how to develop business action plans

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• Create an action plan that drives resul ...

Create an action plan that drives results

An action plan outlines precisely how you’re planning to accomplish your goals. It’s the perfect way to approach goals systematically and keep your team on target. In this article, we will cover how to create an action plan in six steps and how to implement it successfully. Plus, learn more about the differences between action plans, project plans, and to-do lists.

It can feel good to make goals. After all, you’re defining what you want to accomplish. But goals won’t do much without clear action steps. ​​An action plan is a popular project management technique that lists your action steps so you know exactly how you’re going to accomplish your goals. 

We’re going to show you how to create this clear roadmap step by step and other tools you should utilize to get the most out of your action plan. Let’s dive in.

What is an action plan?

An action plan is a list of tasks or steps you need to complete to achieve your goals. An effective action plan works like a management plan for your company’s initiatives, outlining the steps you need to take to make these larger goals a success. Once you go through the goal-setting process, create an action plan with specific tasks and timeframes to reach each goal. 

Who needs an action plan?

An action plan is useful for anyone who needs a step-by-step planning process. When you create an action plan, you detail exactly what actions you'll take to accomplish your project goals. These plans can help you organize your to-dos and ensure you have the necessary information and resources to accomplish your goals.

But you can create action plans for more than just strategic planning. Use this tool to reach any specific goals in a systematic way. Try setting up:

Business action plan

Marketing action plan

Corrective action plan

Sales action plan

Project action plan

Personal development action plan

Regardless of the type of action plan you create, make sure you create it in task management software . That way, you can easily share action items and timelines with your team to track progress. Instead of manual status updates and unclear deliverables, your team has one central source of truth for everything they need to do in order to hit their goals. 

Now let’s get into how you can create an action plan that increases your team’s efficiency and accountability.

6 steps to create an action plan

Step 1: set a smart goal.

When it comes to setting goals, clarity is the single most important quality. With the SMART goal method, your goal is clearly defined and attainable. Set specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound goals to benefit from this tactic.

For example, your goal could be to deliver your current project (measurable) in four months (time-bound) without overspending (specific). Assuming this goal is both achievable and realistic based on your available resources, it’s a great SMART goal to set for yourself.

Step 2: Identify tasks

Now that your goal is clearly defined and written down, you’ll want to identify the steps you have to take to reach it. Identify all of the tasks that you and your team need to complete to reach milestones and, eventually, the main objective.

Here are a few action plan examples with tasks for different kinds of goals:

Goal: Expand team from seven to nine team members by June.

Meet with Human Resources to discuss the recruitment campaign.

Create a template project to track candidates.

Schedule three interviews per week.

Goal: Select and onboard new work management software to the entire company by the end of Q2.

Apply for the budget.

Create a roll-out plan for Q2.

Schedule training for team members.

Goal: Host 5k charity run in May to raise $15,000 for the local food bank.

Find volunteers and determine responsibilities

Prepare marketing materials and PR plans

Secure sponsors

Step 3: Allocate resources

Once you’ve outlined all of your tasks, you can allocate resources like team members, project budget, or necessary equipment. Whether it’s assigning team members to certain tasks, applying for a budget, or gathering helpful tools—now is the time to plan and prepare.

Sometimes, you can’t allocate all of your resources before you put your action plan in motion. Perhaps you have to apply for funding first or need executive approval before you can move on with a task. In that case, make the resource an action item in your plan so you can take care of it later.

Step 4: Prioritize tasks

When your team is clear on their priorities, they know what work to do first and what work they can reschedule if necessary. No action plan is set in stone, so the best way to empower your team is to let them know what tasks have a high priority and which ones are a bit more flexible.

To make this clear, sort all of your action items by priority and sequence:

Priority: Important and less important tasks.

Sequence: Order in which tasks have to be completed so others can start.

When you’re organizing and prioritizing your action items , you’ll notice that some action items are dependent on others. In other words, one task can’t begin until the previous task is completed. Highlight these dependencies and factor the sequence into your prioritization. This reduces bottlenecks , removing obstacles that would make a less important action item delay a high-priority item.  

Step 5: Set deadlines and milestones

When your team knows what they're working towards, they have the context to effectively prioritize work and the motivation to get great work done. Team members tend to be more motivated when they directly understand how their work is contributing to larger goals.

To engage your teammates from the get go, assign deadlines to all action items and define milestones . Milestones mark specific points along your project timeline that identify when activities have been completed or when a new phase starts

Create a timeline or Gantt chart to get a better overview of your prioritized tasks, milestones, and deadlines. Your timeline also serves as a visual way to track the start and end dates of every task in your action plan. You can use it as a baseline to make sure your team stays on track.

Step 6: Monitor and revise your action plan

Your ability to stay on top of and adapt to changes is what makes you a great project manager. It’s crucial that you monitor your team’s progress and revise the plan when necessary.

Luckily, your action plan isn’t set in stone. The best way to track potentially changing priorities or deadlines is to use a dynamic tool like a work management software . That way, you can update to-dos and dependencies in real time, keep your team on the same page, and your action plan moving.

Action plan vs. plan B vs. project plan vs. to-do list

So how exactly does an action plan differ from all these other plans and lists? To clear this up once and for all, we’re going to explain what these plans are and when to use which plan to maximize your team’s efforts.

Action plan vs. plan B

You may have heard the terms action plan and plan B used interchangeably. But in fact, an action plan and plan B are two completely different types of plans. Here’s how to tell them apart:

Your action plan outlines actions in much detail so you and your team know exactly what steps to take to reach your goal.

A plan B is a secondary action plan, an alternative strategy, that your team can apply if your original plan fails. Whether that’s because of an internal issue or an external factor—having a plan B is a great way to be prepared for the worst case scenario.

Action plan vs. project plan

A project plan is a bit more complicated than an action plan. Project plans are blueprints of the key elements your team needs to accomplish to successfully achieve your project goals. A project plan includes seven elements:

Goals and project objectives

Success metrics

Stakeholders and roles

Scope and budget

Milestones and deliverables

Timeline and schedule

Communication plan

Once you’ve created a project plan, use an action plan to outline and document how your team will execute your tasks and hit your goals. This will ensure that everyone on your team knows what their responsibilities are and what to get done by when.

Action plan vs. to-do list

A to-do list is typically used to write down single tasks that don’t necessarily lead to one common goal. To-do lists can change daily and are much less organized than action plans. An action plan will follow specific steps and include tasks that all lead to the completion of a common goal.

How to implement your action plan successfully

You know how to create an action plan, but in order to implement it successfully, you need to use the right tools and use them correctly. Here are our top five tips to ensure your action plan is effective:

Use task management software

Streamline your action plan by keeping all of your tasks and timelines in one central source of truth. Task management software, like Asana , is perfect for your action plan because it allows you to keep track of pending tasks, declare task ownership, assign dependencies, and connect with your team in real time or asynchronously .

Use or create templates

Create or use a template that lists all the action items with notes, status, priority, and ownership. When you create a template that fits your project type, you can reuse it time and time again.

Set up real-time alerts and assign dependencies

Make sure all action items are time-bound and that you assign dependencies. That way, your team can react when an item is ready for them and easily track what other items depend on theirs. 

Check action items off as you complete them

When action items are completed, check them off! Make sure it’s visible to everyone and happens in real time so the person responsible for the next action item can start their work as soon as possible.

Discuss late or pending tasks

If you run into issues or delays, talk to your team to uncover potential bottlenecks and find solutions that keep the action plan on track. You can add notes directly into your action plan or set up calls to discuss more complex issues.

Ready, set, action plan

Like Benjamin Franklin once said: “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” Creating an action plan helps you stay focused, on track, and brings your goals to life.

Plan to succeed with a structured action plan and helpful tools like Asana’s task management software. Connect and align with your team in a central source of truth while staying flexible enough to revise your action plan when necessary.

Related resources

7 steps to complete a social media audit (with template)

How to accomplish big things with long-term goals

What are objectives and key results (OKRs)?

Fix these common onboarding challenges to boost productivity

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Blog What is an Action Plan & How to Write One [With Examples]

What is an Action Plan & How to Write One [With Examples]

Written by: Danesh Ramuthi Oct 26, 2023

An action plan is a meticulously structured strategy that pinpoints specific steps, tasks and resources vital to turning a goal into reality. It is extremely useful in any project management. 

Crafting an action plan is like plotting a route for a cross-country journey. It’s the strategic map that outlines every step, decision and pitstop needed to reach your ultimate destination.

With a well-thought-out action plan, you’re not just shooting in the dark; you’re making informed, purposeful strides towards your goals. Dive deep with our guide and witness real-world examples that will inspire and guide you.

Need a tool to kickstart your planning? Try out the Venngage business plan maker and explore their extensive collection of action plan templates .

Click to jump ahead: 

What is the purpose of an action plan?

When to develop an action plan, 7 components of a actions plan, 15 action plan examples.

• How to Write an action plan?

Final thoughts

An action plan serves as a strategic tool designed to outline specific steps, tasks and goals necessary to achieve a particular objective.

Its primary purpose is to provide a clear roadmap and direction for individuals, teams or organizations to follow in order to efficiently and effectively accomplish their goals. 

Action plans break down complex projects into manageable, actionable components, making it easier to track progress and stay on course.

Moreover, action plans play a crucial role in fostering accountability and coordination among team members. By assigning responsibilities and deadlines for each task or milestone, they ensure that everyone involved is aware of their roles and the overall timeline, reducing confusion and enhancing teamwork. 

Additionally, action plans help in resource allocation, budgeting and risk management by enabling stakeholders to identify potential challenges and plan for contingencies. 

Overall, the purpose of an action plan is to transform abstract goals into concrete actions, making them more achievable and measurable while ensuring that the resources and efforts are aligned with the desired outcomes.

Developing an action plan is crucial when you’re looking to achieve a specific goal or outcome. Here are instances when you should consider developing an action plan:

• Start of an organization : Ideally, an action plan should be developed within the first six months to one year of the start of an organization. This initial plan lays the groundwork for the future direction and growth of the entity.
• Project initiation : At the start of any project, an action plan helps to clearly define the tasks, responsibilities, and timelines.
• Goal setting : Whenever you or your organization sets a new goal. Action plans transform these goals from abstract ideas into concrete steps.
• Strategic planning : For long-term visions and missions, action plans break down the journey into manageable pieces, each with its timeline and responsible parties.
• Performance improvement : If there are areas where performance is lacking, whether it’s personal or organizational, an action plan can outline the steps needed to elevate performance.

An action plan is a detailed outline that breaks down the steps necessary to achieve a specific goal. Here are the typical components of an action plan.

1. Objective or Goal

The cornerstone of your action plan is the objective or goal. This should be a clear and concise statement outlining the desired outcome or result. Having a well-defined objective provides a direction and purpose to the entire plan, ensuring all tasks and actions are aligned towards achieving this singular aim.

2. Tasks or Actions

Once the objective is set, the next step is to list down the specific tasks or actions required to achieve this goal. These tasks should be broken down into detailed steps, ensuring no essential activity is overlooked. The granularity of these tasks can vary based on the complexity of the goal.

3. Set deadline

For each task or action, set a realistic and achievable deadline. This timeline ensures that the plan stays on track and that momentum is maintained throughout the execution. It also allows for monitoring progress and identifying potential delays early.

4. Resources needed to complete the project

It’s crucial to recognize and list the resources you’ll need to complete the tasks. This can encompass financial resources, human resources, equipment, technological tools or any other assets. Identifying these early ensures that there are no bottlenecks during execution due to a lack of necessary resources.

5. Person responsible

Assign a person or a team for each task. This designation ensures accountability and clarity. When individuals are aware of their responsibilities, it reduces overlap, confusion and ensures that every task has someone overseeing its completion.

6. Potential barriers or challenges

Every plan will face challenges. By anticipating potential barriers or obstacles, you can be better prepared to address them. This proactive approach ensures smoother execution and less reactionary problem-solving.

7. Measurement of key performance indicators (KPIs)

Determine how you’ll measure the success of each task or the plan overall. KPIs are tangible metrics that allow you to gauge progress and determine whether you’re moving closer to your goals and objectives. They offer a quantifiable means to evaluate success.

Action plans serve as blueprints, guiding the steps and resources needed to achieve a specific goal. 

They come in various formats, tailored to different scenarios and objectives. Here, we present a range of action plan examples that cater to diverse purposes and situations. 

From business strategies to simple task lists, these examples illustrate the versatility and importance of well-structured planning.

