Action plans

A specific and feasible plan to do something.

If you want to modify some aspect of your behaviour so that you become even more effective in your dealings with people, action plans are vital.

An action plan needs to be specific and feasible. An action plan with both these characteristics is more likely to get implemented than a plan without them. Indeed a plan without them isn’t really a plan at all: it is only an intention. Intentions, however laudable, have a poor track record when it comes to the crunch of implementation. Think of New Year resolutions you have made that did not even survive a week.

Here is an example of an unsatisfactory action plan:

I will be more positive.

This is flawed because it is too general and not implementable. It is just an intention, not an action plan.

Here is an example of a satisfactory action plan:

Each time I find fault with one of Bill’s ideas I shall work out how to improve his idea so that the fault is eased or overcome. I shall only allow myself to point out a fault when I have a positive development of his idea to offer. Each stated fault will therefore be matched with a positive suggestion.

This is specific, in that it pinpoints exactly when and how I am going to behave positively. It is also feasible, because it doesn’t unrealistically expect that I am going to be more positive all the time with everyone. The idea is initially to concentrate on being positive in my dealings with Bill and then, when I have been successful with him, to review progress and subsequently plan to extend it, or a version of it, in my dealings with a wider range of people.

Needless to say, it makes no sense to have an action plan that doesn’t get implemented. Plans have a notorious reputation for needing constant amendment in the light of experience. This is inevitable, since the acid test of any plan is how well it works in practice. If it doesn’t in the event work out too well, then that doesn’t mean the plan was useless or that planning is a waste of time. On the contrary, it puts you in a better position to learn from the experience, to review which parts of the plan worked and which didn’t, and to modify the plan or scrap and replace it with another, so that you have one that is more workable. Action-planning plays a key part in the process of 'learning from experience’.