Before there was Hannibal the Cannibal on the big screen, there was the A-Team’s Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith from ‘80s day-time TV.
Hannibal was the fearless leader of a team of ex-special forces who were accused of and convicted of robbing the Bank of Hanoi during the Vietnam War.
Needless to say, our A-Team heroes never committed that crime. They were framed!
In each episode, the A-Team made some wronged person whole again by getting the better of the bad guys who started it all.
When the A-team successfully completed their mission, which they did for 5 full seasons, Hannibal would say, “I love it when a plan comes together.” The A-Team smoked cigars. TV credits rolled.
Here’s the thing about the A-Team’s plan. They had one.
They didn’t look to the loudest people for answers. They didn’t compare themselves to their competitors. They didn’t get distracted by the next shiny thing.
They relied on their training. They were capable. They knew it and they acted like it.
I was not part of the A-Team. However …
One of my last jobs before I decided to go the self-employed route was working at a digital publishing company. The COO had a saying: “We plan the work. We work the plan.”
It was simple. It was effective.
Having a plan worked. It kept everyone on track and accountable. Shit got done.
We set goals. We planned the work to support those goals. We broke the work down into quarters and months, then by week and finally by day.
We had a company-wide meeting first thing Monday mornings, during which we reviewed our biggest tasks. We called them “rocks”.
If something was on track we moved on. If something was off track we did something about it. If something needed adjusting, we adjusted. We controlled the controllables.
Over a six-year period, we grew from 7 employees to 40. We tripled the revenue.
We worked the heck out of that plan.
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