Business action plan example

A business action plan is essentially a strategy roadmap, meticulously tailored for realizing broader business objectives. By crafting a solid action plan, businesses can channel their resources, manpower and strategies in a direction that harmonizes with their larger vision.

Key to this plan is the identification and alignment of steps that resonate with the company’s comprehensive strategy, ambitions of growth and aspirations for operational enhancements. 

While this might entail a myriad of specific steps based on unique business goals, some common elements include setting clear key performance indicators (KPIs), undertaking a thorough SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis to grasp the current business landscape and establishing a timeline to keep track of progress.

Furthermore, allocating responsibilities to team members or individuals ensures that every aspect of the strategy has a dedicated focus. Budgeting, essential to the success of the action plan, ensures that every initiative is financially viable and sustainable. 

Regular reviews and iterations based on feedback and changing market dynamics keep the action plan agile and relevant.

Related: 5 Steps to Create an Actionable Employee Development Plan [with Templates & Examples]

Company action plan example

A comprehensive company action plan serves as the strategic linchpin, ensuring a coherent and coordinated approach to realizing organizational goals. Central to this plan is the incorporation of rigorous market research and analysis, which provides insights into consumer behaviors, market trends and potential opportunities. 

Equally vital is the focus on product development and procurement, ensuring that the offerings align with market demands and stand out in terms of quality and relevance. 

Alongside, adept legal and financial management safeguards the company’s interests, ensuring compliance with regulations and prudent fiscal oversight.

Moreover, the essence of any successful company action plan lies in its sales and marketing strategies. These define how the products or services are positioned and promoted in the market, ensuring visibility and engagement with the target audience. 

However, while acquisition is crucial, retention plays an equally significant role. Hence, impeccable customer service and nurturing relationships become indispensable components, fostering loyalty and ensuring that clients remain ambassadors for the brand long after the initial transaction.

Related: 30+ Project Plan Examples to Visualize Your Strategy (2023)

Sales action plan example

A well-structured sales action plan serves as the backbone for systematic and efficient progress. Central to this plan is the identification and utilization of the most effective sales channels, whether they are direct, online or through third-party avenues. 

Clarity on the products and services on offer, combined with their unique selling propositions, facilitates tailored and resonant sales pitches. 

Budget considerations ensure that resources are judiciously allocated, balancing the act between expenditures and potential returns. This financial prudence is complemented by setting realistic sales projections, which act as both a motivational target and a yardstick for success.

Timelines, or proposed deadlines, infuse the process with a sense of urgency, ensuring that the momentum of the sales drive is maintained. 

However, the true measure of the action plan’s efficacy lies in its key performance indicators (KPIs). These metrics, be it lead conversion rates or customer retention figures, serve as tangible markers, highlighting the plan’s strengths and signaling areas that might require recalibration to increase sales.

Corrective action plan example

The essence of a corrective action plan lies in its meticulous structure, tailored to address and rectify deviations or inefficiencies identified within an organization. At its core, each action item serves as a focal point, detailing specific areas or processes that require intervention. 

Accompanying each action item is a clear description that provides a comprehensive understanding of the issue at hand. 

However, merely identifying a problem isn’t enough; delving deep into its origins through root cause analysis ensures that solutions target the fundamental issues, rather than just addressing superficial symptoms. 

This analysis then paves the way for defining the corrective action, a tangible step or series of steps designed to mitigate the identified problem and prevent its recurrence.

Besides, to ensure the plan’s effectiveness, assigning a responsible person to each action item is paramount. This individual or team is entrusted with the task’s execution, ensuring accountability and focus. 

The status of each action keeps stakeholders informed about the progress, be it in the planning phase, ongoing, or completed. 

Lastly, setting a due date for each corrective action introduces a sense of urgency and purpose, ensuring that issues are addressed in a timely manner, minimizing disruptions and maximizing operational efficiency.

Simple action plan example

A simple action plan strips away the layers of complexity, offering a concise and direct approach to achieving a goal or addressing an issue. This type of plan is characterized by its straightforward structure, devoid of extraneous details, yet powerfully effective in its clarity. 

It is specifically designed for tasks or objectives that don’t necessitate elaborate strategies or multi-layered approaches.

The core components of a simple action plan usually include a clear statement of the task or objective at hand, followed by a sequence of actions or steps to be taken. 

Each step is described succinctly, ensuring that anyone involved has a clear understanding of what is expected. Responsibilities are defined clearly, with each task allocated to an individual or a team, ensuring accountability. Timelines might be integrated, providing a clear framework for completion, even if they’re just broad milestones. 

Regular check-ins or assessments, although minimal, might be incorporated to monitor progress. 

The beauty of a simple action plan lies in its agility and adaptability, making it particularly suited for individual projects, short-term tasks or situations where a rapid response is required.

How to write an action plan?

Creating an effective action plan is a foundational step towards turning aspirations into tangible results. It provides a clear roadmap, ensuring that each step taken aligns with the overall objective.

Whether you’re aiming to enhance a business process or achieve a personal goal, a well-drafted action plan can be your guiding light. Here’s key steps on how you can craft one:

• Step 1: Establish SMART goals: Initiating with a goal that is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound ensures you have a clear and focused endpoint in sight. Smart goals serves as the cornerstone for your entire strategic blueprint.
• Step 2: Determine necessary tasks: Decompose your overarching objective into smaller, actionable tasks. This modular approach not only makes the mission less daunting but also provides a sequential pathway to goal attainment.
• Step 3: Assign essential resources: Depending on the tasks at hand, designate necessary resources, be they human, financial or technological. This ensures that every activity has the backing it needs for successful execution.
• Step 4: Prioritize tasks by importance: Not all tasks hold equal weight. Determine the hierarchy of tasks based on their impact on the goal and their time sensitivity. This allows for a systematic progression.
• Step 5: Outline timelines and key markers: With tasks in hand, set clear deadlines for each. Introduce milestones, which act as periodic check-ins, ensuring you’re on track and allowing for celebrations of smaller victories.
• Step 6: Oversee and modify your strategy blueprint: As you progress, there will invariably be learnings and challenges. Regularly review your plan to make necessary adjustments, ensuring its relevance and effectiveness.
• Step 7: Consider ready-to-use templates: If starting from scratch feels overwhelming, lean on structured templates to guide your planning. There’s plenty of business plan softwares and platforms such as  Venngage that offer a plethora of action plan templates , tailored to various needs, which can significantly streamline the process.

An action plan is more than just an action steps, it’s a strategic blueprint that bridges the gap between aspirations and realizations. 

Through this comprehensive guide, I’ve walked you through the purpose, ideal timings, core components, and practical examples of action plans across various domains. 

Leveraging tools of project management , you can track progress, assign tasks and ensure every team member stays on the same page. 

It’s not just about setting goals, but about strategically planning every step, ensuring tasks completed align with the larger project goals. 

Remember, success isn’t just about having goals but about charting the right course to achieve them

And if you’re looking to supercharge your planning efforts, don’t miss out on the Venngage business plan maker. 

Dive into their extensive collection of action plan templates and make your strategic planning both efficient and effective. 

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How to Write an Action Plan: Step-by-Step (Examples)

By Status.net Editorial Team on November 9, 2023 — 9 minutes to read

An action plan is a detailed roadmap of the necessary steps you need to take to achieve a specific goal or objective. It’s like a GPS that guides you from your starting point to your desired destination. Creating an action plan helps you break down a large goal into smaller, more manageable tasks, which makes the goal feel less overwhelming.

To start, you should first identify your end goal and be as specific as possible. For example, if you want to increase sales for your business, set a target like “Increase sales by 20% within the next six months.” This will give you a clear vision of what you want to achieve and make it easier to measure your progress.

Next, list the necessary actions or tasks required to reach your goal. These can be further divided into smaller tasks that are easy to understand and implement. For example, to increase sales, you could:

• Improve your online presence by revamping your website, optimizing it for search engines, and posting regularly on social media platforms.
• Reach out to potential clients through email campaigns and cold calls.
• Offer promotions or discounts to incentivize new customers to try your product or service.

Now, it’s time to set a timeline for each task. Deadlines will enable you to monitor your progress and stay on track. Assign realistic due dates for each task, and if needed, break them down into smaller milestones.

To ensure your action plan’s success, make sure to assign responsibility for each task. If you’re working with a team, delegate tasks according to each team member’s strengths, skills, and workload. This will help ensure everyone knows what their responsibilities are, and they are held accountable.

Lastly, always monitor your progress and evaluate your action plan’s effectiveness. Regularly review the tasks you’ve accomplished, and make note of the tasks that were challenging or required more time than anticipated. This self-assessment will help you improve your action plan and make necessary adjustments as you work towards your goal.

Example Action Plan

Goal : Increase sales by 20% within the next 6 months (By January 1st, 2025)

Actions : 1. Improve online presence a) Revamp website design – Due October 15th b) Optimize website for SEO – Due November 1st c) Post regularly on social media (1x/week min) – Ongoing

2. Reach out to potential clients a) Create email marketing campaign – Due September 15th b) Start cold calling campaign (10 calls/day) – Start October 1st

3. Offer promotions a) Design promotion flyers – Due September 1st b) Run month-long 20% off sale – October 1-31st

Monitoring : – Check website analytics weekly – Track new clients monthly – Evaluate sales figures monthly – Adjust plan as needed at monthly meetings

Responsibilities : – John to revamp website – Susan to handle social media – Michael to create promotions – Jennifer to manage outreach campaigns

Steps to Creating a Powerhouse Action Plan

First, identify your goal . Be specific about what you want to achieve and set a time frame for accomplishing it. This will help keep your efforts focused and prevent you from getting overwhelmed by smaller tasks. For example, instead of “increase sales”, choose “increase sales by 20% in the next six months”.

Next, break your goal down into smaller, manageable tasks . Create a list of activities or steps that must be completed in order to reach your goal. If your goal is to Increase sales by 20%, some tasks might be:

• Research your target market
• Develop a marketing strategy
• Improve product offerings
• Train your sales team

Assign a deadline and responsible party for each task on your list. This will help ensure that all tasks are completed on time and that everyone knows their role in achieving the goal. Make sure to set realistic timelines for each task, taking into consideration the resources and time available.

Here’s an example:

• Research your target market – due in one week – assigned to Jane (marketing specialist)
• Develop a marketing strategy – due in two weeks – assigned to marketing team

Monitor your progress regularly. Keep track of your progress by using tools such as calendars, project management software, or a simple spreadsheet. Regularly assess whether you’re on track to meet your goal and adjust your action plan if needed. For example, if a task is taking longer than expected, you may need to reassign resources or revise the deadline.

Celebrate your milestones and learn from setbacks . Along the way, take the time to acknowledge and celebrate your successes, as well as learn from any setbacks or challenges. This will help maintain motivation and encourage continuous improvement.

Finally, communicate your action plan to all stakeholders involved, such as employees, investors, or clients. Clear communication ensures everyone understands the goal, their responsibilities, and the expectations for the project.

Defining Clear and Smart Goals

Specific goals.

When creating your action plan, start by setting specific goals. These are clear, well-defined goals that leave no room for ambiguity. You should know exactly what needs to be accomplished and how you plan to achieve it. For example, instead of aiming for “increasing sales,” set a goal like “increase sales by 15% over the next six months.”

Measurable Goals

Your goals should be measurable so that you can track your progress and know when you’ve achieved them. This involves identifying quantifiable indicators that will help you determine your progress. For instance, if your goal is to increase sales, a measurable component can be the number of units sold or the amount of revenue generated within a specific timeframe.

Achievable Goals

When setting goals, make sure they are achievable and realistic based on your current resources and constraints. Consider your team’s capabilities, time, and budget. Unattainable goals may negatively impact your motivation and morale. For example, if you have a small team with limited resources, setting a goal to double your company’s size within a month might be unrealistic. Instead, aim for a modest yet challenging growth rate that can be achieved with your available resources.

Relevant Goals

Your action plan goals should also be relevant to your organization’s mission and vision. These are goals that align with your overall strategic plan and contribute to its long-term success. Relevant goals ensure that your efforts are focused on high-impact areas and avoid unnecessary distractions. For example, if your business is focused on sustainability, a relevant goal might be to reduce your company’s carbon footprint by 20% in the next year.

Time-bound Goals

Finally, ensure that your goals are time-bound, meaning they have a deadline for completion. Deadlines keep your team accountable and help maintain a sense of urgency, which is crucial for staying on track and achieving your objectives. A clear timeframe also allows you to measure your progress and adjust your plans as needed. For instance, you could set a goal to expand your customer base by 10% within the next quarter.

