Strategic Planning & Forecasting

I used to have many false preconceptions of what I thought were relatively easy skills to master given X amount of time — anything from marketing to design and development. Turns out, all of those are fairly difficult. But again, with enough rigor, grit, trial and error, those have skills have become easier (heavy emphasis on the “ier” part) over time.

Several years into delving into all of these skill sets, I’ve encountered what has yet to be the most difficult task — forecasting. While all three aforementioned skills all deal with some rudimentary type of forecasting, mostly in the form of resource allocation (we predict X should happen when we devote Y marketing/design/development resources to it), when it comes to the financials, that part’s always been a black box and barf-inducing buzzword to the highest of levels. And that black box has to deal with the overall picture and trajectory you want to hit. That’s a huge undertaking and challenge — doing the resource allocation forecasting on all three fronts plus the varying ways you could take something from Point A to Point B —  and it’s something I’m starting to delve into … so, onward and hakuna matata.