the five stages of missing plan

To everyone at work, I promise I'm not signalling anything with this cartoon (I'm confident we'll make it all up by Q4).

I was thinking of the funny dance we all do in "meeting plan" (hitting your volume targets). Whenever you're off, the easiest thing to do is blame the plan itself and whoever committed to it in the first place (which is particularly funny when it was you). 

There's a lot of nuance around timing and when and how to communicate that you're off plan.  The process reminded me of Kübler-Ross' "Five Stages of Grief". 

I first riffed on the "Five Stages" in 2001 in this cartoon as part of my Sky Deck series, when I was interviewing for jobs in b-school.

Comments

[Heidi]

I'm a new marketer and new reader. I work for a Fortune 500 company and am totally in love with your site.

Thank you for bringing some much needed comic relief to my day.

[David t. Jones]

Fun to see the old Sky Deck cartoon - and to note how much your work, style and ideas have evolved so well.