Assigning Roles and Responsibilities

When creating an action plan, it’s important to assign roles and responsibilities to your team members. This helps ensure tasks are completed efficiently and everyone is clear about their duties. Here’s how to do it effectively:

• First, identify the necessary tasks to achieve your goal. Be specific about what needs to be done and break it down into smaller steps if needed. For example, if your action plan involves promoting a new product, tasks could include designing promotional materials, creating social media posts, and reaching out to potential partners.
• Next, evaluate the skills and expertise of your team members. Consider their strengths, weaknesses, and past experiences with similar projects. This will help you match team members with tasks that best suit their abilities. For instance, someone with graphic design expertise should be responsible for creating promotional materials.
• Once you’ve determined which team members are best suited for each task, clearly communicate their roles and responsibilities. This can be done through a project management tool, an email, or a team meeting. Make sure everyone is aware of their duties and the deadlines for each task.
• Keep track of everyone’s progress, and hold regular check-ins to see how each team member is doing with their assigned tasks.
• Be open to adjusting your action plan and roles as necessary. Sometimes, unforeseen challenges can arise and require you to modify your plan.

Creating a Time Frame

When working on your action plan, it’s important to establish a realistic time frame for achieving your goals. This helps you stay on track and prioritize tasks effectively. We will walk you through the process of creating a time frame for your action plan.

• First, break down your primary goal into smaller, manageable tasks. Think of these tasks as stepping stones that will lead you toward your overall objective. For example, if your goal is to start a new business, your tasks might include researching your target market, establishing a budget, and developing a marketing strategy.
• Next, assign a deadline to each task. Deadlines should be specific and set in stone but make sure to be flexible enough to adjust as necessary. Use a calendar or planner to visualize your timeline, marking important dates and milestones. For example, you could set a four-month deadline for completing market research and a six-month deadline for securing initial funding.
• To keep yourself accountable, set reminders or notifications for important deadlines. This can be done using digital tools like smartphone apps or traditional methods, such as sticky notes on your workspace. Regularly reviewing your progress and adjusting your time frame when needed will help you stay on track.
• Lastly, consider any external factors that might impact your time frame. Are there seasonal events, holidays, or industry-specific deadlines that could affect your ability to complete tasks? Factor in these considerations as you build your timeline.

Resource Allocation

When creating an action plan, resource allocation plays a major role. You’ll need to determine the resources required for each task and how they’ll be distributed among team members. This usually includes time, budget, and human resources.

• Start by estimating the time each task will take. Break tasks down into smaller chunks and allocate a specific deadline to each. This will help you prioritize tasks and balance workloads for your team members. For example, if designing a marketing campaign takes four weeks, divide it into weekly tasks like conducting market research, creating promotional materials, and setting up advertisements.
• Next, determine the budget needed to complete your project. Identify any expenses such as salaries, equipment, software, and project-related costs like travel. Create a budget for each task to avoid overspending, and allocate funds accordingly. Using our marketing campaign example, allocate separate budgets for market research tools, graphic design tools, and advertising platforms.
• Lastly, allocate human resources to tasks based on their skills and expertise. Delegate responsibilities to your team members, ensuring that everyone has a clear understanding of their role in the project. If needed, identify additional hires or outside consultants to fill gaps in your team’s expertise. For instance, if your team lacks graphic design experience, consider hiring a graphic designer or outsourcing the work to a design agency.
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What is an action plan? Steps, template, and examples

Editor’s note : This blog was updated 27 June 2023 to add more information about action plans, including examples of the types of organizations that can use action plans and an in-depth example study. The action plan template was also updated.

Have a thoughtfully laid-out product roadmap? Great! What’s next?

It’s time to make things happen and turn your product vision into reality.

As a product manager, you’re akin to an orchestrator, juggling multiple hats that need different levels of skill and communication — the glue that brings everything together. One of the most important things you need to get started is an action plan.

What is an action plan?

An action plan is a guiding document and work breakdown structure that outlines all the tasks that need to be completed so you can achieve your product goals.

An action plan is like a music sheet: if you have a defined set of notes, you know exactly what the music is going to sound like.

As the product manager, you need to be able to define the set of tasks in sequential order, considering dependencies and priorities, that will help you complete your project in the quickest, most efficient way possible.

What is an action plan example?

Action plans do not all have to be for complicated products or things — they can be for easy, short-term plans as well. For example, say a product team at a stationery company wants to introduce a new pen model. Their action plan could involve defining the new model’s design, sourcing materials, setting up manufacturing processes, determining marketing strategies, and setting a timeline for the product launch.

Another example could be a clothing brand apparel brand plans to launch a new, sustainable line. This action plan could include researching sustainable materials and manufacturing processes, designing the clothing line, determining pricing strategies, planning the marketing campaign to emphasize the sustainability angle, and coordinating the product launch across various sales channels.

As you can see, action plans don’t always have to be for complex software products. We’ll walk through an example later in the article more suited toward a digital tech product, but the point is that every team can use an action plan no matter what their product is!

How an action plan complements your product strategy

It’s important to note that an action plan and product strategy are not the same thing. Product strategy defines the high-level direction of what will make a product successful and a general idea of how to get there. An action plan is created from an execution standpoint and is not meant to define product strategy.

However, a good action plan should incorporate a long-term product strategy that aligns with business goals. Taking action that doesn’t ultimately lead to achieving your goals is simply unnecessary and a drain on your resources. A smart action plan embraces the fact that business goals and product priorities can change along the way, making it crucial to create a plan that is flexible and allows you to pivot with minimal disruptions.

All in all, an action plan (especially when finely tuned and strategic) complements your product strategy by providing an actionable roadmap to success. As mentioned earlier, while the product strategy paints the high-level vision for what will make a product successful, the action plan breaks this down into tactical steps — think of it as the bridge between the strategy and actual implementation. It’s important to clarify that a well-crafted action plan does not aim to redefine the product strategy but gives a path to execute it.

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How to create an action plan in 5 steps

Creating an action plan is a logical exercise, much like putting the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together. It’s just that sometimes, you don’t have the jigsaw pieces readily available, so you have to do some digging to find them first.

Whether you’re using pen and paper or a more sophisticated project management tool such as Jira or Confluence, it’s important to write down your action plan so you can get everyone on the same page (literally) and reference it later.

The steps to writing an effective action plan are as follows:

• Define goals
• Build your framework and task list
• Define roles and responsibilities
• Communicate and get feedback
• Update your action plan

1. Define goals

The most important step in creating an action plan is to define the goals you want to achieve through that plan. This isn’t exclusively about launching a new product feature or enhancing user experience, you can equally use an action plan to reinforce security measures or diminish your product’s tech debt. The goals can be big or small, but defining them clearly is crucial.

To ensure these goals are robust and measurable, incorporate data metrics as your success indicators and set feasible timelines. The more precise and data-centric your goals, the more actionable they become. For example: Increase net-new users by X percent through the release of Y new feature by the end of Q3.

2. Build your framework and task list

Now that you have your goals defined, work backward from your goals and think about all the different pieces you need to reach them.

When dealing with so many moving parts, it’s important to create a structure for them. We call this the work breakdown structure.

Essentially, this involves dissecting the project into smaller, manageable tasks. Organize these tasks into groups and create dependencies and communication links between them. This forms the framework you can use to fully build out your action plan.

The framework will help you create a holistic execution plan and force you to think about the things that you possibly could have missed. No two companies are alike, so create a detailed framework that works for you and your company.

Example action plan framework

Here’s an example of a simple, high-level framework for a process-oriented action plan that’s ideal for software companies:

• Product scoping
• Technical scoping
• UI/UX design
• Development
• Release and review

Product scoping — Gather product requirements through product analytics, customer discovery, cross-functional collaboration and internal feedback, competitive and market trends, and any other source that brings insights into the product you’re building. Consider how your product will impact existing customers, other products, teams, revenue streams, etc. within your company.

Technical scoping — Once you have the product requirements nailed down, having technical scoping discussions helps to understand technical feasibility and dependencies better.

UI/UX design — Create prototypes according to user experience and design best practices. This will help validate technical feasibility, customer usability, and alignment with product strategy.

Development — Now that we have a solid set of requirements that are ready to be developed, you can create further action plans specifically for development in collaboration with your engineering manager(s) . Together with your engineering leaders, break down the development phase into manageable chunks of work, taking into account technical dependencies and the sequential order of how the tasks must be developed.

Testing — Once your product is developed, it’s time to test it. Engage a variety of stakeholders to test your product. More feedback means more insights into how customers will perceive and use your product.

Release and review — Releasing a new product feature can be nerve-wracking. Having a release checklist to go with your action plan can be helpful. Think about all the things that need to be put in place before the release, including communicating with other stakeholders (e.g., support, marketing, sales, leadership, etc.). Once you release, review customer feedback to find ways to improve your product.

Once you have your framework, create a detailed list of tasks for each stage. Support each task with a written description of what the task entails and what defines it as completed . Reach out to your team members to help you understand each task better and include any other details that you think are relevant.

3. Define roles and responsibilities

Use the framework as a point of reference to manage your resources. Resources can make or break your project, so it’s important to manage them as efficiently as possible.

In collaboration with your engineering manager, establish the team that will be working on the specific project. Define the roles and responsibilities of each team member and make sure everyone understands how they are expected to contribute to the project.

Assign tasks to team members accordingly and help them understand the scope of their tasks. It’s also important to collaboratively set up deadlines for tasks and then hold them accountable to those timelines.

4. Communicate and gather feedback

You now have a well-established action plan. You know who is doing what, when, and how it all leads up to achieving the goals of your action plan. But there are always caveats.

For instance, sometimes you make assumptions before validating, or you’re just not aware of something that can become a problem later on. The list of potential nags is literally endless.

To avoid this, communicate your action plan to your core team, management, cross-functional stakeholders, and other team members to gather feedback. Being open to feedback is critical to learning and growing. Incorporating feedback will build your own credibility and will help evolve the process of creating action plans.

5. Update your action plan

The only constant is change. As market trends and business strategies evolve, you have to be ready to pivot. This can put a damper on your well-established action plans.

Acknowledging this and building flexibility into your action plans will help you keep projects on track. Create milestones or checkpoints in your action plans; this will enable you to make informed decisions on how best to pivot when the need arises.

As things change, update your action plan and communicate at the earliest possible to the project team, as well as any other stakeholder that needs to be in the loop.

Action plan in-depth example: Improving user engagement with a new feature

Let’s walk through a specific (and realistic) example product managers may face — improving user engagement by releasing a new feature. Specifically, let’s say you’re working on a news app and have been seeing declining user engagement recently. You’re not exactly sure why, but think that introducing a personalization feature might increase engagement. Following the steps outlined to create an action plan, the process would look like this:

The primary goal is to increase user engagement by 20 percent over the next two quarters. You’ll do this by introducing a personalization feature that tailors content to the individual user’s interests — something that we believe our competitors are doing already.

This will be measured by tracking metrics such as session duration, number of articles read per session, and click-through rates on personalized content suggestions.

You’ll use the simple, high-level framework we outlined to build the task list.

Product scoping — Conduct market research to understand user preferences for personalized content and see how our competitors are currently doing it.

Technical scoping — Collaborate with the technical team to assess the feasibility of implementing personalization algorithms, dependencies, and any potential challenges. This step may include meetings with data scientists and backend developers.

UI/UX design — Design the user interface for the personalized content feed. It could include the location of the personalized feed on the home screen, a section for users to choose their interests, etc. This step will involve creating wireframes, developing prototypes, and conducting user testing to validate the design.

Development — Implement the personalization feature, including the development of the algorithm, changes to the backend to handle user data securely, and the frontend changes to display personalized content.

Testing — Extensively test the new feature for usability, security, learning curve, etc.

Release and review — Plan the release of the new feature, and consider a soft launch with a small user group to collect early feedback. After the release, continue to collect user feedback to identify any needs for improvement.

For the sake of our example, let’s assume all of the team members have availability to help. The product manager will work on the product scoping phase and coordinate with the technical team for technical scoping, UX designers will handle the UI/UX design phase, developers and data scientists will work on developing the personalization algorithm and integrating it with the app during the development phase, etc.

4. Communicate and get feedback

The plan is then shared with all stakeholders — the core team, senior management, executives, and other teams impacted by this feature. You’ll get their feedback and make the necessary amendments. You’ll also use project management tools to ensure everyone has a clear understanding of the action plan and their roles.

Lastly, you’ll set up regular reviews to monitor progress and make necessary changes in the plan as we encounter new information or challenges.

Action plan template

Now that you have a foundational understanding of what to include in an action plan and how to write one, where do you start?

