You want your business to be successful and probably have many ideas on how to improve certain aspects of its day-to-day organisation, but unless you can act upon your vision those ideas will unfortunately never take shape.
Taking action – with a plan in place – enables you to prepare for challenges and to successfully implement your vision. Today, we’re going to discuss some key principles to developing an action plan.
What is an action plan?
Quite simply, an action plan outlines the steps you need to take in order to achieve goals. It plays an important role in project management as it helps teams communicate effectively and reach an outcome within a given time frame.
Why do you need an action plan?
You’ve probably heard the famous quote – ‘By failing to prepare, you’re preparing to fail,’ but how relevant is it to you in your business? As action coaches we’ve certainly noticed that one of the reasons behind any project failing, or objectives not being met, is lack of planning.
Planning in advance gives you a clear strategy on roles and responsibilities, obstacles you need to overcome and resources, etc.
What should an action plan include?
Your action plan should include tasks and the steps needed to complete them. What does your team need to do each week to ensure you stay on track? Do you have a document which you can hold people accountable to?
The detail
The success of an action plan lies with the detail within it. For instance, let’s take a scale of 90 days. What key steps do you need to take within the next 90 days? Focusing on too many long term goals can be distracting. Instead, we’d recommend you create a list of short term actions which lead to you achieving your goals. Break things down into 10-15 steps and write them down. It will help keep you on track.
What key actions do your team members need to take to achieve these goals? Make sure you have an accountability plan and a management plan in place for them to achieve specific goals.
By breaking tasks down into smaller, more manageable steps, you’ll soon get to your higher, long-term goal.
Remember – Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither was any successful business.
If you’d like to learn more about action planning, or you’d be interested in coming along to one of our planning events, feel free to call us on 02392 454 111 or get in touch. We’d love to help you achieve your goals.
