Why Action Planning?
There is no scarcity of good ideas. There is also no scarcity of good intentions. Why is it then that the shelves of organizational planning departments, university presidents, department heads, community services organizations, and countless other effective innovation people are stacked with plans that were never implemented? More importantly, why is it that so many entrepreneurs never seem to get their innovations off the ground?
The answer is often quite simple. Their innovation plans never actually included the last critical step – action planning. Action planning is the process of taking good ideas and breaking them into manageable steps that can be accomplished and measured. Action planning maximizes success and minimized failure.
Action planning is often ignored because it is believed that there is “always a market for good ideas.” Or that the “cream will always rise to the top.” Entrepreneurs and innovators are often so in love with their ideas that they can’t understand why everyone is not begging to help them put the idea into action.
The reality is that the action planning and implementation phases are often the most difficulty. Ironically, developing an action plan often seems to be an exercise in the obvious. That is, everybody surely knows what we have to do to get this idea in place. The action plan is the opportunity to test this assumption.
Action planning is a clear process with no shortcuts. The steps below demonstrate this process:
Choosing the team (Done)
Naming and describing the specific goals to be accomplished
Describing the current reality that forms the environment for the project
Discerning the key actions that need to be performed
Creating a calendar of action and assignments for team members
Each of these outcomes is critical for the success of any project. Without accomplishing each of the above, innovation success is seriously jeopardized.
