Action Plan
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| This chapter is designed to assist you in understanding what an Action Plan is, how to develop one, and how it will help your business to achieve short and long term business goals. | |||
| What is an Action Plan? | |||
| Developing an Action Plan | |||
| What is an Action Plan? | |||
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| An action plan integrates all of the strategies you have developed throughout your business plan into a highly organised and prioritised plan of action designed to achieve your stated business mission and goals. | |||
| This is achieved by breaking down the strategies you developed into small, achievable steps and then identifying the actions you need to take for each step. It can be used as a short term (6-12 months) action plan to achieve short term business goals, a medium term action plan (2-3 years) or a long term action plan (3-5 years). | |||
| An action plan identifies the business goal (what you would like to achieve) and the strategies that can be implemented to reach that goal. It also explains the specific actions that need to take place in order to achieve the business strategy. This will include the timeframe, roles and responsibilities, performance indicators and alternative methods that can be implemented to reach the business objectives. | |||
| Developing an Action Plan | |||
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| Generally action plans are limited to a small and manageable number of goals. This helps to keep the plan realistic and achievable. | |||
| For each action you should identify: | |||
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| Once you have these details identified, you can progress to formulating a series of strategies to be undertaken to achieve the goals of each action item. It often helps to break the various strategies tasks down into simple and specific steps to keep the plan on track and avoid getting overwhelmed or losing control. | |||
| An important step is being able to evaluate within a set period of time if the action plan has been a success. Failing to do so could result in a plan that continues on indefinitely without ever actually achieving anything positive for the business. | |||
| To evaluate your action plan, go back to the initial objectives you set out and decide if they have worked, not worked or are in the process of being achieved. Be critical of each objectives success or failure in this stage. If your original targets were too optimistic, then you need to admit this so that you will be able to move on. | |||
| Sometimes it may become apparent that an action plan has failed to meet its objectives. Therefore, you may need to reassess and redefine your original objectives and strategies to improve their success or abandon the plan and start again at the beginning rather than waste resources on a plan that isn't working. | |||
| To assist you in developing your action plan, you can download a template here. | |||
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| Implementation | |||
| Q1.Develop an action plan which outlines the key tasks and activities required to implement your business plan. You may wish to use the action plan sample template, which is available in Business Planning > Action Plan > Developing an Action Plan. Give answer | |||
| Action plan for <Business Name> | |||
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