Analyzing Your Personal Plan

If you’ve followed the three previous blogs or the Personal Futures Workbook, you should have a personal strategic plan for the next ten years. Your plan includes three parts:
• A vision— a mental image of your life ten years from now.
• An action plan composed of strategies and a timetable for execution of each strategy.
• A contingency plan—actions to take when a low-probability, high-impact event occurs.
Now is the time to do some analysis before you put your plan into effect.

Most of us, when creating a vision or a plan, do so with enthusiasm. Analysis puts a more critical eye on the plan, looking for ways to improve it and to avoid future disappointments.

I suggest three different types of analysis. Each will look at your plan from a new perspective.

First is Vulnerability Analysis which looks at each of your personal domains for weakness or vulnerability. Imagine your life as a table with six legs, your activities, finances, health, housing, social, and transportation. Which areas are vulnerable? What events might occur that would make one area vulnerable?
For example, Health. Do you have a physical weakness of any kind? Are you badly out of shape, heavy smoker, high cholesterol, chronic condition, etc.? Any of these, or a combination could make you vulnerable.

Another example, Finances. If you or your family lost one income, how long could you continue your present way of life? What would happen?

For each of your personal domains, look for potential weaknesses. Then consider; if one of the domains fails, which other domains will be immediately affected? The concern here is to avoid a cascading of events where one negative event causes another, which causes a third. For example, failing health causes the loss of a job, which causes loss of income and insurance, which causes severe financial problems which leads to the loss of the family home, leading to the breakup of the family. The recent financial crisis demonstrated examples of similar cascading events at many levels of life in many countries.

Once any vulnerabilities are recognized, develop strategies to change your life to reduce or eliminate the weak spots.

The second analytical technique is Gap Analysis. Here, you are looking for gaps in your plan. That is, gaps between what you want to do and what you can actually do. Very frequently, this will be related to your finances. If there is a gap between what you want to do and what you can afford, you will have to find a way to close that gap.

Finally, is the Search for Unintended Consequences. Very often, when we make plans for change there are consequences that we didn’t see coming. This is the place to look for them.

A good tool for this is the futures wheel, which can be drawn on any piece of paper. Very simple, but very effective. Draw a circle and write a one or two word name for an action you plan to take. Draw a short line away from the circle and name a consequence of that action. Draw another line from the action and list another direct consequence. After you have identified the direct consequences, pick one, draw a line away from it and list a result of that consequence. Now you have three levels. If the action in the center was “Lose weight” one of the consequences might be “smaller waist” which might result in “need new clothes.”

This is a great tool for personal or group brainstorming. Jerry Glenn is credited with developing the first futures wheel, or mind map, and they idea spread quickly. In another blog I’ll spend some time on futures wheels.

Here’s a link to YouTube to a one minute book trailer for It’s YOUR Future… Make it a Good One.! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anKiQ_rJua4. I’m told it has shown up in a lot of places on the web, including on Amazon as a review! More details on the book at www.vernewheelwright.com . More information on personal futures, including free workbooks, at www.personalfutures.net .