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You can have a great idea and you can come up with a plan to make it happen, but unless the plan has a structure that other people want to follow you could eventually be traveling the road alone. Great ideas need structure so that diverse people can understand what’s about to happen. This will help them buy in, support you and, encourage others to come aboard. It’ll also help them stay committed if a time comes when they could stray.

Here’s the backbone of a smart plan.

1. Make sure you describe your plan clearly, especially the end result desired. You want it to be so clear that anyone can explain what the plan is to accomplish.
2. Put your plan in writing to maintain clarity. Not writing your plan invites confusion, misinterpretation and blurred details. Oral plans make me think of the schoolyard game of people repeating the same thing one to another and after 10 generations it no longer sounds even remotely like the original.
3. Have whomever is chiefly responsible for implementing the plan be the chief architect of the plan. The depth of commitment may be what you need to weather future storms.
4. Be certain your plan includes one particular person as the focal point for accountability. People want to know who is in charge.
5. Invite the people most impacted by your plan to share their input long before the plan is finalized. Besides buy in, their insights will help you refine your plan for strength and flexibility.

Incorporating these five elements will help ensure your plan’s success. That’s smart planning.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 at 5:30 am and is filed under Podcast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.