“Napoleon built his campaigns of iron and when one piece broke the whole structure collapsed. I made my campaigns using string, and if a piece broke I tied a knot and carried on.”
Arthur Wellesley Wellington
For those of you that don’t know Arthur went on to defeat Napoleon at Waterloo and effectively end the French control of Europe. Though it’s two hundred years old I find the Iron Dukes’ words more relevant than many of his more contemporary and fashionable counterparts.
In business and increasingly at home we are forever told that we need to set ourselves targets, have goals and a plan to get there. Often these include spreadsheets and charts which are supposed to measure progress. However it is all too common that these charts take over and become more important than the objective itself. When this happens the target dates, costs and so on are often endlessly amended, rendering the whole process worthless. When things don’t go to plan then rather just fudge the spreadsheet surely it be better to review the objective. Is it still relevant? Do we need to change the plan? If we don’t re-evaluate our objectives regularly then we run the risk of making the process (who doesn’t like turning all those little excel boxes green!) more important than what the process is trying to achieve.
Since moving to Brasil we have had to continuously review and change our plans – carefully constructed timelines went out of the window, money ran out, unforseen problems with power, sanitation and bureaucracy all played havoc with our meticulously detailed plans and spreadsheets.
When you’ve moved your family to the Brasilian rainforest; your plans aren’t working, you have invested everything you have and nothing is progressing as you thought it would be from comfort of your office in England you have a stark choice. You can give up – we followed the plan but it just wasn’t to be. Or you change the plan.
We opted to change the plan!
We never intended to open an English School in the local town, but after several problems working with other schools and many broken promises we now have our own small school. Though not in the original plan it has become a vital source of income and has helped us integrate with the local community and we really enjoy teaching! Our small Pousada is also going well. I am proud that we have managed to evolve our goals and now have two small, fledgling businesses. For all the complicated spreadsheets and plans the most important objective we had in moving to Brasil was more family time and we have definitely achieved that. So nearly two years after leaving England and 10 months after realising that our plan wasn’t working we are still here….following the Iron Duke’s advice and making our plans from string so that when they break we just tie a knot and carry on!