This action plan template is designed to help you keep track of tasks, resources, dependencies, and progress in a single, easy-to-read, and even easier-to-update spreadsheet:

To customize the action plan template for your next project, click here and select File > Make a copy from the main menu at the top of the page.

5 tips to build an action plan that drives value

A rushed or incomplete action plan will lead to stress and frustration down the road. Here are five best practices to help you create an effective and efficient action plan:

• Create multiple action plans
• Identify milestones and critical tasks
• Communicate early and often
• Embrace technology
• Continuously improve your processes

1. Create multiple action plans

Action plans can get pretty daunting for bigger projects. Don’t overwhelm yourself; use the same concept as the work breakdown structure.

Start by creating a holistic, high-level action plan that encompasses the entire project. Then, take each part of that plan and break it down further, and so on.

You can create individual action plans for each part of the high-level action plan. You may also need to do this for specific parts of the project if they have a lot of dependencies or require many people to collaborate with each other.

2. Identify milestones and critical tasks

When you have numerous tasks, you might have trouble managing them all.

Identifying milestones and critical tasks can bring visibility to the most important parts of the action plan. Make sure you have the right stakeholders in the room when discussing these.

Celebrating milestones is also a great way to improve the morale of the team.

3. Communicate early and often

No matter how detailed your action plans are, if you are not able to communicate them properly to the project team, it will be difficult to achieve your goals.

Keep the communication continuously flowing and keep an eye out for blockers. As the product manager, you need to work with the team to remove obstacles and keep things moving along.

Communication also goes a long way to align the team during change management .

4. Embrace technology

Technology can make our lives so much easier when we know how to apply it in the right ways.

There are many software tools that can help you create, document, and manage your action plans. Assess your needs and experiment with free trials to gauge which tool suits your process the best.

If paid software is too far out of the picture at the moment, you can simply use Google Sheets/Docs or Microsoft Excel/Word to create your action plan. Click here for a simple action plan template in Google Docs.

5. Continuously improve your processes

Small things that are done to better the process eventually add up and create drastic efficiencies over time.

Make time for feedback and introspection loops. Find ways to incorporate relevant feedback and distribute the knowledge. Monitor for process patterns and areas that need improvement and discuss with the team how you can make the overall process better for everybody.

Collaborate with the team to make improvements incrementally and continuously .

The framework and process for creating and managing action plans can vary based on the project and team. As long as you have action plans documented and communicate regularly with relevant stakeholders, you will be able to get things done efficiently.

Remember, as the orchestrator (product manager), you need your music sheet (action plan) and your orchestra (project team) to align, and you’ve got yourself a fantastic concert (product)!

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What is an Action Plan? Learn with Templates and Examples

Planning on turning your vision into reality? And what’s your best way to avoid challenges and problems during this journey? A solid action plan.

We have outlined 6 steps explaining how to write an action plan. Once you familiarize yourself with them, go ahead and use the editable templates below to start planning right away.

What is an Action Plan?

Why you need an action plan, how to write an action plan, action plan templates.

An action plan is a specific list of tasks in order to achieve a particular goal. It can be regarded as a proposed strategy to execute a specific project to achieve a specific or general goal effectively and efficiently. It outlines steps to take and helps stay focused and organized, whether it’s personal or work-related. Breaking down the goal into smaller, manageable steps, makes it easier to stay motivated and track progress.

It’s an essential part of the strategic planning process and helps with improving teamwork planning Not only in project management, but action plans can be used by individuals to prepare a strategy to achieve their own personal goals as well.

Components of an action plan include

• A well-defined description of the goal to be achieved
• Tasks/ steps that need to be carried out to reach the goal
• People who will be in charge of carrying out each task
• When will these tasks be completed (deadlines and milestones)
• Resources needed to complete the tasks
• Measures to evaluate progress

What’s great about having everything listed down on one location is that it makes it easier to track progress and effectively plan things out.

An action plan is not something set in stone. As your organization grows, and surrounding circumstances change, you will have to revisit and make adjustments to meet the latest needs.

Sometimes businesses don’t spend much time on developing an action plan before an initiative, which, in most cases, leads to failure. If you haven’t heard, “failing to plan is planning to fail” said Benjamin Franklin supposedly once.

Planning helps you prepare for the obstacles ahead and keep you on track. And with an effective action plan, you can boost your productivity and keep yourself focused.  

Here are some benefits of an action plan you should know;

• It gives you a clear direction. As an action plan highlights exactly what steps to be taken and when they should be completed, you will know exactly what you need to do.
• Having your goals written down and planned out in steps will give you a reason to stay motivated and committed throughout the project.  
• With an action plan, you can track your progress toward your goal.
• Since you are listing down all the steps you need to complete in your action plan, it will help you prioritize your tasks based on effort and impact.

From the looks of it, creating an action plan seems fairly easy. But there are several important steps you need to follow with caution in order to get the best out of it. Here’s how to write an action plan explained in 6 easy steps.

Step 1: Define your end goal

If you are not clear about what you want to do and what you want to achieve, you are setting yourself up for failure.

Planning a new initiative? Start by defining where you are and where you want to be.

Solving a problem? Analyze the situation and explore possible solutions before prioritizing them.

Then write down your goal. And before you move on to the next step, run your goal through the SMART criteria . Or in other words, make sure that it is

• Specific – well-defined and clear
• Measurable – include measurable indicators to track progress  
• Attainable – realistic and achievable within the resources, time, money, experience, etc. you have
• Relevant – align with your other goals
• Timely – has a finishing date

Use this SMART goal worksheet to simplify this process. Share it with others to get their input as well.  

• Ready to use
• Fully customizable template
• Get Started in seconds

And refer to our easy guide to the goal-setting process to learn more about setting and planning your goals.

Step 2: List down the steps to be followed

The goal is clear. What exactly should you do to realize it?

Create a rough template to list down all the tasks to be performed, due dates and people responsible.

It’s important that you make sure that the entire team is involved in this process and has access to the document. This way everyone will be aware of their roles and responsibilities in the project.

Make sure that each task is clearly defined and is attainable. If you come across larger and more complex tasks, break them down to smaller ones that are easier to execute and manage.

Tips: Use a RACI Matrix template to clarify project roles and responsibilities, and plan projects

Step 3: Prioritize tasks and add deadlines

It’s time to reorganize the list by prioritizing the tasks . Some steps, you may need to prioritize as they can be blocking other sub-steps.

Add deadlines, and make sure that they are realistic. Consult with the person responsible for carrying it out to understand his or her capacity before deciding on deadlines.

Step 4: Set milestones

Milestones can be considered mini goals leading up to the main goal at the end. The advantage of adding milestones is that they give the team members to look forward to something and help them stay motivated even though the final due date is far away.

Start from the end goal and work your way back as you set milestones . Remember not to keep too little or too much time in between the milestone you set. It’s a best practice to space milestones two weeks apart.  

Step 5: Identify the resources needed

Before you start your project, it’s crucial to ensure that you have all the necessary resources at hand to complete the tasks. And if they are not currently available, you need to first make a plan to acquire them.

This should also include your budget. You can assign a column of your action plan to mark the cost of each task if there are any.  

Step 6: Visualize your action plan

The point of this step is to create something that everyone can understand at a glance and that can be shared with everyone.

Whether your action plan comes in the shape of a flowchart , Gantt chart , or table , make sure that it clearly communicates the elements we have identified so far – tasks, task owners, deadlines, resources, etc.

This document should be easily accessible to everyone and should be editable.

Step 7: Monitor, evaluate and update

Allocate some time to evaluate the progress you’ve made with your team.

You can mark tasks that are completed as done on this final action plan, bringing attention to how you’ve progressed toward the goal.

This will also bring out the tasks that are pending or delayed, in which case you need to figure out why and find suitable solutions. And then update the action plan accordingly.

Business action plan

You may like to read: The Easy Guide to Making a Business Plan for Presentations

Marketing action plan

Strategic action plan, corrective action plan template.

Learn more about: Corrective Action Plan template .

Additional resources: The Easy Guide to Creating a Business Contingency Plan

Simple action plan template

Any more tips on creating an action plan.

An action plan is designed to guide your way to accomplishing your goals. It turns your vision into actionable goals and steps. And it helps you stay focused and motivated.

From an individual employee in an organization to larger departments can make use of action plans to steer their way towards completing their goals.

Maybe you are about to create your very first action plan, or you are already a pro at writing them. Either way, we’d like to hear your opinions on how to write an action plan. Do share them with us in the comments section below.

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FAQs About Action Plan

Lack of clarity on goals: Make sure the team understands the goals and objectives of the action plan. The goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).

Unclear responsibilities: Assign clear roles and responsibilities for each team member to avoid confusion and ensure accountability.

Overcomplicating the plan: Keep the action plan simple and easy to understand. Avoid adding unnecessary complexity or detail that may confuse the team.

Failure to prioritize tasks: Prioritize tasks based on their importance and urgency. This will ensure that the team focuses on the most critical tasks first.

Inadequate resources: Ensure that the team has access to the necessary resources such as time, budget, and equipment, to carry out the action plan successfully.

Lack of communication: Effective communication is crucial to the success of any action plan. Ensure that team members are regularly updated on progress and any changes to the plan.

Failure to monitor progress: Regularly monitor progress and adjust the action plan as needed to ensure that it stays on track and achieves its goals.

Strategic action plan: This type of plan outlines the long-term goals and objectives of an organization, and the actions that will be taken to achieve them. It typically covers a period of several years and includes high-level strategies and initiatives.

Operational action plan: This plan focuses on the day-to-day operations of an organization, outlining the actions that will be taken to achieve short-term goals and objectives. It typically covers a period of one year or less and includes specific actions and timelines.

Project action plan: This type of plan is used for individual projects and outlines the actions that will be taken to achieve specific project goals and objectives. It includes a detailed breakdown of tasks, timelines, and responsibilities.

Sales action plan: This plan focuses on the actions that will be taken to increase sales and revenue. It includes specific strategies for marketing, sales, and customer service.

Marketing action plan: This plan outlines the actions that will be taken to promote a product or service and increase brand awareness. It includes strategies for advertising, social media, public relations, and other marketing initiatives.

Crisis management action plan: This type of plan outlines the actions that will be taken in the event of a crisis, such as a natural disaster or security breach. It includes specific protocols for communication, evacuation, and other emergency procedures.

An action plan can be used by anyone who wants to achieve specific goals or objectives. It is a useful tool for individuals, teams, and organizations in a variety of contexts. Here are some examples:

Individuals: An individual can use an action plan to achieve personal goals such as losing weight, completing a degree, or starting a business.

Teams: A team can use an action plan to achieve goals related to a specific project or initiative. For example, a marketing team may use an action plan to launch a new product.

Small businesses: Small businesses can use an action plan to achieve goals related to sales, marketing, operations, or finance.

Non-profit organizations: Non-profit organizations can use an action plan to achieve goals related to fundraising, volunteer recruitment, or program implementation.

Government agencies: Government agencies can use an action plan to achieve goals related to policy implementation, disaster response, or public safety.

Educational institutions: Educational institutions can use an action plan to achieve goals related to improving student outcomes, increasing enrollment, or expanding programs.

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Amanda Athuraliya is the communication specialist/content writer at Creately, online diagramming and collaboration tool. She is an avid reader, a budding writer and a passionate researcher who loves to write about all kinds of topics.

How to Write and Develop an Action Plan for Your Small Business

6 min. read

Updated October 29, 2023

Taking action at the appropriate time is critical to turning your visions into a viable reality. However, doing so without a proper strategy can be a recipe for disaster. 

A well-designed and concrete action plan that weighs all the benefits and possible challenges is the key to executing your vision successfully. Furthermore, it makes tracking progress easier, which in turn helps you attain your goals. 

Whether it’s a business, personal, or career goal you are going after, the right action plan can be your roadmap to success. A comprehensive plan details all the information regarding your objectives and projects, such as the resources required, the complexity level of tasks, etc.

Let’s figure out how you can build one to achieve your goals successfully and efficiently.

• What is an action plan and why is it important?

An action plan serves as a trajectory for the tasks or steps you need to accomplish to reach your goals and objectives. It is a crucial part of your strategic process that helps you improve teamwork planning significantly. Also, a proper action plan allows you to manage projects efficiently.

You have all the essential information in a centralized location that your team can access, making it easier for everybody to monitor progress and plan things successfully. As your company grows and circumstances change, you can revisit and make modifications to meet your latest requirements.

