Article by: Sara Pantaleo
The action plan is a great way to ensure you achieve your goals! It’s simple, efficient and easy to use. All it needs are some details about what resources will be used to achieve the goal and when they should come into play – with every detail laid out for quick reference, so there isn’t any confusion or wasted time on implementation tactics. It will then act as a tool to check how your company tracks each of its goals, making achieving your strategic goals easy to manage and oversee.
To achieve the best results using your action plan, it is necessary to plan all the steps of an action plan effectively through a schedule using project management tools like Trello and Asana can make this easier and have the discipline to comply with it.
SMART Goals
Always start your action plan with clear goals in mind. The more specific and measurable, the better! Be sure to include timeframes for each action step so that you can track progress towards achieving them all. Without this crucial detail, there may be no way of knowing whether or when certain activities need attention.
Ensure your goals are measurable! Using “SMART goals” is the best way. SMART stands for:
- Specific.
- Measurable.
- Attainable.
- Relevant.
- Time-bound.
Resources & Prioritisation
When you’re ready to start that action plan, ensure there are no gaps in any resources. If the resources you need don’t exist, make an action plan to get them. When you first create your action plan, it may be chunky. However, after taking the time to re-evaluate what is important, slimming down can happen if needed! It doesn’t matter how difficult a task may seem; always try to break up larger jobs into smaller pieces for more effortless accomplishment.
Monitoring and measuring
This is the most crucial part of our plan. It’s not enough to list all its stages and forget about them – we have to ensure each stage leads us closer to achieving success; otherwise, what was supposed to happen will never come to fruition! If you want your plan to work, then monitoring is essential; without it, the plan will not work.