Action Plan Writing Tips + Templates
Want to write an Action Plan to improve your personal, professional, and family activities? Then let’s get started.
Downloads: The MS Office Action Plan is here. The Apple iWork Pages template is here.
What is an Action Plan?
An Action Plan identifies the goals, schedule, and priority of inter-related tasks necessary to complete an objective. An Action Plan has three parts: tasks, schedule, and resources.
Action Plan Template
Use this Action Plan template to identify what plan to accomplish in your business, what you need to prioritize, and how you will share these objectives. This Action Plan template pack includes a 14 page Word template and 7 Excel spreadsheets to organize your planning activities.
Learn more about the Action Plan template here.
[Learn more about these MS Word and Excel templates here]
The Benefit of a Daily Action Plan
Are you the type of person who likes the ‘idea’ of planning but not the actual planning itself? Me too. Action plans may be the answer. Here’s how I use them.
Read: Benefits of a Daily Action Plan
10 Step Action Plan to Increase Sales
It’s easy to confuse Action Plans and To Do lists? From one angle, they both have the same objectives. What I find is that I often end up with lots of to do lists, which are really hard to keep track of. And, it’s very difficult to see if they’re working or making any real difference.
Read: Action Plan to Increase Sales
A motivation tip from Michael Phelps
It’s interesting to watch the reaction of athletes after they’ve won (or lost) a race. Michael Phelps had just won his fourth of five medals. But he wasn’t taking the fifth for granted. ‘We’re not there yet.’ Winning the fifth would be just as hard, if not harder, than the first four. What does this mean for you? How can you apply this to your business?
Read: Michael Phelps on Motivation
How to Track Job Opportunities with Action Plans
When creating Job Action Plan, use a simple record keeping tool, such as MS Excel, to keep track of all the efforts in your plan of action. This means that every step gets tracked and you can see where you need to make any corrections to the plan. Likewise, if you make many calls – and don’t track them – you may call them twice by accident.
Read: How to Track Job Opportunities with Action Plans
5 Year Action Plan
[Learn more about these MS Word and Excel templates here]
How to Improve Action Plans with To Do Lists
To bring your Action Plan to life, create a To Do list in MS Excel. Once you have developed your Action Plan, you need to allocate time to each activity. To Do lists are one of the simplest ways to track, monitor and improve your Action Plan’s tasks.
Read: How to Improve Action Plans with To Do Lists
Using Job Search Action Plans To Find Work Faster
If you’re looking for work, create a Job Search Action Plan to define the activities you need to perform to get hired. These guidelines work for full-time, permanent and contract roles. The key is to keep the Action Plan simple so it brings you closer to landing your next job and improves your chance of employment.
Read: How to Use Job Search Action Plans To Find Work Faster
Action Plans: How to Create Sub Goals
Last week, we looked at how to create goals for your Action Plan. The next step is to drill down and create sub goals. This lets you work on the smaller tasks necessary to complete the high-level actions.
Read: How to Create Sub Goals in Action Plans
Performance Indicators
[Learn more about these MS Word and Excel templates here]
The Lazy Man’s Guide to Action Plans
If you have never written an Action Plan before, you want to know, how do I get started, what needs to go into the Action Plan, and can you show me some samples? In this series of tutorials, I will help you define your Action Plan; give examples to download; show you how to format your MS Word templates.
Read: The Lazy Man’s Guide to Action Plans
Action Plan Guide: 7 Questions, 7 Answers
Write your Action Plan so that it is achievable, measurable, and effective. When writing your next action plan to achieve a particular goal or outcome, use the following guidelines to reach your objective faster.
Read: FAQs For Creating An Action Plan
The Absolute Beginner’s Guide To Writing an Action Plan
If you need a sample action plan to get your business in shape, then use the following guidelines to design your next MS Word template. An Action Plan is a series of steps that helps you achieve your goals in measurable ways. The key is to tie your goals to targets you can reach – and measure your success at each step!
Read: The Absolute Beginner’s Guide To Writing an Action Plan
Performance Action Plans: 10 Ways to Improve Productivity
Use Performance Action Plans to help employees improve their performance at work by identifying goals which are realistic, practical and measurable. Here are ten practical ways to create performance reviews.
Read: Performance Action Plans: 10 Ways to Improve Productivity
Responsibility Matrix
[Learn more about these MS Word and Excel templates here]
Strategic Action Plans: Are You Making These 7 Mistakes?
Need to create a Strategic Action Plan? Your business will benefit from using an Action Plan to link your business goals to your strategies. This plan lets your develop a series of tasks that you can assign to targets and review as they are accomplished.
Read: Strategic Action Plans: Are You Making These 7 Mistakes?
Action Plans: Make Your Goals Hit The Right Target
We looked at how to create goals for your Action Plan and how to tie this into your overall plan of action. The next step is to drill down and create sub goals. This lets you work on more granular efforts that help you complete the smaller tasks necessary to complete the high level actions.