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Planning Season Is the Best Time to Rethink Planning
Planning season is under way everywhere. And as every year it is engaging, exhausting and slightly absurd.
Teams refine spreadsheets, debate assumptions, adjust premises, look for compromises. The goal is the one number that captures everything. Except there is no one number, and the moment it is signed off it is already out of date.
Many companies want to improve their planning, but right now there is no time for it. You are in the middle of the process, fighting deadlines, budgets and alignment rounds.
Yet right now is the best moment to think about what should work differently next time. Nowhere is the friction more visible than in the running process.
Anyone who observes now where loops form, which discussions repeat, and where the current approach hits its limits, lays the groundwork for the next round.
Planning means more than coordinating numbers. It aligns the company to its goals and decides how capital is allocated. And it should be robust enough to keep the company able to act when conditions change.
Once planning season is over, nobody remembers the places where it hurt. That is the actual problem.