In most organisations the commercial plan is agreed first and the people plan is derived from it afterwards, usually as a headcount number in a budget. The sequence looks sensible and quietly guarantees a gap.
The gap is lead time. A commercial milestone in Q3 that depends on a capability the organisation does not have requires a decision in Q4 of the previous year, because a senior appointment takes three to five months to complete and another three to become productive. When the people plan is written in January, the milestone has already slipped and nobody has recorded why.
The second cost is sequencing. Capabilities depend on one another. Hiring a commercial director before the product leadership exists produces a frustrated commercial director. Plans built as a headcount total rather than a sequence lose this entirely.
The third cost is compounding. Each delayed capability pushes the next, so a plan that was six weeks behind in March is a quarter behind by September, at which point the response is usually to hire faster rather than to fix the sequence.
Reconciling the two is not a large exercise. It requires the commercial plan read milestone by milestone, each one tested for the capability it depends on, and each capability given a route and a lead time. Four to six weeks of work, refreshed when the plan moves.
The measure of whether it has been done is straightforward: can the board say, for each of the next four milestones, which person or capability it depends on and whether that is in place. Where the answer is no, the people plan is a budget line rather than a strategy.
A milestone in Q3 that depends on a capability you do not have requires a decision in Q4 of the previous year.
