objective. For this reason, every objective must be
assigned an “owner” who may or may not
be involved in the actions to achieve that objective,
but is certainly responsible for the monitoring and
measurement of the progress of the objective.
Defining one or more action plans for each
objective allows you, as the agency owner, to
determine whether or not your staff is activating
the planned changes to progress the plan. Believe
it or not, most Plans fail simply because of lack of
implementation, not from poor implementation.
Your staff is already busy and we are asking them
to change something to yield results different from
last year. Unless the Action Plan is well-defined and
you or someone is helping the staff implement the
activities, they are not likely to be implemented
simply because you desire the changes to be made.
by Al Diamond
within the next five years. The lowest level goal
of each strategy becomes the objectives for the
organization for the next year.
As you can see, the agency’s annual objectives are
well defined short term goals within the strategies
that will allow you to achieve your long term goals.
Following this format allows you to avoid the
pitfalls of setting objectives that are not attuned to
your Mission and Vision. If each objective refers
to a strategy needed to change your organization
from its historical position into the company that
will put you into the place you desire personally
and professionally in the next five years.
Many Plans end with a set of objectives that you and
your staff are then expected to achieve during the
upcoming year. But stopping at a set of objectives and
a budget attuned to those objectives is dangerous.
People are not motivated by WHAT needs to be done.
They achieve or fail in their goals based on knowing
HOW to accomplish the objectives.
We have found that the most important ingredient
to effective planning is an Action Plan for every
objective. An Action Plan is short term in duration
(usually quarterly) and defines the “activities” that
we believe should result in the achievement of the
So, behind every Action Plan, we recommend you
estimate monthly benchmarks, the markers or
progress you expect from every Action Plan every
month. We measure the results of the benchmarks
against our expectation of how the Action Plan is
carried out and evaluate the activities and results
monthly. Then, on a quarterly basis, we ‘fine tune’
any underperforming Action Plans to gain the
results we desire by year end.
The end result of Strategic and Tactical
Planning is movement of the agency over time to
accomplish your personal and professional goals.
In the words of President Eisenhower, long before
he became a politician, “In preparing for battle
I have always found that plans are useless, but
planning is indispensable.” What he was saying
was that the act of planning made the troops
much more agile and able to alter their direction
to meet the realities of war. Similarly, the realities
of business will never quite meet what we have
planned. But the act of planning, itself, will get
you much closer to your original goal than simply
reacting like deer in the headlights when business
realities cause you to change what you do.
Reprinted from The PIPELINE, the national newsletter
for agency principals. The PIPELINE is published by
Agency Consulting Group, Inc., a leading consulting
firm for independent agents in the U.S. for over 35 years.
Call 800-779-2430, email [email protected], or
visit www.agencyconsulting.com for information about the
content of this article or PIPELINE subscription information.
| January - February 2019 | KANSAS INSURANCE AGENT & BROKER
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