S1E10 - Action Plans – From Slidedecks to Real Progress

Everyone’s got a plan… until it’s time to do the work. In this episode of Leadership Matters, Glenn Price and Terry Reynolds unpack why so many action plans look brilliant in PowerPoint but disappear in the chaos of “business as usual”.

They explore the difference between activity and outcome, why fluffy ownership (“the ELT will own this…”) kills execution, and how rhythm, cadence and clear measures turn a plan into a living roadmap instead of spreadsheet decoration. From fortnightly strategy check-ins and visible milestones to pushing ownership down to those closest to the customer, this conversation is all about making plans that actually move the dial.

If your action plan is more admin than execution, this episode will sting—in a very useful way.

Transcript

Welcome to Leadership Matters, a podcast series created by LeaderShape Consulting. My name is Glenn Price and I'm joined by my business partner, Terry Reynolds. And this is a podcast series to try and help leaders take a vision and deliver a result. And if you've been following along for the last couple of episodes, you know that we started with the big step of set direction and that had three rational drivers in it, vision, strategy, and alignment. We then took a look at our first three emotional drivers in the engage and excite section around experience, believability, and desirability. And now we're back into rational with enable and execute, making sure that we can deliver and drive on the results. The last two podcasts we recorded were around structure and resources. And this one's about action planning. And I guess in preparation for this particular episode, I kind of got to a stage where I went, everyone's got a plan, right? It may look different or it's down formally or it's inside some sort of digital system or maybe it's just on a piece of paper. But everybody's got that plan until it's time to deliver and then that's when the rubber hits the road. I wondered how much planning plays into the detail of the plan. Yeah, it's interesting you say that. I think that people feel really, really comfortable on the planning side. But as you describe, you know, when rubber hits the road, I think that that's really the key around execution. And in my experience, most leadership teams, many, many leadership teams, are good on the planning side, not so good on the execution side. And maybe that is the way that they build these plans. Maybe there's not clarity around who's responsible. Maybe there's not clarity around how it's going to look. Maybe there's not clarity around any of the rhythm of follow-up, et cetera. And I think that seems to be with the teams I've worked with, where probably they're less effective. So when you see planning done well, remembering that we've already got a strategy plan, right? So this is the operational or technical plan. It's aligned. The KPIs are aligned. We're aware of the objectives or at least the outcomes we're looking for because that will be in our strategy. So when you see firms plan well, what sort of things are they doing? Is there a regularity that they're checking these? Are they continuously and updated? Are they live? Is it a quarterly sprint? What sort of things have you seen?

Definitely where there is a rhythm. And that is the rhythm of how often we're going to meet. You know. And I can't really… I think of the businesses that I'm with. You've got to keep momentum. So meeting once a month for me is not enough. It needs to be probably fortnightly that… A fortnight seems to be that there's enough time for people to take some action but also enough time to check in and see where people are at. I also find that, you know and I think this is a clarity piece, is that the meetings where I've seen success for are purely strategy meetings. They're not mixed in with just a normal meeting. They dedicate the time to actually follow up on it. Well, I've even seen worse than that. people turn up to the… Remember this is Action Plan again. So we turn up to the Action Plan meeting and we're expecting to start the discussion there as opposed to coming having pre read the decks. You've had an interest in what other departments have done. You've given your input on your part. And so all of a sudden the one to two hour meeting, if you're doing it every fortnight or every month and that's the cadence and rhythm that you're looking for, I don't think that's possible if you're doing the introduction and explanation in the meeting. If you've got a set of measures that matter, then constantly everybody knows what that is. They've thought about those. They've got an opinion. They've got things to share and so all of a sudden those meetings become decision making forums as opposed to a discussion. Do you think that this generally will get in the way of business as usual and that becomes an excuse for not actually doing it? Well, I think people that I've seen, they almost take for granted the discipline of reporting back on what they said that they would do. And then they act surprised when they're five or ten degrees off it at the end of 12 months, right? And so I think it takes a level of leadership maturity. It takes a level of discipline and valuing the task of going where are we at? What have we done? What's worked? What hasn't? And what needs to be adapted? And we've said earlier in the podcast series, hey, we should be rewarding people on the progress they make, not just the outcome. Well, if you're not having these regular meetings and you also don't get that alignment all the way from the top to the bottom on what people are working on.

