SESSION TWENTY-TWO: DEVELOPING TEAM ACTION PLANS
Planning Tools
After working with your team to identify a tentative solution, you must move on to the next phase, and create a realistic and achievable action plan together. When you create the plan together, you get their support. Make sure that the plan is clear and concise (as opposed to ambiguous or vague) so that people know what is coming up. Good action plans include all of the following:
- What is achievable? What amount of improvement can we implement over the course of the plan?
- What’s reasonable? How can we assign and undertake work so that everyone on the team gets involved and has a high level of commitment and buy in?
- What help do we need? We operate as a team within a larger organization or system, so perhaps we have access to people with resources, ideas, and more. How can we solicit their help or input?
- What could go wrong? We need contingency planning to prepare for anything that can or will likely put us off track.
Making Your Team Improvement Plan
There are five steps to constructing a team improvement plan:
- Identify what’s required in terms of action steps
- Define goals agreed upon by the group
- Decide who is responsible for what through assignments or people volunteering
- Create a chart or some kind of clear tool that shows what’s taking place
- Create a contingency/troubleshooting plan
Intention vs. Actions
A frequent problem with teams is that they have wonderful intentions that are rarely translated into actions. To prevent this, use action statements instead of intention statements. Here are some examples.
| Team Improvement Area | Intention | Action |
| We seem to lack foresight. Team members are too often taken by surprise with performance problems, such as errors or project delays. | We’ll pay more attention to our planning. | During the next six weeks, each project leader will create a troubleshooting checklist detailing potential obstacles and indicating appropriate preventive actions. |
| Communication breakdowns are occurring within the team. | We’ll schedule more meetings. | During the next three weeks, we will schedule two videoconferences and set up a shared web space where we can collaborate and have discussions about where things are at. |
| We’re experiencing a lack of direction. There is some confusion within our team regarding our objectives and direction over the next few years. | During the next week, we will survey the team for their perspective of the team vision. | By the 15th of this month, the team will meet to draft a vision statement. Prior to this meeting, each team member will have reviewed their projects and compiled a list of forecasted changes in our customer base as well as production results, while considering what they know of direction for the next two years. |
| We’re receiving an increasing number of complaints from our internal customers. | We’ll survey internal customers and ask for formal feedback on our performance. | On the 23rd of next month, department leaders will host a focus group of internal customers to resolve these complaints and move ahead. |