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15-5-15

May 15th, 2011 | Add a Comment

When action planning don’t get stuck in the details. Keep moving. Use the 15-5-15 approach for the various steps you take. Do your first, fast pass in 15 minutes, Set a timer if needed. Use every second of those 15 minutes. Think about it. If you drop one item every minute, you will have 15 items in 15 minutes. Move faster, add an item every 30 seconds, that will give you 30 items in 15 minutes. If you are working with a small team, say of two or three, then you can easily double the 30 if needed. See the power of working fast, and the power of working with a small team. Now, take a 5 minute break. Get up and move around, get your blood moving. This will help push fresh … Read entire article »

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Add an Executive Summary

An Executive Summary is a powerful way to share action plan results with key stakeholders. There are many ways to do this; one way is to store the Executive Summary right in your action plan. Using the power of sequencing, we can actually create a record, give it a unique sequence number and use it for our Executive Summary. For our purposes we will sequence the Executive Summary as row 100. This will place it at the top of our sorted action plan. You could sequence it 999 and place it at the bottom of the action plan. It is best to place it at the top or the bottom, so it does not get mixed … Read entire article »

Sequencing Part 3

Use sequencing to build a simple work breakdown structure (WBS). A WBS allows us to group similar items together. For larger and more complex action plans this gives us flexibility. For example, we could group a series of items by Phase, or by Month, or by Location. The nature of your action plan may help you best determine if using a WBS is needed. For basic sequencing, we are using the following: - series 100s for plan management items such as Plan Name, Goal, Build Date and Goal Date. - series 900s for action plan management items that help us manage the life cycle of the plan, such as plan reviews, plan updates, and communications. For the action plan task … Read entire article »

Staging

Staging is an extraordinarily powerful way to improve action plan outcomes and results. Staging is a methodology whereby we foretell, forecast, give advance warning or preview what is to come. Consider a new movie release featuring your favorite movie star. Before releasing the movie, Hollywood shows previews of the movie. While not an exactly perfect analogy, it is easy to see how the movie preview allows the movie makers to influence the success of  the movie. What we do not see as average movie goers, is that prior to the preview we get to see, the Hollywood movie makers did other previews with other groups, focus groups, and asked for input or feedback. Many times a movie … Read entire article »

SMART Goal Setting

An action plan with a good SMART goal is extremely powerful. An action plan with a weak goal is risky and potentially wasteful. Follow these steps to get to a great Goal: Finalize your PROBLEM statement. Draft a good “Fast Goal”.  Take two to three minutes and quickly draft out a goal statement.  Make it quick and intuitive.  Make sure it is close to describing what needs to be done in order to deliver a solution. Make the goal SMART.  Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time based.  This step … Read entire article »

Define the Problem

While looking at “the problem” is not necessarily a part of core action planning, it is an important aspect of setting the goal. Many times we jump right into action planning by listing or determining solutions. It is preferable and significantly more productive to ensure you and the team all fully understand the problem. Define the problem to be solved. Take time to ensure the team fully understands the parameters of the problem / the challenge / the puzzle / the desired future state.  It is worth taking time to ensure there is full commitment to what is being solved.  Not doing this results in risking effort being spent on activities of questionable value. What are you solving?  … Read entire article »

Sequencing Part 2

Here is another sequencing add on. This adds additional power and efficiency to your action plan. You have done your brain storming. You have sorted by dates. You have added the plan management elements to the top of the plan to track the plan name and goal and last update date. Now, add some new rows to the bottom of the action plan, number them 901 to 905. We will add several additional plan management pieces allowing you to have an easy to access plan in the action plan for managing updates, reviews, communications and other standard items. See the example below. Seq# What Who Due Date Comment 901 REVIEW: Philip 4/15/2011 Plan Mgt Item 902 UPDATE: Philip 4/15/2011 Plan Mgt Item 903 COMMUNICATE: Philip 3/10/2011 Plan Mgt Item 904 TEAM MEETING: Philip 3/10/2011 Plan Mgt Item 905 OTHER: Philip 3/21/2011 Plan Mgt Item   How you … Read entire article »

Setting Dates

A key part of any action plan’s success is being realistic.  This is a major part of goal setting. The “R” in SMART stands for Realistic. Setting dates is an absolutely key part of setting up the action plan.  Keeping these dates realistic is also critical to the action plan success. Focus on two “starter dates” - the date the written plan must be done - the date the goal’s outcome must be delivered Check these dates: are they realistic?  Meaning, can they be achieved within the context of your schedule? Do they allow you time to build the plan, then live with the plan build for a few days or more before you have to jump in and work … Read entire article »

Determining Who

A key element of a successful Action Plan is knowing the WHO of the Who does What by When formula. It is tempting to assign a task or set of tasks to the team, in an effort to build team cohesion.  Avoid this at all costs.  WHO is all about accountability.  Make decisions, or delegations as necessary, to ensure that each action plan item has a primary WHO – one person who has primary responsibility for ensuring that line item is completed.  During team meetings, status report sessions or other communication opportunities, each person who is a WHO on the action plan will speak to those items they were assigned. Team work can be achieved by this … Read entire article »

The Action Plan: First Draft

This is what your action plan might look like during your first pass at it. Consider this a draft. Set it up fast and fill it out fast. Who What When Bob Draft Word Press Article 3/25/2011 Jane Edit Word Press Article 4/1/2011 Looks simple? It is simple. Keep it simple. Just make a simple Who does What by When list. That is your action plan. All the rest is icing. This is the basic and most important part of the plan. Simple trick: draft this out in Excel. That way you can easily move pieces of it around, you can sort it, filter it and add other elements to it, making management of the plan easier. Why not start with a more complex structure? Because putting effort up … Read entire article »

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