Then how possibly do you have role clarity and goal clarity? How can you reward people for the progress that's being made? And I think the excuses I started with is going, well, we don't need to go over that part because that's just business as usual. yet, sort of touched on this earlier in this episode, you think of an athlete, right? And when I think of an athlete and when we followed some of the world's best sports people, the 97 % is the preparation and 3 % is the performance. And yet in leadership, think we kind of switch those around. 97 % is the performance and 3 % is the preparation. And so I'm with you. We don't want to over-prepare or have analysis by paralysis. But what I do think we need to do is make sure that we are putting in the yards and the discipline to build the muscle and the rigor that goes behind fantastic execution. These aren't plans that are just living in a slide deck somewhere and you've ticked the box to say our department or our team's got a plan. These are living, breathing things that are guiding decision making. Well, these meetings are interesting because I've also seen where the ELT, SLT, they walk out of those meetings with the action plans thinking or feeling, rightly or wrongly, that they're now responsible and accountable for whatever that thing is without thinking actually... ...I need to build a team around this. And which, you know, at least they can share the workload. And what ends up happening is people then go... ...they don't build the team, they end up taking accountability for it on their own... ...and then they come back and they've made no action... ...because the excuse is well, business as usual has got in the way as opposed to putting time in. something done over the top, right? Yeah. Like, you know that part where you get to the end of the two-day workshop, especially those firms that only do this once a year, and they've articulated some good stuff, right? So they've got the areas that they want to focus on, their objectives, they've been able to identify the key results that they're looking for. They've got some level of measures. And then there's that row in the Excel spreadsheet that says who's accountable.

And my experience is, that there's only two or three people's names that constantly get put against these activities. And they're not the ones that necessarily have the competence in that area. They just are completed finishes. They're the ones that will get it over the line. They'll build the plan. And then somebody speaks up going, well, I don't have anything. And so they get nominated the people stuff near the end. Right. And I just don't think leaders pause long enough to go either. What team do I need around that? Maybe.

And in fact, I won't even say maybe I'd go stronger than that. The people that should own the action plan should be the people that report to you. If you're looking at an exec team, not you yourself, you can act as an executive sponsor, but I would like, you know, my favorite term, push it down, get people who are closest to the customer to be able to work out the how. And once again, remember we've determined as a, as a leadership team where we're going and where our big bets are, that's the strategy. But this is the part that.

If people don't lean into it, they don't contribute towards it, then it kind of feels they're just being told or they're noma-volunteered about what to do and then they don't get any accountability. Well, this is the problem, is that many people take the action plans, they'll leave the exact table and they'll go to their teams and go, right, this what you need to do. And, you know, many of the drivers that we've talked about so far around alignment, is that if your teams that are going to execute on these action plans have not emotionally bought in or connected to what actually they've got to do, then all of a sudden it's just going to fall on deaf ears and the action plan itself becomes actually a bit of a pain in the arse for people to execute on and they'll make every reason why they haven't got time to do it. It's always a time thing. Do you think that leaders sometimes they're trying to look for the perfect plan and so they're trying to get the words exactly right. don't know how many times plans that I've seen have been taken back out and they wordsmith them so that they get the words exactly right or you've finished the area and the measures aren't that tight. And I think that they're looking for perfection. And whilst they're looking for that, they're not progressing the firm. Right. Do you think that there is a perfect plan trap or illusion that leaders fall into? definitely. And I think that the ones that are the ones fall into that are the ones that

Often, and I've had people in teams that I've managed like this where they spend so much time in the planning that they don't execute anything because they're trying to get the plan exactly right. Where, you know, look, if it's 90 % there, for me, good enough, we'll work it out as we go along. But I'd much rather take one or two steps forward than sit and continue to plan whilst that's happening. When we did the original research, and I think this is backed up by organisations that have partnered with leadership over the last couple of years. When we do a detailed set of measurement across all 12 drivers and two amplifiers, action plans, operational plans, tactical plans tends to come out as one of the highest scored areas. What's your thoughts on that? I think they get a bit confused because, you know, they do fall back or they credit themselves because they've got their operational plans.

When in natural fact it's, you know, an operational plan is something that they've built for business as usual. What we're talking about here is building something very, very different. So maybe it's what they actually think it should look like versus what it actually is. So are you suggesting there's two plans there? There's a, hey, this is the plan on a page, if you like, for the areas where we're doubling down in the strategy, and this is the plan for business as usual, so at least people have clarity on that.

