Learn what an action plan is and how to write one. Read examples of action plans for goals both large and small, and discover templates to help you write your own action plan.
Planning a wedding, applying to college, hosting a dinner party, launching a new product. These are complicated and multifaceted activities. Successfully planning and then pulling off goals like these may require that you complete many different subtasks. For example, in planning your wedding, you’ll probably need to invite guests, arrange food, secure a venue, and figure out what you’ll wear.
All of these subtasks may have different importance levels, different due dates, and may even require the involvement of different people. How can you organize and prioritize all of the things that you need to do to make sure that everything goes smoothly and that you can achieve what you want to achieve? An action plan is an outline or list of all the tasks that need to be completed to achieve a goal. Action plans can be used to help you accomplish large goals or small goals. They can also be adapted for individual goals or for group goals. In this article, we’ll define what an action plan is, outline the steps to writing an action plan, and look at some examples and templates for action plans.
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Put most simply, an action plan is a list of the steps or tasks that need to be completed to reach a goal or to complete a job (Frese et al, 2007).
There is no one correct way to write an action plan. You can organize your action plan in whatever way helps you keep track of all that you need to do to accomplish your goal. Oftentimes, action plans are organized as tables or spreadsheets with each job, task, or step listed in the first column and other important information listed in the second and subsequent columns.
Most plans include a date or timeline for each of the component tasks. If you are working with a group of people, each task will probably also list the person or people responsible for that task. You may also want to add in other information that is specific to your goal. For example, you may want to note the priority level (low, medium, high) of each task or list the resources that are needed to accomplish each task.
The action plan process is highly versatile. It can be used to organize the tasks required to complete very large long-term goals that take place over multiple years and that involve a large number of people. Action plans can also be used to organize much smaller short-term goals that a single person can accomplish within a few weeks.
Action Plan Example 1
An example of a relatively small goal that may be organized and clarified with an action plan is a dinner party (Rysman, n.d.). Using an action plan to organize a dinner party might first involve listing everything that you need to do to throw the dinner party. You might also find it helpful to organize the tasks by deadline. For example, two weeks before the party you may want to create your guest list, send out invitations, and decide the atmosphere and aesthetic of your party. One week before the party you may want to follow up with guests who haven’t sent RSVPs, confirm the dietary requirements of your guests, plan the menu, and purchase any décor or dishware that you need.
Two days before the party you may want to get your ingredients and make a playlist. The day before the party you may want to prepare as much of the food as you can, clean your home, and pick up flowers. On the day of the party, you may want to prepare the last of the food and set the table. This action plan lists all of the tasks that need to be accomplished to host a dinner party, along with a timeline for each task. In this example, you are throwing the party by yourself so there is no need to assign each task to a specific person. However, if you are throwing the party with a partner, roommate, or another person you may want to assign each task to a specific person.
Action Plan Example 2
A much larger goal that is currently being addressed with an action plan is Harvard Business School’s current ambition to advance racial equity. This is an extremely large, multifaceted, long-term goal involving the contributions of a large number of people. Harvard Business School has developed an action plan to clarify, define and organize all of the tasks required to achieve this goal (Harvard Business School, n.d.).
The broad action plan is made up of eight large goals including “Attract additional Black talent to all parts of the HBS community” and “Equip our students to become leaders for racial equity”. Each of these eight tasks is then further broken down into subtasks. For example, the task of equipping students to become leaders for racial equity is broken down into five specific actions including adding case studies featuring Black and other underrepresented minority protagonists to all courses. Using an action plan, Harvard Business School is breaking down a very broad goal into specific action items that can be assigned to specific people and given specific timelines.
The first part of creating an action plan is identifying the goal or goals that you want to achieve. It may be helpful at this stage to use the Objectives and Key Results (OKR) approach. This approach may help you clarify your goals and make them more concrete. In the OKR approach, you first identify your objective and then break down that objective into specific and concrete key results that you want to achieve. For example, if your objective is to maintain a world-class office, your key results may include transferring all of your company records to the cloud, implementing an online conference room booking system, and launching a new document sharing platform (What Matters, 2020). Each of these key results can serve as a task within your action plan. If needed, each task can be assigned to a specific person, given a due date, further broken down into component subtasks, and given a priority level.
The Charity, Save The Children, sometimes uses action plans to organize the support that they provide to children in the communities that they serve (Save the Children, 2018). In one example, the parents of a disabled 13-year-old girl in Lebanon were increasingly unable to provide their daughter with the high level of care that she needed. An action plan was written to prioritize and organize the assistance provided to this family.
Action plan goals included building a stronger support network for the family and giving the family more access to community support services. Each of these goals was then further broken down into component subtasks.
For example, increasing social support was divided into two subtasks: identifying local community events appropriate for the child, and giving the child the basic safety skills needed to be away from her family for short periods. Each subtask was then assigned to a specific person including the child’s caseworker, a parent, other family members, or community workers. Each task was also given a specific timeline. This action plan allowed the team of people responsible for the care of this child to work on their own specific tasks, with all of the tasks serving the larger goal of ensuring that the child received the best possible care.
The simplest action plan is a two-column checklist with each activity or subtask listed alongside space to mark when the task has been completed. Adding in more columns may help you improve your action plan. You may want to have a column for the expected date of completion for each task, a column assigning a priority level to each task, or a column for the resources that are needed to complete the task. If you are working with a group or a team you may also want to add a column listing the person or people responsible for each task. More columns with more information can be added as needed.
This is a simple action plan template that you can download and use in Microsoft Word. It contains columns for goal, action steps, and target date as well as checkboxes for completion.
Here are some simple action plan templates that you can use in Microsoft Excel. They contain columns for priority, the task, the date that the task was added, reviewed, and completed, who the task is assigned to, and space for updates.
This is a simple action plan PDF template that you can edit. It has space to write a single goal, a target date, and space to write up to three subtasks that you will do to accomplish your goal.
Action plans may help you to run and to grow your business. The short video below, produced by the government of the Australian state of Queensland, outlines and lists some potential benefits of using action plans in your business and describes some best practices for using action plans in your business.