Planning of action items helps you prepare for any obstacles ahead. You’re your teams on track while ensuring impactful results. Furthermore, it also boosts your productivity and keeps everybody focused on urgent tasks.  

Here are some of the reasons why an action plan is vital for you:

• It gives you a clear sense of direction by highlighting precisely the steps you need to take when you need to take that and what it will help you accomplish 
• Having your objectives and goals on paper with structured steps keeps the team members motivated and dedicated throughout the project
• You can gauge your and member’s progress and contribution toward the collective goals
• You can turn your visions into reality, increase accountability and efficiency within your organization

How to create an effective action plan 

When it comes to creating an action plan, various practical methods and tools can help you develop a robust action program. Begin by following this straightforward 7-step strategy.

Following these steps for structuring your action plan incidentally also acts as a brilliant roadmap for your idea’s overall presentation and can effectively create a clear goal.

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1. Define your scope

It is essential to define your scope, create a roadmap, and align it with your strategic planning . Make sure your actions guide you toward company goals. Start by gauging how your team members can contribute and help you achieve your objectives.

If you don’t have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve, it might be challenging for you to plan a new initiative. Defining your current status and where you see your company helps you analyze the situation, explore potential solutions and implement strategies successfully.

2. Set S.M.A.R.T. goals

S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound) objectives or goals is a method of objective setting that enables employees and managers to set, monitor, and achieve their long-term and short-term goals. This approach brings tractability and structure together.

Once you map out your plan, scope, and aim to accomplish, the next step requires you to set well-defined goals and measurable tools. Create a template to highlight all the tasks that your team needs to perform and deadlines.

It is vital to make sure that your entire team is on the same page, involved in the process, and has access to the document. This way, the projects become manageable while also boosting team productivity.

Furthermore, ensure that the tasks are attainable. If you have more complex tasks, it’s essential to break them down into manageable parts for easy execution. 

3. Visualize your plan

Once you plan on the action items, prioritize tasks, and set milestones, the next step is creating a visual representation of your action plan. This visualization helps you engage your team and allow everyone to follow through to carry out activities.

A graphical presentation also makes it easier to get a bird’s eye view of your project. This way, you can identify your objectives and tasks that you weren’t able to execute or reach, allowing you to prioritize them to accomplish them.

You can elaborate your action plan with the help of a concept map that can help you explicitly communicate all the essential elements and information — task owners, tasks owners, resources, goals, objectives, deadlines, etc. Also, make sure the document is easily accessible to all. 

Additionally, you can also leverage online visual collaboration platforms to help you seamlessly visualize and structure your simple and complex concepts.

4. Prioritize your tasks

It is imperative to align all your activities with specific goals and assign them to relevant team members. When you list and prioritize all your tasks, it helps keep track of your projects’ status, progress, and completion. 

You could also structure your task list by importance. This way, everyone knows what needs to be done first to meet your deadlines effectively while ensuring that your employees can manage those tasks. That way, your team will also know their responsibilities and tasks to get done and engage them with a clear vision.

5. Set milestones 

Milestones are the objectives that your team aims to achieve to keep a specific project progressing at a steady pace. Your work will have a lot smoother flow when everybody is clear with goals.

When you set milestones , it serves as mini-goals that help you achieve your central goal towards the end. Adding milestones to your action plan is crucial to give your team members something to look forward to and encourage them to stay motivated throughout.

6. Identify your resources

Before starting your project, it is imperative to ensure that you have the critical resources to complete the tasks successfully. And if you don’t have adequate resources, devise a strategy to leverage what you have effectively. Include all the essential components such as the number of projects, budget, timelines, etc., to make sure you don’t miss out on vital aspects.

Knowing what you have to work with will ensure that any tasks or projects you set out to accomplish have a better chance of succeeding. If you don’t have enough cash, a large enough team, or even enough time to manage every project, you’ll soon find yourself struggling to meet milestones and deadlines.

7. Monitor, gauge, and update

It is pivotal to allocate time and resources to evaluate your projects’ and teams’ progress. Make sure you conduct frequent follow-ups with team members to see if everybody is on track. 

For this reason, you need to elaborate on the follow-up and assessment of teams in your action plan. This will help you implement the strategies that work well and eradicate the ineffective ones.

• A guide to reaching your goals

An action plan is an indispensable tool that helps you guide your way to realizing your goals. It turns your visualization into actionable steps and milestones. 

From larger departments in an organization to individual employees, an action plan is a defined methodology that helps you outline your activities, tasks, resources, budget, objectives, etc. This, in turn, allows you to achieve desired outcomes.

See why 1.2 million entrepreneurs have written their business plans with LivePlan

JT Ripton is a business consultant and a freelance writer out of Tampa. JT has written for companies like T-Mobile and others.

Table of Contents

• How to create an effective action plan 

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What is an action plan? (Example and template)

May 3, 2024 - 10 min read

An action plan is a definitive checklist of tasks and resources needed to complete a project or achieve a goal. You can think of it as a visual countdown to the project delivery or a breakdown of the list of tasks needed to achieve desired results.

Now you may be thinking, “What is the purpose of an action plan vs. a to-do list ?” 

The most significant difference between action plans and to-do lists is that action plans focus on achieving a specific goal . In contrast, to-do lists are ongoing and include tasks for different goals and projects. 

Understanding this distinction, it becomes clear that action plans are powerful tools for goal setting and project execution. They help teams manage necessary resources, adhere to schedules, and track progress toward specific goals and project initiatives. 

In this article, we’ll go through the purposes of action plans, the key steps usually included in them, how you can use action plans to help your project management, and step-by-step instructions on how to put one together yourself. 

And, as a bonus, we’ll also give you information on Wrike’s prebuilt action plan template , which can jump-start your action plan process. 

What is the purpose of an action plan?

An action plan , also sometimes referred to as a plan of action , helps order project tasks in a sequential and timely manner to achieve a goal. Project managers and individuals can use action plans to achieve their work and personal project goals.

Developing an action plan clarifies the goals to be achieved, the teams and service providers to involve, and the tasks, dependencies, milestones, and resources needed to complete the project.

Working with an action plan ensures you complete every task and requirement to meet the expected standards of a project. As you develop an action plan, you identify any critical paths and dependencies. 

Keep in mind that a developed action plan isn’t set in stone, because the environment in which projects operate is often subject to change . External factors such as market conditions, economic influences, technology advancements or failures, regulatory requirements, and unexpected events can impact the execution of any plan. A dynamic document allows for flexibility and adaptability so you can adjust your strategies in response to evolving circumstances.

Why are action plans important in project management?

​​An action plan in project management is a quick and easy way to keep projects on track. Creating an action plan means you can quickly map out the resources and requirements you need and sketch a timeline to complete tasks. 

Here are several benefits of using a strategic action plan in project management:

• They’re simple and easy to set up, helping to maintain operational efficiency without taking much time.
• They declutter managers’ minds by providing a framework for structuring new projects in a sensible order.
• They clarify the objectives of the project and build consensus on how the work should be done.
• They prepare you for predictable and preventable challenges and focus your resources to achieve your main goals for the project. 
• They maximize personal and team productivity and resource allocation.
• They reduce the possibility of forgetting tasks in the project.
• They generate a goal-driven workflow, so you know what to work on throughout the project.
• They provide a way to track progress as you check tasks off the action plan as you complete them.

Action plan vs. project plan

Action plans should not be confused with project plans . Both list the tasks, resources, and timelines required to achieve a desired goal, but project plans go deeper, including details such as contingency plan action steps, risk mitigation strategies, quality assessment criteria, and stakeholder communication schedules. In contrast, action plans simply list the tasks, resources, and timelines needed to achieve a goal. 

Think of it this way: For big, complex, or long-term projects, you create a project plan first. Once your project plan is in place, an action plan helps you detail the steps and flow for allocating resources, sharing and executing tasks, and setting deadlines.

In summary, action plans and project plans differ in the following ways: 

• Complexity : Action plans are simpler than project plans. They focus solely on the tasks, resources, and timelines required to achieve a goal. Project plans include additional sections for other measures, standards, and procedures for completing a project. 
• Duration : Action plans focus on specific, short-term goals. These may be for standalone goals or part of a larger project. Project plans are more encompassing, covering longer-term objectives, which may take months or years to complete. 
• Flow : Action plans are linear, with one task following another until the goal is achieved. Project plans may have multiple phases, e.g., planning, executing, monitoring, controlling, and reviewing, with each stage containing its own distinct tasks and deliverables.

The components of an action plan

Let’s take a look at the essential components of an action plan:

• Action plan objectives: The action plan objectives serve as the main guide for the action plan, defining and communicating what the plan seeks to achieve. 
• Action plan steps: Action plan steps form the core of the action plan. They detail crucial targets and set milestones that must be completed to reach the goal. These steps divide the goal or project into manageable chunks and provide a framework for identifying tasks (action items), allocating resources, and determining timelines. 
• Action plan items: Action plan items are the nitty-gritty details of the action plan — the actual tasks to be performed. Each action plan item must be clearly defined, actionable, and understood by the team involved. 
• Action plan timeline: The action plan timeline maps out the plan schedule from start to finish. It’s crucial for setting expectations, tracking progress and performance, and ensuring the project stays on schedule. 
• Action plan resources: These are the inputs required to execute the plan, e.g., labor, time, tools, and funds. Identifying action plan resources before delving into execution helps ensure tasks are not delayed or compromised due to resource constraints. 
• Action plan matrix: The action plan matrix provides a structured layout for the strategic planning of tasks. It serves as a roadmap and helps to categorize your action steps and tasks based on priority, status, and resource allocation. This alignment helps identify any dependencies or potential bottlenecks.
• Action plan report: The action plan report provides an overview of the progress made in executing the action plan. It includes details like the tasks completed, time taken, costs incurred, resources used, and any deviations from the plan.
• Assignments: Each task should be assigned to a person, team, or group. Clear assignment of responsibility is crucial for accountability and the successful execution of any action plan.

What are the key steps of an action plan?

The main point of a plan of action is to ensure you don’t overlook critical tasks and milestones of your project. In its simplest form, developing an effective action plan entails listing tasks you need to complete and prioritizing them.

As you develop your action plan, you decide which tasks you can delegate, outsource, or delay. The steps below map out how to write a sound action plan to increase your chance of success.

Step 1: Define your goal 

Get clear on what you want to achieve with your project. Define the action plan in terms of where you are and where you want to be. If you have alternative methods to achieve your goal, assess your situation and decide the best chances of success depending on your resources.

Step 2: List tasks

Once you have your goal, list the tasks and activities you must complete to achieve it. Then order them sequentially by adding key dates and deadlines. This should include a time frame with start and end dates for each task.

Step 3: Identify critical tasks

Are there any specific steps that must be completed before others can start? These are critical time-bound tasks with dependencies. Prioritize these tasks and set realistic deadlines. If you plan to assign them to team members, be sure to let them know the dependencies and allow enough time to deliver them.

Step 4: Assign tasks

Now that the project is broken down, you can start assigning tasks. Will you be handling some yourself in addition to managing the project? Make sure you allocate time and human resources carefully — you may choose to delegate or outsource specific tasks.

Step 5: Assess and improve

At the end of each project, assess performance, analyze key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics, and learn from mistakes or missteps to improve your action planning and project execution. If you work with a team, collect feedback and improvement suggestions from team members for better performance in the future.

Action plan best practices

Following these best practices will mean you ’ re more likely to succeed: 

• Involve your team: When working with a team, involve them early in the planning process to get their input and save time. Get team members’ work schedules before assigning tasks to avoid conflicts. Clear communication enables responsible parties to prepare for their specific project tasks.
• Set SMART goals: SMART goals are s pecific, m easurable, a ttainable, r elevant, and t imely. Ensure your action plan starts with a strong foundation by defining clear and SMART goals that add value, either as a personal project or at work.
• Make your action plans into templates: To get more benefits from your action plans, make them into templates. After assessing your action plan at the end of a completed project, make a copy of the plan and remove all project-specific details, so you’re able to use the action planning template in future projects. This minimizes the need to repeat work, saving a lot of time and reducing errors.

Who needs to write an action plan?

Action plans aren’t just for project managers — they’re handy for all sorts of professionals and individuals tackling personal or business projects. Action plans can also be used alone or with a team. When working with a team, the leader puts together the action plan with everyone’s input.

Developing an action plan helps individuals, managers, and organizations finish their projects more successfully. They’re great for getting started, keeping track of what needs to be done, and maintaining progress on any project. Remember to check off tasks as they are done, update the plans, and communicate with your team as your project progresses.

