Failing to plan is planning to fail

“If you do plan, you will be much more successful in life,” renowned entrepreneur Sir Ray Avery told the 500 or so delegates during his opening keynote address. “If you don’t plan, you’re living a life of ricochets bouncing from one event to the next.”

Later, Everest-conquering mountaineer and extreme marathon runner Mike Allsop echoed the planning point. “I just build a really strong plan so that when I’m overwhelmed – and I know I will be at some point – I just stick to the plan and take the next step.”

Their comments set the scene for the three day conference in Lincoln which splices practical management workshops with inspirational keynote addresses.

Allsop, one of only half a dozen people ever to have run seven marathons on seven continents in seven days, relayed his three foundations or principles: to dream; to plan; and to “never, ever, give up.” “If I don’t give up I can never fail.”

By dreaming he refines ideas to the point they become goals, though he stressed the process is “completely different to goal setting”.

Meanwhile the planning for Everest included meticulously analysing why others had failed and mentally preparing for things like passing dead climbers on the route.

“The number one reason I found people failed was punctuality,” he said, explaining how a summit attempt needs to start at 9pm the previous evening. “I started getting ready at 4pm.”

Another ‘take home’ from Avery was to focus on customer needs, not what you produce. “In everything you do, you must be customer centric, not product centric. That applies to everyone in this room,” he told the mostly dairy farmer audience.

He also stressed the power of teams during a broad ranging and entertaining “journey” through his life and how he became a New Zealander. “Everyone in this room is clever, but not one of us is as clever as all of us put together. The thing that’s made me very successful is building teams…. If you get it right you will become unassailable in everything you do in life.”

Avery, an ex-pat orphan, lauded the New Zealand attitude that nothing is impossible, explaining how after a couple of years travelling the world he knew from the moment he arrived at Auckland airport he’d “found home.”

“For Kiwis ‘impossible’ is just a starting point. None of the things I’ve achieved on the world stage would have happened if I hadn’t come to New Zealand.”

Not that his early career in the UK – starting at age 14 with running away from an orphanage for the umpteenth time – had been a failure. “I wanted to be a millionaire by 26. Well I got that wrong. I was a triple millionaire by 26,” the now 67-year-old told the SIDE audience.