Change: the act or instance of making or becoming different.

Having completed step three you have:

• Identified the organisational mission; the organisation’s aims and values.
• Reviewed current practice in relation to these aims and values.
• Set concrete organisational, departmental, team and individual objectives.
• Identified what will count as success in each case.
• Identified times by which each objective must be achieved.

You can now formulate plans of action by which to satisfy the success criteria for each objective in the time permitted.

WRITING YOUR ACTION PLAN

In formulating action plans it is necessary to rehearse, in your imagination (and where appropriate in discussion) every part of the achievement of your objective, the problems you might face, how you’ll overcome them and the resources you’ll need.

This will enable you to:

• Identify each element of your plan.
• Reflect on how each element can be achieved.
• Ensure the achievement of all elements will result in success.
• Anticipate problems and prepare responses.
• Get right the timing of each element and of the whole.
• Assign responsibility for the success of each element.
• Identify necessary resources for each part of your plan.

Insofar as everyone in the organisation has agreed objectives, everyone in the organisation will be involved in this step.

The complexity of this task will depend, of course, on the type of objective to be met. However simple the objective, its successful achievement will depend on proper planning.

ANALYSING OBJECTIVES

In formulating an action plan the best starting point is an analysis of each objective. This involves breaking down each of your objectives into the sub-objectives that you will need to achieve in order to achieve the objective itself.

Such sub-objectives might include:

• the gathering of relevant information
• undergoing some training or arranging for others to do so
• consulting outside experts
• deciding between different approaches
• consulting stakeholders for their views
• securing commitment from stakeholders.

In Table I we can see an illustration of how an

expanded organisational mission statement...
   has generated ...    departmental objectives ...
              from which has been derived a number of...
                 sub-objectives.

These sub-objectives are severally necessary and jointly sufficient for the successful achievement of the stated departmental goal. You will want to agree success criteria for each sub-objective to ensure that you will know what counts as evidence for its achievement. You might (will almost certainly) find that the sub-objectives you have identified can be further broken down into sub-sub-objectives.

Table 2 shows an illustration.

AGREEING A TIMESCALE

Armed with a firm grasp of each of the actions you will need to take you will want to draft a ‘timeline’ to ensure that you meet your objective within the timescale allowed.

Clearly you must allow yourself enough time to complete each element of the plan, including those whose completion depends on the prior completion of other parts. Equally clearly you need to leave enough time for each elements of your plan whilst still completing your plan by the time limit allowed for the achievement of the overall objective.

Table 3 shows a timeline for our imaginary example.

Securing flexibility

It is important that in formulating your action plans and deciding your timeline you are flexible. There’s many a slip twixt cup and lip, and you need to be flexible enough to deal with such slips as they arise. Timelines should never be so tight that they are completely thrown out by something going wrong.

You will, of course, have tried to anticipate the various things that might go wrong, but you would be wise nevertheless to assume that you might not have succeeded in predicting everything.

Because you will have built this flexibility into your timetable you will need to review and revise your timeline as you achieve your subobjectives (and your sub-sub-objectives). If you have succeeded in anticipating problems you might find you can bring things forward (or do something in addition to what you have already done or to a better standard than you thought would be possible). If you haven’t you may need to take advantage of the built-in flexibility and rearrange your timings.

In constructing your timeline you will find it useful to schedule meetings at which to discuss progress. This is discussed further at step five (Chapter 7).

ASSIGNING RESPONSIBILITY

When objectives (and sub-objectives) are to be met, it is always a good idea to assign responsibility for their successful achievement to a named individual.

Although no one individual is likely to be able to achieve the objective by themselves, anything for which everyone is responsible becomes something that is no one’s responsibility. And something that is no one’s responsibility will not get done.

The best way to assign responsibility for the achievement of an objective is to make the identification of the responsible person part of your planning.

Once identified this person’s initials should be included in the plan of action and the achievement of objective included amongst that person’s personal objectives.

You will see in the example above that names or initials have been appended to every element of the action plan. This ensures that that person will be held accountable for the successful completion, by the required date, of that element of the plan.

IDENTIFYING NECESSARY RESOURCES

The successful achievement of some parts of the plan will require only time and energy. Other parts of the plan will require the cooperation of others. Still other parts will depend on money, space, equipment, expertise and/or other resources.

It is important that these resources be identified as part of the planning. The securing of them should also be part of the plan. The nonavailability at the appropriate time of the appropriate resources can scupper even the best laid plans.

The resources required should be reviewed and revised whenever the plan itself is reviewed and revised. The need for resources will clearly have implications for organisational and departmental budgets. These implications need to be considered as plans are made.

There may also be implications for the use of available space and/or equipment. If, for example, there is only one or a restricted number of large rooms available for big gatherings and such a gathering is part of your plan, then you will need to secure one of these rooms as early as possible. If you have no large rooms at all then part of your planning must involve the finding of such a room.

You might want to add to your timeline a column listing the resources you need, together with the initials of the person responsible for securing them and the time by which they must be secured (ie the time they must be booked, not the time they are needed).

COORDINATING CHANGE

Before any action plan is finalised it would be a good idea for it to be checked to ensure that each of the proposed actions are:

• consistent with each of the goals outlined in the expanded mission statement
• not needlessly duplicating the planned actions of other departments and of the organisation as a whole.

Such final checks can help to ensure that organisational practice remains coherent over the necessary period of change.

SUMMARY

During steps one to three you have identified the organisational mission in such a way that everyone understands it. You have conducted a review to determine the extent to which you are successfully achieving that mission. In conducting this review you will also have been able to identify opportunities for improvement.

On the basis of this, at step three, you (and your departments, teams and individuals) identified various objectives the achievement of which will enable you to improve performance, the better to achieve the organisational mission. Success criteria for the achievement of these objectives have been agreed, as have the times by which they must be achieved.

At step four everyone is involved in formulating plans by which these objectives can be achieved within the time allowed. These plans enable practical sense to be made of these objectives. The planning involves:

• identifying the different actions that need to be taken
• ensuring that taken together these add up to success
• anticipating problems and preparing responses
• getting your timing right
• assigning responsibility for success
• identifying and securing the necessary resources.

You know your goals and you have in place strategies by which to achieve these goals. The time has come to consider how you will monitor your achievement and evaluate your success.

In doing this you will be gathering the evidence you need to be sure that your strategies are succeeding in helping you to achieve your goals.