A variation of a traditional action plan is a corrective action plan. Project managers and individuals use corrective action plans when they need to fix recurring problems or deviations in a project, process, or organization, so they don’t happen again in the future.

An example of an action plan 

Action plans are quick and easy to create. It’s all about putting down what you need to accomplish your goal or project. 

Here’s a simple action plan example for a marketing team working on a new campaign:

Action plan objective: Increase brand awareness and boost product sales by 30% by the end of Q4 2023 through a localized multimedia marketing campaign.

Other action plan examples in project management include:

• Launching a new product
• Organizing an event
• Improving customer service
• Enhancing employee training
• Expanding into new markets
• Increasing your social media following

Maximizing efficiency with action plan templates

A project action plan template is a preformatted document providing a framework to outline, execute, and track the tasks and specific actions needed to accomplish your larger goal. It streamlines the action planning process by providing a ready-to-use format you can quickly fill out to create a robust action plan. This way, you don’t waste time making one from scratch using Excel, Google Docs, or Microsoft Word. 

Wrike’s simple action plan template manages projects and goals with an intuitive interface designed to help plan and launch projects with teams of any size. This template’s features enable real-time collaboration, easy task assignments, time tracking, and reporting.

Common issues like a lack of visibility on remote workers’ assignments and confusing project priorities are mitigated with functionalities such as: 

• Organizing tasks by departments into folders, making the journey from “To Do” to “In Progress” to “Completed” smooth
• Identifying dependencies and defining the priority of tasks to determine which tasks need to be done first
• Providing a snapshot of the tasks due now and in the coming weeks, ensuring the project schedule is adhered to
• Securing sensitive data from unauthorized personnel with permissions offering various levels of access and visibility for collaborators and stakeholders

How to create an action plan with Wrike

Using project management tools helps to organize your business action plan visually and make it feel more achievable. With project management software like Wrike , you get a free action plan template included with your subscription — so you can easily input your project resources, requirements, and timelines, and track your progress throughout the project. 

As outlined above, the best way to jump-start your action plan is to use our prebuilt plan of action and milestones template . It helps you take control of your task management by providing sample folders to organize tasks, a calendar for project scheduling, and prebuilt dashboards for monitoring progress. All you have to do is add your tasks and due dates to get a complete overview of all project work. 

Our template works for all different types of action plans. You can use it as:

• A personal action plan template for personal projects
• A business action plan template to simplify project management
• A corrective action plan template to fix issues with an existing project

If you’re ready to develop action plans and track your progress while better managing your projects, you need Wrike. We make it easy to plan, execute, and ensure success, even when you’re on the go.

Click here to start your free two-week trial and kick off your action plan today.

Kelechi Udoagwu

Kelechi is a freelance writer and founder of Week of Saturdays, a platform for digital freelancers and remote workers living in Africa.

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How To Create an Action Plan for Your Business [+Examples]

Last Updated on March 27, 2024 by Owen McGab Enaohwo

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Set a goal for your next project and watch it materialize if you take the right step.

Everyone has goals, but some people will be more successful than others in realizing them. People who accomplish goals better and faster are those who have developed an action plan and work to execute it. 

Executing an action plan is as important as creating it. This guide will walk you through the steps of documenting and implementing an action plan. Also, watch out for insights shared by founders and managers on how they built and implemented their most successful action plans.

Sign up for a free trial of SweetProcess now to create a successful action plan in minutes without a credit card.

Table of Contents

What Is an Action Plan?

How to Create an Action Plan for Your Business in 7 Steps

How to write an action plan for your business using sweetprocess, why you need an action plan to achieve your company’s goals, action plan examples from which you can learn, 8 core components of an action plan, types of action plans, how to implement an action plan successfully: tips and best practices, action plan templates you can swipe for your business, action plan vs. strategic plan: how they differ, action plan vs. implementation plan: how they differ, action plan vs. project plan: how they differ, action plan vs to-do list: how they differ, build your company’s action plans using sweetprocess, what is an action plan .

An action plan is a document that outlines the processes, tasks, and steps you need to cover to achieve a goal. A good action plan document will include actionable steps and procedures to follow, with a timeframe for each step. 

An example of this is Ling’s EAT (expertise, authority, and trustworthiness) action plan, which helped them boost their SEO with about 489% website traffic. Ling is a gamified language learning app, and the goal of this action plan was to boost the app’s download rate. This goal was achieved in one year. 

According to Simon Bacher, co-founder of Simya Solutions who is the creator of Ling, “We created a unique SEO strategy to EAT our way to the top with the following action steps:

• Analyze on-page inventory 
• Improve SEO content by optimizing keywords
• Improve on-page SEO by optimizing images
• Build topical authority with supporting content
• Improve our internal and external link-building strategies through media outreach
• Ensure our website is technically sound by improving our on-page SEO.” 

With these listed action steps, the Ling team was able to assign tasks and allocate resources, and the goal was reached within one year.

A well-structured action plan can make it easier for you to track and realize your goals. Whether you have a career, business, or personal goal, you can use an action plan to create a clear path to success. 

Creating an action plan is not as complex as it is made to look. Once you have your goal in mind, planning how to get there will be less challenging. Regardless of the different goals you plan to achieve, you will have to follow a similar pattern while creating your action plan. 

Meanwhile, the amount of detail in your action plan can vary based on the resources you have and the complexity of your project or goal.

There are three stages in the process of developing an action plan. They are the goal-setting stage, the planning stage, and the action stage. 

These stages are executed in seven steps, and they are discussed in detail below. 

Step 1: Define your goal

“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” —Confucius

The above quote by Confucius made it clear that every goal can be achieved if your action plan has the right action steps. 

The success of an action plan starts with setting a clear goal. Having a goal makes it easy to have clarity of every other thing in between. You can determine the possible setbacks, the required resources, the feasible timeline, and so on. 

The first step in creating an action plan is to determine your goal. An important consideration at this stage is to ensure that you are setting SMART goals . 

SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

Setting SMART goals will help you clarify your purpose and process and give your project a clear direction. Specific and measurable goals will make it easy to track your progress and make necessary modifications in the process. 

Step 2: Create objectives

When you have your SMART goal established, the next step is to choose your objectives. Your project objectives are the deliverables and milestones that must be completed to achieve your project goals.

You must ensure that such objectives align perfectly with your smart goals. Make sure you are not doing this alone but involving other team members to understand different perspectives and needs. 

At the end of your deliberations, you should choose objectives you can realistically achieve based on your budget, time, and resources.

Example of an objective: To produce and distribute an information pack on malaria diagnosis and management to all health clinics in the district within the next three months.

Step 3: Highlight the tasks needed to get it done 

To produce the deliverables required, you have to identify the tasks that need to be done. Once identified, it’s important to prioritize which task comes first and which one depends on another. 

Step 4: Identify the team responsible for doing it 

After listing out and prioritizing the required tasks, merge each of these tasks with the appropriate team and team members. This will help you know whether you have enough hands to get the job done. 

Step 5: Identify the needed resources

When you have identified the tasks required to succeed on the project, it will be easy to identify the resources needed for each task and at each stage. Figure out those resources and ensure you have them readily available. 

One of the best resources you should have in place is SweetProcess, a process standardization tool that makes your action plan easily executable. You can use SweetProcess for free here .

Step 6: State the indicators of success

Success is not only defined by reaching your goal. It’s important also to have varying metrics and milestones that can be used to determine whether your team is making progress. 

Will Yang, the head of growth and customer success at Instrumentl , an all-in-one grants platform that helps nonprofits find, track, and manage their grants in a single place, talked about the company’s action plan on building a customer-centric culture in the company . He said, “One of the initial steps taken was to rigorously define the success metrics for growth—this ranged from user acquisition targets to retention rates and customer lifetime value. We then worked backward from these goals to establish the necessary action steps, using Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to assign accountability and ensure alignment across the company.”

Step 7: Monitor and review your action plan

With your measurable goals and success metrics, it is easy to monitor and review your action plan. As the project execution progresses, you can check which action steps work perfectly and which need to be modified. 

An action plan requires that you have your standard operating procedures (SOPs) documented in one place. This will guide your team members on how each task is handled. A stack of different tasks will also need to be brought together as a process, and you must be able to assign different parts of the process and procedures to the concerned team members. 

A tool that has all these moving parts of an action plan in one place is SweetProcess . With SweetProcess, you can document your procedures, combine them to form a process, assign tasks to team members, and track progress execution. 

Thus, you have all the burdens lifted off your shoulders as a project manager, and it’s easy for all team members to know their assignments.

Without any learning curve and the need to break the bank, you can execute your action plan and make your next project a success. Start using SweetProcess for free without a credit card.

How to Create Procedures Using SweetProcess

If you want to create a new procedure in SweetProcess, you have the option of writing it from scratch, importing it from an existing document, or having SweetAI do the magic for you. 

• Here’s a guide on how to create a new procedure in SweetProcess from scratch .
• If you have existing procedures and would like to bring them over to SweetProcess, you can achieve that with a few clicks. Here’s how . 
• If you want to make things happen fast and would like your procedure creation done for you, SweetProcess’s AI can do this for you in a few seconds. Here’s how to write your process with SweetAI .

How to Create Processes on SweetProcess

A process is a combination of different procedures. All the steps and procedures planned in your action plan can be put together in one place by creating a process in your SweetProcess account. 

Here’s how to create a process from existing procedures . You can also import your existing process and have SweetAI create your process for you. 

How to Create Company Policies Using SweetProcess

Your action plan will sometimes require that you embed certain company policies in your processes and procedure flow. SweetProcess helps you do this without a hitch. All you need is to document your company policies or import them over to SweetProcess. Once you have them over, you can easily attach any named policy to any part of your action plan in the process flow. 

Here’s how to create a policy in SweetProcess:

• If you want to create your company policies from scratch, follow this guide . 
• Here’s how to import an existing policy to SweetProcess .
• Create your company policy with SweetProcess’s artificial intelligence function, SweetAI, following this guide . 
• Here’s how to attach a policy to a process or procedure . 

How to Assign and Manage Tasks on SweetProcess

When you have all your processes, policies, and procedures documented in SweetProcess, you would want to bring your action plan to the limelight by delegating tasks to team members. In addition to delegation, you can also monitor the progress of each team member.

Here’s how to delegate and keep track of team members’ progress in SweetProcess .

If you’re on your way to picking a tool to aid the execution of your action plan, you may want to check out SweeetProcess . Companies like ShipCalm and Stone & Wood have success stories of how they reached their smart goals with the help of SweetProcess. 

Ted Fogliani, CEO of ShipCalm , had a goal of minimizing the stretch on their systems, employees, and facilities during their growing customer base amidst COVID-19. SweetProcess happens to be the tool that brings their dream to life. Features like easy process documentation, different knowledge bases for employees and customers, task assigning and tracking, employee sign-off, and much more are what make the process a walk in the park for the ShipCalm team. 

The fact that SweetProcess has no learning curve and allows access to different document versions and allows easy employee onboarding helped make it a top pick and a great fit for ShipCalm during its expansion phase.

According to Thomas Parker, the quality assurance and sensory coordinator at Stone & Wood, SweetProcess helped the company execute the action plan to comply with regulatory standards . They were able to achieve this with proper process documentation, simplified employee orientation, centralized knowledge base, and process customization, among other features offered by SweetProcess. 

Without a credit card, you can also access all the features in SweetProcess for 14 days to execute your next action plan.

If you’ve never used one before, you may want to ask why you need an action plan before you start working on a project.

It provides clarity of objective and direction

With a well-laid-down action plan, you have a clear roadmap to achieve your smart goals and objectives.

Aids task prioritization

Since each of the tasks in the plan will have different levels of priority, your action plan will help you create a realistic order of priority during the action planning phase.

Enhances proper resource allocation

The resources, tools, and manpower required to carry out your project can be easily accounted for. This way, you can easily avoid shortages or excess resources. 

Leads to focus and motivation

Each team member will be on the same page regarding the execution of the action plan. This will keep everyone on their toes in taking care of their assignments to achieve the objectives and deliverables.

Fosters team alignment

With a documented action plan, all your team members are always on the same page regarding who does what. This will foster cooperation and productivity .

From the real-time insights shared with us by Fortador and Bybrand, you can learn more about how developing and implementing action plans has contributed significantly to their business success.

Lev Tretyakov, the CEO and head of sales of Fortador, revealed how the successful implementation of action plans has been the driving force behind Fortador’s success. Fortador is a company that specializes in distributing sanitation and cleaning steam equipment. 

