Nutrisystem and Business Planning (What?) - Good Decisions Can Be Loaded with Bad Decision Potential

So I went onto Nutrisystem 2 weeks ago.  That's the diet plan that you set up where you get your food shipped to you -- breakfast, lunch, dinner.  Dan Marino says it works, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Now I'm not one of those typical 1-800 try me types.  I don't have "thighmaster" or a bowflex.  But this thing grabbed me for a few reasons.  First of all, celebrity sponsorship (yup, I went for it).  I grew up in Pittsburgh when Dan Marino was quarterbacking the Pitt Panthers and have followed his career.  The picture of Dan after he had completed the Nutrisystem plan was pretty convincing as he had always been a beefy kind of guy.

So how do I feel about my decision to go onto Nutrisystem -- good one or bad one?  Well, both. 

The good decision was to go for a healthier lifestyle.  But what this type of planned system also exposes is not only how many bad decisions I had been making, and believe me there were a lot, but it actually put me in a minefield of potential bad decisions.  Hot dog at daughter's friend's birthday party at the bowling alley?  Bad Decision.  Pizza last Sunday night during the Steelers game? Another Bad Decision.  And there are so many available, take your pick.

On this type of system I've moved from a world where on a normal day I was generally happy that I had made a good decisions on a given meal ("I had salad!"), to one where the expected norm has to be the Good Decision and so anything that strays from that is now a Bad Decision.  Nutrisystem is pretty well designed to help you avoid Bad Decisions, and they counsel you that if you do fall into a Bad Decision, get up and keep moving.

And so I've realized that it all comes down to ones priorities.  I have an over-arching long term priority on becoming healthy and losing weight, and if I can keep my eye on that then I'll be good.  Remember the forest rather than the trees.  But we are chemical beings, and over time there will be moments when that high-minded priority set gets supplanted through temptation or perhaps a desire for immediate gratification (heh heh heh).  I know the outcome of this flipping of priorities in the moment, and it results in a Bad Decision.

So now let me extrapolate this a bit to business planning and decision making.  It is important, similar to the diet here, to first focus on a higher set of objectives that you are trying to achieve.  i.e. better health, loss of weight.  revenue growth, less risk.  You then have to prioritize them to develop an understanding of which ones will contribute the most to your desired outcome, and those priorities serve as your guidepost for business planning.  We have entered the fall, and in the air is not only football season but for many of us it is planning season.  An overall "vision" or "mission" may help to guide planning season, but how does that translate into a quality plan that is aligned to the organization's overall priorities?  Have the organization's overall priorities been explicitly defined and put into priority so as you develop your plan you understand what the organization is trying to achieve?  Most often we don't see this.  So each group is left with the temptation of simply securing your resources in the moment through a well placed argument or back-room politicking (grab the hotdog at the birthday party, health aside).

And after a while "planning" doesn't feel so much like planning as it does a beauty contest.   Temptation has won.  Some folks slipped on the high heels coming down the stairs and they are OUT -- didn't get what they wanted.  Others miraculously wound up with more than they should have received.  And there is little logic to back up the plan and the many decisions made.  The organization has fallen to a base level of confrontation and gut-driven selection rather than an alignment to your overall strategy.  Is it any wonder that people hate planning season?

Define the objectives of your organization.  Do it collaboratively to ensure that everyone is on board.  Prioritize them.  Use them as your measuring stick to guide alternative courses of action, or investments in programs or products.  This produces results that work for the organization, keeping it healthy.

By the way, I've lost 8 pounds.  But I feel the claws of the Bad Decisions nipping at my heels daily.