Or do you merge those two together? Personally I don't merge them together. I'd rather keep them separate because I think they're very, very different skill sets that need to execute on. They're probably one's more slow burn, one's very, very fast burn. I think putting them together would confuse people. Or it gets watered down to a level where we're not you know, a lot of off-sites we've done in the past, you know, we will get after two days, but we're moving, is we'll get to having a plan on a page. And you'll always hear with the people that are high detail going, there's not enough detail in this, we need more detail. And we'll always say to them, you now need to go away and build out your plan. I wonder how many people do that as opposed to just running off those…that first page, that plan on a page that's got three or four things they're going to try to achieve, know, must do's, must wins, whatever. They don't actually build them out.

Yeah, I can't help but think I've got one particular organization at the moment. They've done this really, really well. So rather than turn up and simply look at what they did last year and then increase it by a certain percentage, they've actually gone out and done enough research to understand what their customers want. They've done enough research tapping into their employees to go, hey, like we said before, the employee experience will impact the customer experience. They know the market that they're addressing. And you're right. Inside of an offsite or a series of offsites in this case, they've got to a pretty clear plan. What I'm excited by is now every department takes that and it's almost like rapid fire testing it going, is this reality? Is this actually going to back to rubber hit the road? We can decide it in a nice hotel or in a business boardroom, but will this actually make a difference outside and will it help us progress to the goal? One of our friends in the UK,

Ben Hunt-Davis, we've talked about before, won an Olympic gold in Sydney 2000 in the rowing for the UK. And he would say, you can do whatever you want as long as it makes the boat go faster. And so I wonder how often people come back, fill in the detail that's required per department and then have the discipline to be able to report back on that plan. Because you've got to have some sort of level of feedback as to whether that plan's working. Because if it's not working, at least you know the levers or the ingredients that you put in and you can begin to change that concoction or that mix or that formula. I think sometimes when the results aren't there and you don't have the discipline of checking back on a plan, we've seen leaders just start changing everything back to hoping that any change is a good change. One of the things that worked really well for me, but I'm a high visual person, is I struggle with these plans.

I don't get as much energy looking at a spreadsheet or looking at a PowerPoint or a Word document. I'd much rather see it almost literally on a wall or something to be able to see the progress made because I think once people can see what actions are being taken and the dial was moving, I think it absolutely energises people to continue to take the action. So I think the reporting part of it becomes really, really vital around the action plan itself and what are the agreements that have been set up front as to how it's going to be reported back to that executive team around progress. And we've always hinted that having a set, I know in our businesses we've always encouraged people to have a set of nine or 12 measures that matter. But what I like about what you've said is that it seems like a really good action plan provides an evolving roadmap, right? It's not.

It's not just a plan that sits in a deck or gets pinned to a wall and we'll check it again in the next 12 months. It's something that's constantly being updated and refined. And that way people are clear on the progress, as you said, that they're making. So here are some top tips for leaders. I think most people out there think they do this step well, but there's room and opportunity for higher levels of discipline and practicality, which will get you an action plan that actually drives results. 

Number one, start with the outcome not the activity. You've heard me say a couple of times on this episode, objectives and key results, and then come back and work out the activities. Every line in a plan should answer, how does this create progress towards that true north that we're looking for? 

Make sure we name an owner for every action. That person doesn't need to be in the room, but that shared accountability means no accountability. And so just saying, well, that's the leadership team is not good enough. Well, that's that department. We need a person that we can go to that hold their feet onto the fire and go, they're responsible not for doing all the work, but they're responsible for feeding back to us the progress in that particular area. 

Making sure, and you said being able to see the progress along the road, build momentum milestones, set short, visible checkpoints, I call them base camps that show progress and really celebrate those, however large or big that we've moved something forward as we're going, humans are built.

You know, plans don't execute themselves it takes the people. And so we want to create that momentum and that energy that progress brings. And then we've said this before, keep it alive. Whatever you do, please keep it alive. Write it in pencil, have it up on a whiteboard, review and refresh your plan weekly, monthly, quarterly. Execution doesn't die from bad strategy, right? It dies from really, really style planning. And we need to keep life and certainly customer feedback and employee feedback into those action plans.

So hopefully that should have begun to at least challenge the way in which you're doing action plan. We know that action planning shouldn't feel like spreadsheet origami or locking yourself in a room for two weeks trying to come up with all of the plans to make them perfect. we want plans that add value that enable us to make progress. And so to end like we do in every episode with a challenge, what percentage of your current action or operational plan is actually being executed on and how much is just there for admin?