Lev talked about the action plan that was developed and implemented toward the launching of the company’s new product line of eco-friendly steam cleaners. They had to come up with a comprehensive action plan that outlined the details from conceptualization to the market launch.

Action Plan Goal

To launch a new product line of eco-friendly steam cleaners.

Action Plan Objectives

• To source sustainable materials that conform to eco-friendly standards from suppliers. 
• To produce the steam cleaner in a way that minimizes the environmental impact.
• To revamp their assembly line and ensure reduced energy consumption.
• To ensure the market acceptance of the new product and optimize sales.

Here’s what Fortador’s product launch action steps looked like according to Lev Tretyakov: 

• Conceptualization: Identifying a gap in our product range, brainstorming how to fill the gap, factoring in market trends, customer needs, and Fortador’s strengths.
• Design and development: After getting a concept, our design team came up with prototypes, which we tested and refined depending on the feedback.
• Production: After working on the optimal design, we followed strict quality control measures in production to ensure the product matched our standards.
• Marketing and promotion: As the production continued, our marketing team was actively working to develop a strategy to promote the product. They worked on social media campaigns, press releases, and email marketing.
• The launch: We launched the product through in-store and online promotion events, and it was a success.

From his experience in executing this product launch action plan, Lev highlighted how implementing action plans has been of great influence on the company’s success. 

“An action plan serves as a clear outline of how to achieve a goal, what to anticipate, and what to do. It ensures everyone understands the end goal and their role and contributes towards it, which creates a sense of direction. It has helped the Fortador team navigate challenges, remain organized, and get through challenges better as everyone is working towards a common goal . ” 

—Lev Tretyakov, CEO and Head of Sales of Fortador

Bybrand is another company that developed an action plan to improve its strategic marketing goals by tapping into the boom of generative AI. 

Bernardo Castro, founder of Bybrand (a company that sells B2B email signature software), shared how implementing the action plan has helped them drive this vision. 

According to Bernardo, “The key to an action plan is to use a project management software. We created three goals using the SMART method of defining them. One of our goals is to implement the use of generative AI as a chatbot in the first few months of 2024. We had a specific aim, and it is measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.”

Bernardo explained that while building the action plan, the company assigned tasks to the marketing and IT teams that are mostly in charge of the chatbot deployment. 

“We looked at managed services, the benefits of developing our chatbot, and the limitations of the technology. We looked at the costs involved with launching a chatbot. We prioritized researching generative AI because a website chatbot would directly affect our sales. So, over the last few months, we have looked at the limitations of our current chat tool. And we have begun testing the AI chatbot for its launch in early 2024.”

—Bernado Castro, founder of Bybrand

SweetProcess is a standard operating procedure software that can help you create an executable action plan without prior experience. Sign up for free —no credit card is required.

The components of an action plan can vary slightly depending on the type of project and company. Meanwhile, some core components are indispensable in any action plan document, and they are discussed below.

These are deliverables that the plan should help you accomplish in working toward your goal.

Action Plan Steps

These are the set of activities that need to be carried out to reach your goal. Your action plan steps should be detailed and follow a specific order.

Action Items

The action items are the specific, small tasks that make up the action plan steps. The action items help you execute your action plan steps.

Action Plan Timeline

An action plan timeline is the time allocation meant for each of the action plan steps. This will help to know the required duration of the whole project, each step with its start and end dates.

Action Plan Resources

These include any item that will be required to execute the action plan at each step. Action plan resources can include employees, materials, equipment, and action plan software, among other things. 

Action Plan Matrix

An action plan matrix is a tool that can be used to represent your action plan document, giving you all the details of the plan in just one glance. You can get samples of the action priority matrix here .

Action Plan Report

At the execution stage, you need to track the progress of your project with the anticipated progress. Having the preplanned parameters side by side with the actual ones will help you make modifications where necessary. 

Assignments

You should assign tasks to your team members and communicate with them so that everyone knows the tasks they’re saddled with. 

A process documentation tool like SweetProcess will help you assign tasks to your team members with all the needed details while also tracking the progress of the tasks. 

Action plans have different types depending on the purpose each is meant to serve. They, however, follow a similar pattern, albeit with different goals. The three types of action plans we’ll highlight here are business, project, and personal action plans. 

Business Action Plan

A business action plan is meant to set goals and assign tasks when you want to start a business or execute a new plan in an existing business. It outlines the vision for the business or new goal and the actions needed to bring it to life.

Project Action Plan

A project action plan is tailored toward individual and specific projects within an organization. This project might be a subdivision of a major strategy being executed by a company. An important component of a project action plan is the deliverable that is expected to satisfy the objective of such an action plan.

Personal Action Plan

A personal action plan may not be as complex as other types of action plans. The components are not always complex because they are mostly tasks you need to carry out yourself. Goals in a personal action plan can be as big as changing careers and as small as drinking enough water daily. The goal will determine what the action steps and other components will look like.  

Creating an effective action plan is not the end of it—it is just the beginning. When it is time to act on implementing the plan, here are some of the best practices that guarantee the success of the action plan. 

Involve your team

From the planning stage to the implementation stage, working on your action plan shouldn’t be a one-person show. If you plan with all your team members, it helps to ensure that everyone will be on the same page. Understanding the relevance of each assignment will motivate everyone so they don’t fall short in their duties. 

Set SMART goals

It’s important that you set goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Setting ambiguous goals will take you nowhere because you won’t be able to define your success metrics. 

Use task management software

An action plan document written with pen and paper may die right on the spot. You should consider adopting task management software that will document your processes, procedures, and templates and allow you to assign tasks and monitor and collaborate with your team members. Whether you manage a physical or virtual team, having everything in one place will prevent tasks from falling through the cracks and ensure prompt implementation of the action plan.

Check out SweetProcess for free and use all the features without hand-holding.

Create an action plan template

When you have a lot of projects to execute, it’s helpful to have an action plan template that works best for your team. When you implement an action plan, it is easy to tweak the plan during implementation until you have a perfect one that works for you. This will provide the best template for your team and future projects. 

Set up real-time alerts and assign dependencies

Each action step and item is expected to have a duration. To ensure that your action plan is executed within the allotted timeline, you should set reminders to know when each task completion is due. SweetProcess automatically does this for you by notifying all concerned team members of the progress and completion of each individual task.

Check action items off as you complete them

Checking off each action item on completion will help you know what is done and what is left in the action plan implementation.

Discuss late or pending tasks

Always keep in touch with your team members to encourage everyone to complete the assigned tasks within the time allocated. You should also not overlook late or pending tasks, rather communicate about them to know when they genuinely feel stuck so you can help.

The goal of your action plan will mostly determine the best template to use. Even though some of the action plan templates will have a similar pattern, you can check out which one best fits your project and swipe it right here for free. 

Blank Action Plan Template

The blank action plan template outlines a series of stages or activities that must be done to complete the work or task correctly. It helps you keep track of specific task accomplishments and the resources and equipment needed to execute the action. 

Click here to download the Blank Action Plan Template

Sales Action Plan Template

A sales action plan template outlines what you’ll do to meet your sales objectives with an emphasis on the transactions and relationships you can build with clients.

The major components of the sales action plan template are:

• Your revenue target
• Who your top customer segments are
• How to structure your teams for success 

Click here to download the Sales Action Plan Template

Maintenance Action Plan Template

A maintenance action plan template is a document that outlines what must be done to keep assets in a facility in good working order. The information in the template will guide you on how to use each asset to its full potential. You can keep track of maintenance schedules using the estimated time column, and check and record accountability when the task is complete.

Click here to download the Maintenance Action Plan Template

Startup Action Plan Template

This startup business plan template includes the essential elements you’ll need to pitch investors and stakeholders on your business idea and strategy. 

An executive summary, a financial overview, a marketing plan, specifics on product or service offerings, and more are all included in the template.

Click here to download the Startup Action Plan Template

Personal Development Action Plan Template

The personal development action plan template provides you with an assessment for personal growth. It is presented in the context of professional goals, education, relationships, or self-improvement. This is usually based on awareness, values, reflection, goal setting, and planning.

Click here to download the Personal Development Action Plan Template

Simple Action Plan Template

The simple action plan template allows you to keep track of the tasks that must be accomplished daily to achieve a larger goal. You can document your objectives, task list, success criteria, timeframe, and available resources. Each page has a label where you may enter information about your firm in addition to tables and images.

Click here to download the Simple Action Plan Template

Even though strategic plans and action plans are sometimes used interchangeably, they are not the same. 

Think of your strategic plan as your destination and your action plan as the details on how you plan to get there. 

Simply put, a strategic plan is meant to determine what we intend to do over a specific period, considering our main goals, resources, opportunities, challenges, and limitations.

The action plan refers to the specific steps to be taken to achieve this strategic plan. It comes with outlined objectives, timelines, assigning roles, and identifying the needed resources. 

An action plan refers to the scheduled proposition for implementing required activities to achieve a desired goal. An implementation plan, on the other hand, comes with a broader view. It covers the identification of required resources, developing assumptions, forecasting short and long-term outcomes, budgeting, allocating responsibilities, and scheduling of activities in a bid to achieve the desired objectives.

An action plan is usually a subset of a project plan. It describes how to accomplish a particular objective within the bigger project. The project plan outlines everything about the whole project, from its initiation to its completion. It includes objectives, scope, budget, timelines, risks, and stakeholders.

An action plan breaks down a specific goal into tasks, allocates resources, and sets deadlines and priorities, while a to-do list is only a list of things that need to be done in no particular order and without regard to the needed resources and timelines.

If you’re now looking to make and implement an action plan, you’ll be more concerned about executing, monitoring, and reporting throughout the project execution. SweetProcess is a tool that lets you achieve these and many more, ensuring you have everything in one place. 

This SOP documentation and management tool helps you realize your goals with great built-in features and intuitive interface. Features such as procedure standardization, process documentation , policy creation, and artificial intelligence assistance will help you set the pace for your action plan. While implementing your action plan, you will be able to tap from features like task assigning, progress tracking, team collaboration, and version histories. 

SweetProcess is a top pick among other similar tools because of its intuitiveness and favorable pricing, which helps you save time and cost. 

Without a credit card or any technical knowledge, you can use all the features in SweetProcess for 14 days for FREE .

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How to Write an Action Plan (Examples Included)

Before you start any project, you have to draw up a plan to manage, organize, and realize the project’s goals. Planning is a crucial component of the project initiation phase of the project management life cycle.

The best way to turn your project objectives and goals into reality, and to avoid risks and challenges during the project management life cycle , is to use a solid action plan. You can use an action plan to create a clear path to success for any goal (personal, business, or financial goal ).

In this article, you will learn how to write an effective action plan and why you need one for your project.

Let’s get started.

What is an Action Plan?

An action plan is a comprehensive plan on how to reach a goal. This is a step-by-step process you have to perform to attain your goal.

Every organization has a guideline or strategy in place to achieve its goal, be it small or big. An action plan can work towards a quarterly or yearly goal. This will include setting goals and objectives that are realistic to achieve.

A goal is the primary objective of an action plan. An action plan does not only exist in organizations, but it is very useful in our day-to-day life.

When you set a goal, an action plan has to be in motion to bring such a goal to life. Some processes or structures have to be in place to create an action plan.

Ask the following questions before you write an action plan.

• What are the goals you need to achieve?
• What methods will go into achieving them?
• What is the end goal of these goals and objectives?

You also need to follow processes to set an effective action plan.

1. Setting A Goal

The first step for writing an action plan is to set a goal. When you discover the goal of the whole operation, you can then draw up an action plan to achieve it. The purpose of this is to create or have a picture of what the goal is going to be about. This ensures that you set a realistic goal.

During the process of setting a goal, consider the following.

• The goal must be clear and actionable
• Must be realistic
• Must have a completion date

Organizations at this phase create a project charter to sketch out the goals and objectives.

2. Structures to Achieve the Goal

These are the guidelines or step-by-step plans to achieve the goal. During this stage, you write a well-described and outlined plan. The action plan is a guideline for achieving the already set goal.

Break down the goal of the project into smaller units and tasks that will lead to the eventual progress of the goal. Set targets and deadlines, and share responsibilities and resources needed to achieve the goal.

Some of these structures to achieve the goal include:

• Listing the steps to be followed
• Establishing key goals and targets
• Identifying available resources
• Visualizing the goal

Why You Need an Action Plan

An action plan is a framework for how to complete a project effectively. One of the reasons why projects fail is due to a lack of planning. Many projects fail because they either did not carry out extensive research or they did not have a solid plan to bring all their goals to fruition.

