitude of systems, but I've set them all up to trickle into to do at the end of the day so that everything across Every client that I'm working with across business and across my personal life all lands in the one space and I can then go through that [00:17:00] system and set my daily plan simply by dragging and dropping or ticking a box that says, yep, add that to my day.

And then again, now that I've got that plan set for that day, I just have to work through it. Plan your work. Work your plan. It's just a simple concept that makes such a big difference to what you can achieve every day, every day, without being stressed, without losing focus, without having to start

the day by thinking, what am I here for? What am I doing? And if you can maintain the diligence to just simply work through that list. then you relieve so much mental clutter and you become so much more productive. So that's the Cascading Planner in a nutshell. Now, as I said, you can download that from our website. So Onsomble, as you know, O N S O M B L E there is actually a page page on our website that tells you why [00:18:00] I've chosen to spell it in such a strange way.

So you go to onsomble. com. au slash resources and then look for Cascading Planner and it'll tell you all about what's included in there and it gives you the opportunity to download that and with that monthly priorities. Section, we've got a version in there that can print out in a four, if you want to print it in a four or print it in a two.

If you wanted to print that in a big poster size that you can then stick on a wall somewhere, maybe you don't wanna print it at all and you just wanna keep it as a PDF that you can add to, and edit as you go through the year. And either way is great, completely up to you. But the main thing is that on four separate pages.

You've got your work plan for the year, and all you have to do is follow the bouncing ball, do the work in the time frame that you've allocated it, and you've got to do the thinking up [00:19:00] front. But that's great. This is a great time of year to be doing that because it's quieter. I don't know if it's the same for you, but certainly for me, the meetings haven't ramped up in their frequency at this point, and there is still a little bit of room to think.

More clearly and to take that time to set that plan in place. And I guarantee you the amount of time and mental capacity that that will save you as you go through the next quarter. Months, weeks, days, right through to the end of the year is going to be game changing. It really will make such a big impact in your life.

So I recommend that you undertake this process. Do the work now of the thinking and reap the rewards for the rest of the year. I wish you all the best. And as ever, please don't forget to reach out to us at any time. You can find us via thrive at onsomble. com. au or you [00:20:00] can reach out to us on our socials or directly via the website via our contact form.

Thank you again as ever for listening in. Till next time.

Thanks for listening to the Service Game Podcast by onsomble. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe and write us a quick review. It helps us to reach more people and we really appreciate your support. To access our downloadable resources and tailored support options designed for NFPs, head to onsomble.com. au or look us up on social media. You'll find all our links in the show notes for this episode. Chat next time.