My purpose is to set up with him or her an apparatus to still achieve that plan by the end of the year. I explore the first quarter in detail to see how much they know about it and what they’re going to do about it. And the emphasis that I have is on early action.

What I say is, “People, we’re talking about operating plans. This is not about hopes and dreams. This is about realities. Don’t tell me you hope it’s going to get better. Don’t tell me that you dream about doing it better . The reality is that in the first quarter it wasn’t better. That’s the
database that we’re going to go from, and that’s the database we’re going to act upon.”

Now, if it develops that we can foresee some cash issues at the end of the second quarter, I might reduce the capital budget a little bit. I’m going to say, “Okay, we approved$50 million for capital expenditures in your operating plan, but I’m going to reduce that to $45 million in order to maintain our cash flow plan. Now you have to select the capital
projects most beneficial to the business. If you’re back on plan at the end of the quarter, fine, we’ll look at those things again, and we may bring them back to the original state.”

This process doesn’t guarantee that you make every plan in the corporation—you don’t. But you’d be surprised by the number of people who come awfully close under conditions that were a lot different than were assumed when they put the plan together.

Taken from: Execution The discipline of Getting things Done