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March 08, 2013 at 06:49 AM
“You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” That line, as many of you already know, comes from “Jaws” — maybe my favorite all-time movie.
In the scene where it’s spoken, Sheriff Brody (Roy Scheider) is shoveling chum off the back of Quint’s (Robert Shaw) ratty fishing boat. Along with the oceanographer, Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), the unlikely trio has set out to capture the great white shark that’s terrorizing the resort community of Amity Island.
The town is desperate. The shark is killing people, scaring away tourists in a town that needs tourism to survive. Brody, Quint and Hooper are the town’s salvation. They have a plan: capture and kill the shark.
So they chug along the choppy waters, and Brody’s sent to do the dirty work, scooping out chum in hopes to lure the great white. When he finally comes face to face with the massive shark for the first time, he backs up, slowly, horrified at the prospects of actually achieving the goal. With a cigarette dangling from his mouth, Brody utters the famous line: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
As I said earlier, the trio had a plan: capture and kill the shark. Ok, that’s the plan, but is it realistic? Do they have the necessary manpower and firepower to get the job done?
Likewise, when you set your goals for 2013, did you set them with an intention that they were actually achievable? While it’s great to shoot for the moon, were the numbers you planned to sell of annuities and other products something within your reach? Or were you simply shoveling chum off the back of the boat?
See also: The 4 enemies inside you
If Quint and his motley crew had truly mapped out a plan, perhaps their voyage would have turned out differently. If you mapped out your 2013 production plan you would have a better idea of how to accurately hit your targets.
I recently spoke to advisor Sean Lee, president and founder of Murray, Utah-based SPL Financial, Inc. While we didn’t talk about Jaws, we did talk about planning.
Lee is a former baseball player, and he looks at his planning practice in sports terms. “I was an outfielder and a pitcher, and I hit one homerun in the entire 24 years that I played baseball, and that was an inside the park homerun,” Lee told me.
