Business Improvement initiatives rely heavily on Action Plans to define important tasks for implementation. This charts the the way forward by crucially defining who does what, and by when.

Failure to pay due care in compiling an Action Plan can seriously affect the quality of your efforts and output, denting any chances of your improvement idea ever taking off.

Done correctly however, Action Plans can be an effective weapon of mass improvements.

How To Make Good Action Plans, Great.

1. It’s a good idea to split your Action Plan into 2 sections, one for “Short Term” (to be done within the week in question) and another for “Long term” (more than a week required to complete the action). This will make it clear what needs to happen immediately.
2. Actions should be documented and targeted at the intended audience as if they were not present when the action was assigned. This will ensure the correct context of the action is provided and help avoid the “What was this all about?” type of question further down the road.
3. Endeavour to send out the Action Plan as soon as possible, preferably on the day the Actions are assigned.
4. Start with the most important Actions, by using the pain vs. gain prioritisation technique. Actions with a higher business impact and requiring lesser effort being the highest ranked.
5. Group related actions together and if necessary create categories to form clusters of related actionable efforts.
6. If you do use a meeting room, consider using a whiteboard demarcated as your Action plan template. At the end of the meeting, simply take a digital photo of the completed whiteboard and email it to all assigned action owners. No double handling, no typing, no waste – typical Continuous Improvement!
7. Always start the actual action statement with a verb. A verb is called an “action word” for a reason! This makes it clear from the onset exactly what needs to be done.
8. Assign a unique number for each Action. This will make it so much easier during discussions and meetings. If you refer to Action # 24, everyone immediately knows which one is referred to as opposed to explaining the action or reading it out – saves you a bit of time.

How do you make your actions happen ?

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For more resources, see our Library topic Quality Management.
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About Brian Venge

I’m a self-confessed coffee addict, technology geek and business improvement strategist. At the time of writing I am 42 years old. Even I’m astounded to realise 21 years, (or half of my life) has been spent working in the incredible world of Value Creation or more specifically Continuous Improvement, doing something I truly understand and enjoy.

My career was built around 4 multinational companies involved in manufacturing and service related industries (Nestle, Unilever, Vodafone and Crown Cork). In conducting several high profile CI projects across 5 continents and 12 countries, I discovered there is one universal translation to Continuous Improvement and it’s called Value Creation.

I’m the author of a DIY Business Improvement eBook, “Pimp Your Biz – The Complete Guide to Improving Your Business Under Any Circumstances”

Follow me on Twitter

Strong customer service creates valuable crisis management opportunities

In an article from my most recent Crisis Manager newsletter, friend and reputation management consultant Jeff Chatterton wrote about the significance of customer service in crisis management and the negative results that quickly come from ignoring said customers. On the heels of that came a posting by my colleague in the UK, Jonathan Hemus, on his Insignia Talks blog, that provided even more proof of this principle. First, the Tweet that inspired his post:

Earlier today BBC presenter Clare Balding posted the following tweet:

Sat next to nice woman who’d been on Qantas flight when engine blew up. She said pilot was amazing. He spent 2 hours talking to passengers afterwards and gave them his mobile number if they had questions or problems. She said Qantas were amazing.

Unless you make the effort to be there for your customers, such helpful word of mouth would never be generated. How do you do it, you ask? Jonathan knows, and goes on to share his insight with readers:

If you want your employees to help protect your reputation in the event of a crisis, the starting point is instilling a customer service culture. Next, you need to empower staff to make decisions and do the right thing in the event of a problem.

Finally, when the crisis breaks you need to brief the frontline – receptionists, call centres, security guards, salespeople – on what’s happened, how they should respond and what to say. This should be an essential part of your crisis communication plan.

Take this approach and your own people can play a big part in protecting your reputation. More than that, supportive words from those directly affected by the incident provide a real opportunity to enhance your reputation. That’s certainly true for Qantas given that Clare Balding’s tweet has now reached 35,000 followers: now that’s positive word of mouth on a huge scale.

While many organizations seek some sort of “secret formula” that will magically produce buckets of goodwill and a torrent of happy Tweets and Facebook postings, the reality is that no such thing exists. These results come from enabling every member of your frontline staff to serve as brand ambassadors and crisis communicators and, obviously, the hard work that these people put into creating and nurturing customer connections.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc. , an international crisis management consultancy, and author of Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training.]

The culture in each organization is different and dependent on so many factors. But it is the culture that shapes the internal operations of your organizations. Culture can make or break your organization.

Recently, while working on a white paper about how to shape your organization’s culture, I realized how extremely important culture is to every non-profit achieving their goals and planned outcomes. That white paper will be available shortly through our online store, so watch for it. The reasons why culture is so important are:

• Overview of entire organization – The culture of an organization is decided by the personalities, policies and procedures of an organization.
• Internal balance – For an organization to be successful, its culture must have internal balance. That means that the policies, procedures and people involved do not lean too much one way or another, but complement what the goals of the organization are.
• Defines relationships – An organization’s culture includes how they (the staff) work with clients, other community groups, agencies and funders.
• Impacts communication – Each organization, depending on its culture, creates its own jargon that is unique to their organization. This means that the way the organization communicates internally and externally is impacted by its culture.

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For more resources, see our Library topic Nonprofit Capacity Building.

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By Ingrid Zacharias, Managing Director, Envisioning the Future International, Email: izacharias@envisioningthefutureintl.ca Website: http://envisioningthefutureintl.ca/