Your Leadership Coach

  The phrase for the week is "Contingency Planning” When I was growing up in Chicago, I loved to play chess.    What I loved most about the game was trying to predict what moves my opponent might make and what I would do in response.    I’m too impatient for chess now, but I have used those skills throughout my career and am confident it has been the foundation for much of my planning success stories.    I call it contingency planning but the formal term is scenario planning. It is so much a part of how I approach my personal and professional life, I rarely realize I’ve engaged this tool.    In order for this level of planning to work, you must be committed to the amount of time it takes to sift through all the possible outcomes or scenarios.    Often, a person will only plan for the outcome they want and when things go awry, they are back to square one--researching, planning, etc.    Often there is a mourning period before they are able to regroup to begin again.    Meanwhile, I