Action planning session

1. Action Planning

2. Todays objectives
• Gaining an understanding of what project management is
• Understanding what your one important goal is
• Gaining the ability to identify individual actions to achieving your goal
• Identifying what is slowing you down.
• Understanding how to place these individual actions in an effective order
• Knowledge of how important each action is
• Identifying ways in which your business can grow.

3. What do you want from your business?
Where are
you now?
Where do
you want
to go?
How are
you going
to get
there

4. Where are you know?
• Reflect on your progress
− What have you achieved?
− What milestones have you passed?
− What can genuinely be celebrated
It’s important to recognise and
celebrated your achievements

5. Where do you want to go?
• By the end of the first year?
• By the end of year 2?
• In 5 years time?

6. What’s preventing you from getting there?
Day job Goals
Urgent
It acts on you
Important
You act on it

7. Urgent Important
If you ignore the urgent you kill today
If you ignore the important you kill
tomorrow.

8. One wildly important goal
• The more you try to do the less you accomplish
• If you are “focused” on achieving 5, 10, 15, 20 goals you cannot focus
• The first challenge then is to focus on what’s wildly important
• Focus on less so you can achieve more
• What is the one wildly important goal?

9. Identifying the one important goal
• Ask yourself
If every other area of the business
remained at its current level of
performance, what is the one area
where change would have the greatest
impact?

10. One final rule
• Your wildly important goal must have a finish line.
−It must contain a clearly measurable result
−And a date that the result must be achieved.
−For example “to increase the number of client instructions from 25 to 50 client by the end of
2020”
−You may remember this style
−Where are we now (25 instructions)
−Where do we want to go (50 instructions)

11. Your activities
• What are ALL of the activities you are doing at the
moment in your business?
−Marketing
−Sales
−Product development
• Write them all down

12. How will you get there?
Progress Anchors

13. What’s holding you back?
• Be honest
−Which of the tasks that you have listed are slowing you
down or holding you back?
−Think about activities you are doing that are not moving
you towards your goal?
−What can you do about them?

14. What could make you go faster?
• What activities will put wind in your sails?
−Of your list of actions – which are good ones?
−Think about the actions that if you did them or if you did
more of them it would make you go faster
−Reflect, discuss and list them.

15. What comes first?
Urgency
Importance
High
Low
HighLow

16. Eisenhower method
• Can you now put ALL of your tasks into this grid?
• Rate them on urgency and importance
Urgency
Importance
High
Low
HighLow

17. What comes first?
Urgency
Importance
High
Low
HighLow

18. If its worked………
Urgency
Importance
High
Low
HighLow
Day job tasks
Goal tasks

19. How do you make a cup of tea?
• What are the individual tasks
to making a cup of tea?
−E.g.
−get cup out of cupboard
−Get tea bag
Try not to think about an order –
just the simple tasks

20. Dependencies
• Known as the relationship between tasks in a project
• All of the tasks in a project are sequenced according to their dependencies for each other
• Dependencies are critical for:
−Sequencing work packages
−Calculating a critical path
−Identifying resources and scheduling issues and making supportive decisions
−Identifying opportunities for fast tracking or fast failing

21. Types of dependencies
• Finish to start
−The first task must be completed before the next task can start
• Finish to finish
−The second task cannot finish until the first task has finished – but it can start before the first
task has finished
• Start to start
−The second task doesn’t start until the first task starts.
• Start to finish
−The first task must start before the second task can finish

22. Categories of dependencies
• Logical planning dependencies
−there are dependencies which are logic driven. i.e. you cannot paint a wall before the wall is
even built
• Resource based planning dependencies
−These are dependencies where the task could be completed quicker if you had more resources
• Preference planning dependencies
−These are tasks that could be scheduled in a different order but the project manager chooses to
schedule them in this way.

23. How to make a cup of tea
• Now try and put them in a specific order.
• Consider the dependencies:

24. Critical path
• The sequence of activities that any project must follow
• Where a delay in one task will lead to a delay in the whole project
• The critical path is usually the path through which the project will take the longest dependent time.

25. Critical path

26. Now lets look at yours
• Of the actions you identified earlier do any
have dependencies?
− Are you prevented from starting some until you
have finished others?
− Can you start any whilst others are going on?

27. Dependencies
• Can you now try to place them in an order in the
same way we did the “cup of tea” exercise?

28. Gantt Charts – what are you going to do and when

29. Holding yourself to account
• Try this:
−Weekly
−Try to write down all of the things that you have done to achieve your goal
−Did you achieve everything that you promised yourself you would?
−Reflect on the progress – was it enough for you and your goals
−Reflect on the challenges – both business and personal
−How can you improve on the challenges?
−Make promises for the next week
−What are you promising yourself that you will achieve in the following week