So what’s your plan? A letter from the publisher

The future has a defining characteristic—it is unknown, says Print21 publisher, Patrick Howard.

This more than anything else has shaped human life, from the caveman around the campfire to the head of state. Fear of the unknown is never far from experience and how we deal with it is a measure of our life.

One of the most common responses is to pretend it does not exist. We fill the void with an amazing diversity of philosophies, religions, beliefs, hopes and dreams. These are strategies to deal with the future and all are likely to be as good as the other. Research indicates that a common shared belief, no matter how strange, is better for an individual’s welfare than no belief at all.

At bottom, all our stratagems are some type of plan to deal with the future. Whether buying insurance or casting fate to the winds, the essential thing is to have the conviction of your own belief and take responsibility for your behaviour.

In business, there is plenty of room for visions and dreams. The notion we make business decisions in some super-rational environment is wrong. Management theory is full of the need for visionary leaders to direct the troops’ gaze towards the light on the hill. However, common sense indicates that having a plan to get up the slope is the best way of arriving at the summit.

This leads to the inevitable conclusion, that any plan is better than no plan at all. There is no way of testing the utility of visions and goals. Be careful what you wish for because you might get it. Utopian dreamers with a solid plan can achieve amazing results, while pragmatic realists without one are left floundering. The important thing is to take control of the future and the best way to do that is to have a plan.

Taking control … and some time off

A good plan is a combination of science, engineering and art; it seeks to eliminate the unknown and the unquantifiable while building strategies to handle inevitable unforeseen circumstances. That plans work can be realised the next time you are in an aircraft at 35,000 feet. Someone planned the engineering that keeps you up there. Someone invented jet propulsion and refined the aerodynamics. The combination was sufficiently reality tested to ensure that air travel is the safest form of transport. However, flight in its essence remains one of humanity’s most visionary accomplishments.

There is little need to dwell on the limitations of even the best-laid plans—mice and men and all that. There is a need to encourage more printers, small to mid-sized enterprises, to adopt the planning culture. At a time when the industry is enduring difficult trading decisions, day-to-

day survival takes precedence. But dogged persistence will only take you so far.

There are many gates into planning, budgeting being the most obvious. Knowing your real costs is essential to sustainable operations. When faced with death-defying price competition, the only way of rationally deciding whether to compete or not is to know what it costs you to produce. You can plan to meet the market, if that is your goal.

Reading management textbooks is good too. The shelves in bookstores are groaning under the weight of inspired opinion. It is not that one seer has all the answers but a regular diet of business theory keeps one up to the mark. Knowing how others approach business performance will feed into your own planning process. When did you last read a management book?

Seek and pay for expert advice. There is an unwarranted scepticism about the role of the consultant in our industry. Someone you employ to tell you how to do your job. But you pay a doctor and a lawyer when required. If you identify a persistent problem in your business, which may be an acute inability to formulate a plan, then it makes sense to bring in someone who specialises in planning.

Take control of your destiny, discover your goals and make 2011 the year you plan to achieve them.

Having said that, my plan is to take some time off over Christmas. Sit on a beach, sip some cool drinks and watch Ponting’s players win back the Ashes. The Print21 team will be back in January, refreshed and ready for the fray.

We wish you all the compliments of the Season. Merry Christmas and let’s plan for a Happy and Prosperous New Year.