Momentum - Business to Business Online Magazine MOMENTUM November 2018 | Page 10

Biz Tips 9 Steps to Developing a Plan For Action By Mike Hilderbrand, MBA, CBC, CSSC ActionCOACH of Galveston [email protected] www.actioncoach/mikehilderbrand I n importance of, and methodology behind, building a comprehensive strategic plan. But do you do after that? Put all that new knowledge on the shelf and forget about it? No! Knowledge only has value when it is acted upon. 4 Allocate resources. Financial, physical and human resources must be allocated to each action step. If resources are limited, or fall short of requirements at any stage, it may be necessary to return to an earlier step and revise the action plan. Planning is preparatory to action. Analytically at least, planning must be separated from implementation so that the major policy decisions can be made and their implications understood prior to action. Here are the 9 steps to develop an Action Plan: 5 Identify possible problems. Consider all the things that could go wrong in the process of achieving a goal. List these problems and identify causes and suitable actions to resolve them. If necessary, these actions might need to be added to appropriate slots in the timeline 1 Express your solution as a series of goals. Having agreed on a solution to a problem within your organization, you first need to define that solution in terms of number of goals and objectives. For example, each goal could be expressed as follows: "For us to (blank), we would need to (blank)". Record each goal at the top of a whiteboard or sheet of paper. 6 Develop strategies for monitoring progress. List ways in which progress of the action plan can be monitored. These monitoring stages should also be included on the timeline. the Summer issue of Momentum, I talked about the 7 Assign tasks. Take each point on the timeline in turn and ask: "Who will do what, by the date set, to bring about each action? Allocate these tasks to appropriate individuals or teams. 2 Generate a list of Actions for each goal. Use brainstorming to compile a list of actions to achieve each goal and record these below the goal. Arrange this list of suggested actions in sequential order. 8 Estimate costs. Consider any expenditure required to complete the task. All costs will have to be considered when preparing a budget. If funds are not available, tasks will have to be reviewed and, where necessary, revised or eliminated. 3 Prepare a timeline. Beginning with a time point labeled "now" and ending with a point labeled "goal achieved", build a timeline on which you allocate dates by which you intend to complete each of the sequential actions listed under each goal. It is important that you get both sequence and timing right if you are to reach "goal achieved" effectively. 9 MOMENTUM / November 2018 9 Implement the plan. Translate all your information to a clean copy, listing the actions required, the person responsible for a task, and when that task is to be completed. Having now finalized the plan for action in specific terms, this information can now be made available to all involved.