Spending the time strategic planning is necessary for any business to continue growing and thriving. Out of these meetings comes a handful of goals that your company has identified as highest priority to focus on. These goals are the results you're looking to accomplish. Unfortunately, too often company goals do not get completed. Why is that? The results that your company was looking for were clearly defined and agreed on by your leaders as a priority, and still - they did not get done. What is missing? The majority of the time, it is a lack of clarity with what activities need to get completed to get the results you want and regular reviews to assure this work is getting done. What to do In order to complete more of your goals, you and your team need to create an action plan. This outlines what activities/tasks you will do throughout the quarter to get the results you want with each of your goals. In order to assure this action plan is on-track, your progress needs to be reviewed weekly with your team. Action Plan Look at this as the major activities/tasks that you need to complete along the way for each individual goal. When you look at a 90 day goal it can be overwhelming. When you take that goal and break it down into bite sized chunks, it becomes more manageable. That is the purpose of the action plan - take a bigger goal and break it down to manageable steps. The action plan must have 3 components:
Clearly defined tasks
Due date for each task
1 owner per task (does not have to be the owner of the goal)
Example task: Send survey to all members by 8/24 - Scott (owner) Weekly Review Each week, with your leaders, report progress on each of your goals at your weekly meeting. This does NOT mean talk about what you've been working on. Simply answer whether you are "on-track or off-track". You will know if you're on/off track based on the progress you've made towards your Action Plan. For example - if your Action Plan had a task due yesterday and you have not completed it - you would be off-track. If you did complete that task - you are on-track. This not only gives everyone insight on the status of the goal - it also helps drive accountability for the owner of the goal by providing weekly updates. Now What? Set an Action Plan for each goal you own this quarter, even if you're in the middle or near the end of the quarter. Make sure you've included clearly defined tasks with due dates and an owner for each task. Then, each week review with your team whether you are on/off-track for each of your goals. Following these simple best practices will get you better at executing towards your goals and help your team get more of the results they set out for. If you'd find a template helpful or have questions on how to implement, shoot me an email at scott@scottgullickson.com or grab some time on my calendar. Now…go and execute!
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