Sarah Oeltjenbruns, Performance Partner
The fourth quarter is a critical time for all organizations. You’re driving sales to finish the year strong, and you’ve set your sights on an even stronger 2020. You’re adapting products to meet demands your clients and prospects expect for innovation in the future. This is the most important time to engage in the process of action planning. Why don’t more organizations commit to action planning?
Here are three of the most common reasons:
- Leaders believe they need more information than they really do. According to a recent Harvard Business Review article, “people may overestimate the amount of evidence they evaluate before making up their minds, paying costs to acquire information that will go unused.” Gathering additional data often isn’t necessary and certainly isn’t cost-effective.
- Organizations are inherently adverse to failing. When it comes to the decision-making process, the fear factor kicks in. What if the decision is a bad one? What if we make a mistake? It’s much easier for organizations to not make a decision than to admit to fear of failure. But, being paralyzed by fear, means never knowing if it was a good or a bad decision.
- Most teams are accustomed to evaluating, but not executing. During an interview on the radio show, Money Talk, “eighty-percent of organizations fail at the execution part of the strategy.” Execution lies in the hands of the people of the organization. In our experience, any strategy can work if the people responsible for it plan AND execute.
Center for Practical Management offers a disciplined process for Action Planning. Our highly interactive development workshops help organizations do four things:
- Brainstorm opportunities for revenue growth, expense control, innovation or productivity gains
- Identify up to 3 creative solutions using multi-voting to gain consensus and buy-in
- Form teams to develop SMART Action Plans and agree to be accountable for execution
- Track outcomes with facilitated monthly teleconferences that track progress, review successes and obstacles
Acquiring skills for successful execution of strategic planning can help organizations achieve their growth goals in new ways.
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