“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”
Not my favorite quote in the world. Truth be told I actually believe a little bit of failure is a good thing. Especially if you learn a lesson as you are failing forward.
But…
When it comes to making major changes or improvements I do believe that you absolutely need to plan ahead. Better yet, you should be creating a plan that will help you to take action without feeling overwhelmed. Sadly many of us fall victim to busyness or when we want to tackle a big project we fail to act because we don’t know where to start or how to plan. Remember, motion does not equal results. Get off the hamster wheel! Plan!
Tips to End Busy
Here are a few simple tips that we teach our clients when creating plans:
First, set goals. Seems obvious, but too often they aren’t thought about at all or they aren’t written down.
Trust me, do yourself a favor and make them SMART Goals: Specific, Measurable,Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Write those goals down for everyone to see.
Next, create milestones for each of your smart goals. For example, your smart goal statement says: “Support staff in offering their absolute best by increasing employee engagement by 10%.”
Your milestones might be:
- Conduct a baseline evaluation of employee engagement
- Review current process for orientation and on-boarding
- Survey staff on educational topics they would like to see offered
- Train staff on interviewing peers
Finally, each of the above milestones can then be broken down into bite sized actionable steps. For example, you may need to start as basic as determining what employee engagement tool you are going to use to measure the baseline.
We have found that you cannot break these steps down too small.
Each of these steps can be assigned to team members. The smaller they are, the easier they are to accomplish and to find the perfect person for that task!
Keep in mind no one person is handling everything. A committee can formed with a project leader, but the project leader isn’t micromanaging the project.
Quite the contrary! Every team member is committed to the shared vision of seeing the project through to completion.
Committee members can meet twice a month, or as needed, for status updates and learn together how to keep the project moving forward. During these meetings, obstacles can be eliminated and new opportunities discovered.
This article was written by staff member, Allison Duda.
