Let's talk about the power of planning, and I don't mean just the act of planning where you have priorities, goals, strategies, or tactics. That's all essential to planning, but I'm actually talking about the result that comes from good planning. Planning gives you propulsion. It gives you momentum. And it gives you direction.

I want to borrow something from the engineering world often called the Venturi Tube effect or the Bernoulli effect. It is mathematical in nature, but its practical application is everywhere in your daily life. The concept is this: As you narrow your options through planning, you are then able to say yes to some things and no to others. If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. So, in planning, as you narrow the options of what you are going to do, how you are going to do it, and why you are going to do it, you are then in effect saying no to other things.

Let me illustrate it this way. If you were to narrow your fingers down on a watermelon seed and squeeze it, what would happen? It would shoot off, right? You are giving it propulsion, direction, and momentum. Likewise, in planning, when you narrow the options, you are speeding up the process.

In the Venturi effect, you start with a chaotic state where there are lots of opinions and different directions that could happen. Think of a jet engine where at the beginning it is very chaotic until those air streams are sucked through the engine. Other practical applications of the Venturi effect include refrigeration, the internal combustion engine, and many medical devices. If you know someone who wears a mask during their asthma breathing treatments, that is a venturi. It's forcing air in one way, squeezing it down, and giving it momentum.

We often don't apply this principle of saying we are going to do less in order to do more in our organization or lives. But I would like to illustrate to you that if you do the good work of planning, you can have propulsion towards your metric of success. Here are the three basic movements that happen in the power of planning.

Chaos

First, you start with chaos. There are lots of ideas, lots of ideation, and lots of possibilities which is a good thing. But it is chaos with ideas going in all directions.

Order

Next, we need to go from chaos to order. This might mean you identify the common themes, or you have a discussion to choose three of those 23 ideas you have. However you decide to do it, you have to narrow the options down.

Momentum/Thrust

Once you identify the order (priorities or goals) and assign strategies, tactics, mile markers, and metrics to them, you will begin to get momentum. Note that there will be a sense of loss over some of the things that you had to discard in the chaotic state. Some people mourn too much about what they are not able to do instead of celebrating what happens when we narrow and give ourselves that propulsion through planning.

There is power in planning, friends. If you want momentum, good direction, and to feel like you have energy behind your plan, use the Venturi Tube effect to create power in planning.

Dave Marks is a Senior Consultant at The Center Consulting Group and has over 35 years of church ministry experience including 23 years as a senior pastor. His consulting experience includes ministry assessment, leadership coaching, and strategic planning. Dave’s degrees include a B.S. in Bible, an M.S. in Organizational Leadership and a D.Min. in Leadership.

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