About Me

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Ottawa, Canada
Dr. Charles Lam has since 1971 received training in West Germany (telecom) and university education in U.K. (management) and acquired working experiences in Hong Kong and Canada, in a utility company, Hong Kong Government, a multinational organization and a SME. In his career path, he has acquired qualifications from UK institutions including DBA (1990), MBA (1980) and Chartered Engineer (1978). Since 1986, he has left pure engineering to teaching various subjects of business management in Hong Kong for famous universities of Hong Kong, England and United States. He also has served the society as a member of an advisory committee of the Hong Kong Government for eight years, and as the Hon. Chairman of its Consumer Education Group. Later, he set up his own company to offer services as a consultant, writer and speaker. In his 'Second Half Time', he has been working passionately on integrating Christian values with management knowledge, in the marketplace/workplace ministry, serving hospitals, churches and organizations, as a speaker, consultant, life coach, and the leader of a REST Group based on a life story approach. Charles is currently living with his wife in Canada.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Reasons for planning failures

Some say that plans more often fail than succeed. If we recall major and minor plans we and our friends have made in the last few months, we’d realise how true this statement is. I try to identify some key reasons for planning failures below.

1. nature of the plan. For example, the plan itself is not well defined; wanting too big a dream to come true; too aggressive target dates are set; too heavy costs would be incurred. Planning should include planning how to control the execution of the plan; the absence of controls will lead to failure.

2. no flexibility is allowed in the plan. For example, activities must be conducted in sequence in stead of running in parallel; there are constraints (e.g. time, physical space) that cannot be changed.

3. decisions relevant to the plan are made under poor conditions. For example, when the planners are stressful, emotional, under time pressure; when the atmosphere is poor.

4. planners’ personal weaknesses; fear of consequences, self-blinkering, stubbornness, procrastination, short-sightedness, are some of them.

5. resistance by people affected by the plan. The closer are the persons to you, the heavier would be the blow. Many societal plans made by governments and social organisations fail because of resistance by the general public.

6. good plan but bad timing. Imagine a group of people have spent months to work out a plan, but then suddenly there is an environmental change. When SARS (2003, Hong Kong) started to emerge, many business decisions were executed, as if there was no SARS, leading to big economic losses.

一般個人 計劃失敗的原因

計劃性質:夢想太大、達成目標的日期太近、花費太多等

計劃無彈性:不能改變限期、不能同時進行、 範圍狹窄

在惡劣情況下作決定:例如壓力大、鬧情緒、太急迫

計劃人本身的缺點:害怕後果、盲目、固執、坐失良機、眼光短等

遭他人反對:尤其是親人,受計劃影嚮的人

計劃好,但時機不適當