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Six Greatest Ideas for Building Creative Plans • 131

are trying to make these planning events regular and routine. It is a good idea to call
a one- or two-day planning session to modify a particular part of the plan and to
hold such a meeting in an ordinary conference room.

The documentation of a planning session should be on flip charts subsequently
transferred to an electronic file.

The creative planning process

The word 'creative' reminds us that we are looking for the best possible plan. Try to
avoid all your prejudices and preconceived ideas. In particular, in the early part of
the planning process do not constrain your thinking by doubts about the availability
of resources.

We will of course recognise that there is a management budgeting cycle and that
each plan needs to have resources approved at appropriate times during that cycle.

Nevertheless we need creative ideas to generate new initiatives. After all, any
company's management can put resources where they like. If the team gives man-
agement a good business case and enough time to react, you may have to buy in
resources seeing from the plan the results that will follow.

The creative planning process has various steps, described below.

Gather a database of knowledge
Remember the Chinese proverb - do not decide where you want to go and how to
get there until you are quite certain where you are now.

The team needs to understand the customer's business, the customer's indus-
try, the customer's current financial and competitive environment, the influencesof
the general economy, etc.

That's before the team adds the supplier-company environment, its current mar-
ket strategies, position in the account, products and services, etc. If we have organised
a huge database of knowledge, planning will become more and more effective.