Every goal must have a to-do list of all tasks that need to be accomplished to achieve an objective. An action plan guarantees a well-organized objective. You need this plan to stay on track and manage the progress of the project or goal.

1. Provides Motivation and Eliminates Procrastination

An action plan is simply a to-do list that one checks till a task or goal is accomplished. A well outlined and organized arrangement of your plan encourages one to start and complete the task. Breaking the task into smaller units makes it feel less overwhelming and cumbersome.

Ticking your to-do list makes the progress of the goal visible. You can easily track milestones and accomplishments of the set objective.

2. Sets Direction and Priorities

One of the benefits of writing an action plan is that it establishes direction and priorities for your goal. It defines the whole purpose of the operation. In an organizational setting, it can be likened to a project charter. This represents a sketch of what the end goal should look like or should be.

An action plan helps the project team to stay on track and focus on the purpose of the project without going outside of the main objective. This prevents the waste of time and resources on scope creep . If eventually, you have to make changes, there will be adjustments that will easily fit into the project.

3. Uncovers Weaknesses and Opportunities

In the course of drawing up an action plan, one uncovers both the strengths and weaknesses of the project. An action plan provides you with a better chance of adjusting and creating a better plan for your goal or project.

The weaknesses uncovered could be the risk involved in the project. The action plan helps you discover the weaknesses and how to quickly eliminate them before the project begins.

During the process of writing an action plan, one can also find opportunities that can be generated from it. An action plan will force you to think strategically to deliver insights that will improve your project.

How to Write an Action Plan

There are seven steps to follow that serve as a guideline for writing a strategically well-detailed action plan.

1. Define Your Goals

The first step to writing a good action plan is to define the goal, be it a personal or business plan . Break down the overall goal into smaller, easier, and understandable sub-goals.

The reason for this is that, when people start to accomplish a task, the first impression they will develop is that it will take lots of time and energy. Breaking down the goal into smaller units will make it easier to understand and accomplish

By defining the goal, you understand what it takes to achieve it. It is at this stage you decide if you can go through with the plan. The goal you define should be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Timely.

2. List the Key Objectives

Listing priorities is another important step when writing an effective action plan. What are these priorities? They are the key elements that form the goal of what you want to achieve.

By listing the key objectives , you know where to focus on majorly or areas that will require more attention.

3. Create a Step-by-Step Guideline to Achieve Your Goal

A guideline ensures you do not get stuck during the process of achieving your aim. Many businesses have failed due to getting to a particular segment of achieving their goal and not knowing what to do next. Creating a step-by-step guideline ensures there is the next thing to do.

4. Set Targets and Deadlines

Time is a very important factor when setting a goal. During the process of trying to achieve the aim of the project, you can easily lose track of time if you do not track it.

When a goal drags on for a particular period, it can lead to loss of interest or the goal might fail to accomplish what it was intended for.

5. Identify Available Resources

An action plan should have an estimate of the resources available. When talking about resources, this is not just in terms of financial resources but also human resources. This refers to the number of teams on the ground to achieve the goal.

The essence of identifying available resources is to manage them effectively to achieve a specific goal.

6. Set Milestones

In every sector of life, the show of success no matter how little serves as a morale booster. Setting milestones helps you keep track of the project’s progress.

When working on a project, after completing a milestone, no matter how little the step is, it is important to celebrate or mark that milestone.

Milestones show progress. The essence of setting milestones is to give morale and motivation to your team members to do more work. A good practice is to reward team members when they accomplish a set milestone to show appreciation for their effort and encourage them to accomplish more.

7. Monitor and Evaluate the Plan

Monitoring and evaluating the plan is the last section of an action plan. This is where you evaluate the whole plan, check for the loopholes, and whatever was missed when writing the plan. It also leaves room for adjustments and scope creep.

Tips for Writing an Effective Action Plan

1. involve team members and experts.

This goes with the saying that “no man is an island.” No matter how much you understand a project, you need to involve team members and experts for better opinions and inputs. Following this tip allows for growth and communication among the team.

When opinions are welcomed from the team, this helps develop the project and might even uncover a greater benefit to the project. There are certain aspects of the project you may miss which your team members can pick up.

2. Have a Timeline

Getting your timing right is key to the success of any project. Having a timeline guiding all the activities you want to carry out in the project is crucial. A well-established timeline for your project ensures that you accomplish all tasks and milestones at the appropriate time.

3. Communicate the Plan

Communication is the foundation upon which a project can develop. When communication is in place, there will be a smooth transfer of information from one section to another. This is key because, without communication, the goal will remain stagnant.

4. Tick Off Items As You Accomplish Them

After completing an item or task in your project, mark them as completed. Doing this will make it easy for you to know the items or tasks you have completed and the ones that are still pending.

Ticking off items as you accomplish them can boost the morale of the team and encourage them to put in more effort to achieve the project.

5. Write an Action Plan Template

Writing an action plan template helps you save time and energy. Instead of having to create an action plan from scratch each time you need one, you can write or collect action plan templates you can edit to fit your needs.

Since the format for writing an action plan is similar for many projects or goals, writing an action plan template is a great idea.

6. Use a Project Management Tool

The best project management tools help you write effective action plans and keep you on track. Project management software like Monday.com, ClickUp, and Wrike have project planning and reporting features that help you monitor the progress of your project and the performance of your project team.

Action Plan Template

An action plan template makes it easier and faster for you to create an action plan for your goal or project. While almost every action plan template follows the same format, modifications vary depending on its purpose and the industry.

1. Business Action Plan

2. Marketing Action Plan

3. Sales Action Plan

4. Project Action Plan

5. Corrective Action Plan Template

Action Plan Example

An example of an action plan for a marketing agency.

Problem: Slow growth due to lack of sufficient employees and clients.

Goal: Increase profit by 50% within three years.

We expect our marketing agency to increase our profitability by 150% as we increase our marketing and customer service team and attract more clients over the next three years.

Current State of Our Agency: Annual profit of $100,000, six employees, and fifteen clients.

Our Agency in Six Months: Training for our existing customers in marketing and customer service and our profit will increase by 10%.

Our Agency in 12 Months: Annual profit of $150,000, ten employees, and 25 clients.

Our Agency in Three Years: Annual profit of $225,000, fifteen employees, and fifty clients.

Action Plan to Achieve Our Goal

Task 1 – Training

Action: Train all employees in the latest marketing and sales trends, client acquisition, and customer service.

Completion Date: August 2022

Person Responsible: Project Manager

Task 2 – Recruitment

Action: Work with the HR manager to hire new employees that fit the skill sets needed to achieve the agency’s goal.

Completion Date: November 2023

Task 3 – Improve Customer Service

Action: Improve relations with clients to convert them into repeat customers by updating the agency’s website, taking note of their birthdays, and sending customized gifts showing the agency’s logo to them.

Completion Date: Ongoing

Person Responsible: IT Manager

Task 4 – Generate More Sales

Action: Organize meetings with clients and in-house staff to develop the best strategies for increasing sales conversions.

Completion Date: January 2024

Person Responsible: Sales Manager

Action: Run marketing campaigns on Google, Facebook, and Instagram to generate more sales for clients.

Completion Date: March 2024

Person Responsible: Marketing Manager

Task 5 – Reduce Friction at Payment Channels

Action: Optimize your payment clients for a seamless payment experience for your clients and increase the number of payment channels

Completion Date: May 2024

Task 6 – Expand Client Base

Action: Participate in relevant regional marketing summits to hunt for high-paying clients.

Completion Date: June 2024

Action: Target weaknesses in competitors’ services and offers and create better deals to attract more clients.

Completion Date: October 2024

Evidence of Success: Annual profit of $225,000 or more. Tracking and Evaluation Process: Assess staff size, client number, and profits.

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Anastasia belyh.

Anastasia has been a professional blogger and researcher since 2014. She loves to perform in-depth software reviews to help software buyers make informed decisions when choosing project management software, CRM tools, website builders, and everything around growing a startup business.

Anastasia worked in management consulting and tech startups, so she has lots of experience in helping professionals choosing the right business software.

Small Business Trends

What is an action plan and how to create one + an example.

An action plan is an organized list of steps that you can take to reach a desired goal. Creating an action plan requires carefully considering resources, goals, and available time. With a well-structured action plan, you can reach your goals in the most efficient way possible. Here’s how to create an action plan – plus some helpful examples and time-saving tips to guide you during your strategic planning process.

Table of Contents

What is an Action Plan?

At one point or another, you may have a task that seems larger than life. But an action plan helps.

In essence, an action plan is a systematic, detailed blueprint, or a comprehensive document, that lays out the strategy to achieve a certain goal or set of goals. It’s similar to a roadmap, providing clear directions on how you can move from your current status to your desired state.

The concept of an action plan is not limited to any specific domain, making it a versatile tool. It can be applied in various fields such as business, education, project management, personal growth, healthcare, and so forth.

A well-crafted action plan typically encompasses several elements:

• Objective: The objective is the ultimate goal that you aim to achieve. It needs to be clear and precise. This is the “destination” you’re striving to reach, so it’s vital to define it in a way that leaves no room for ambiguity. Often, the SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) is used to frame these objectives.

• Steps or Tasks: Once the goal is set, the next stage is to break it down into smaller, manageable steps or tasks. Each task should be straightforward, feasible, and should contribute directly to the attainment of the ultimate goal. For example, when you break down a large project into smaller, manageable tasks, it keeps you on track to success, and makes staying motivated in business easier during tough projects.

• Resources: For each task, you should also identify the necessary resources. These can be physical resources, such as equipment or materials, or human resources, like specific skills or personnel. By identifying these upfront, you can better plan and mitigate potential bottlenecks.

• Timeline: It’s also crucial to set a timeline for each task, which includes a start and an end date. This not only instills a sense of urgency but also helps to track progress over time. A well-planned schedule can also prevent tasks from overlapping or clashing.

• Responsibility Assignment: Each task needs a responsible person or team who will see it through to completion. Defining this ensures accountability and prevents tasks from being overlooked.

• Contingency Plan: Despite the best of planning, unforeseen circumstances may arise. Having a contingency plan prepares you for such scenarios, ensuring that your plan remains robust and flexible.

• Tracking and Evaluation: An important aspect of an action plan is tracking progress and evaluating outcomes. This step is essential as it allows you to adjust your plan as needed, based on the performance of each task or changing circumstances.

Creating an Effective Action Plan

Creating an effective action plan is an integral part of achieving any goal. In the following video, Brian Tracy, a well-known speaker and author in the field of self-development, outlines his method for formulating such a plan. Tracy’s process, built from years of experience, provides clear and practical steps that can be applied to any project or objective.

How to Write an Action Plan

An effective action plan operates as a guiding light, leading the way towards achieving specific objectives, milestones, and goals. For any project or substantial task, it can be the pivotal element that swings the balance between success and failure.

To make the process of creating an action plan easier, we’ve provided a summary table below. This table functions like a checklist, outlining clear steps and eliminating any confusion about what needs to be done next.

Having this overview can be a great starting point, but a deeper understanding of each step will further assist you in crafting a robust action plan. So let’s get started and explore each of these steps in more detail.

Step 1: Define the goal

Defining project goals is a critical first step in the action-planning process. It involves establishing a clear and concise objective that guides the rest of the plan. A well-defined goal serves as a roadmap for the team, providing direction and focus for their efforts. It also helps to keep everyone aligned and on track, ensuring that the plan is executed effectively.

To define a goal effectively, it is important to consider several key factors. First, the goal should be specific, meaning that it should clearly state what is to be achieved. Second, it should be measurable, allowing for progress to be tracked and evaluated.

Third, it should be attainable, meaning that it should be realistic and achievable given the available resources and constraints. Fourth, the goal should be relevant and aligned with the organization’s overall strategy and goals. Finally, it should have a specific timeline, with deadlines established to ensure that the goal is achieved within a reasonable period of time.

Step 2: Project management – Identify the necessary actions

This step outlines the specific tasks and activities that need to be performed in order to achieve the defined goal. It involves breaking down the goal into smaller, manageable steps and determining what needs to be done to accomplish each step. The actions should be specific, measurable, and have clear deliverables.

Project management plays a vital role in this step, as it helps to ensure that the necessary actions are planned and executed effectively. Project managers use a variety of tools and techniques to identify the necessary actions, such as creating a work breakdown structure, creating a project schedule, and identifying project dependencies.

They also work closely with the team to ensure that the necessary resources are available, that risks are identified and managed, and that progress is tracked and reported. Using project management best practices, the team can ensure that the necessary actions are performed efficiently and effectively and that the project remains on track and on schedule.

Step 3: Assign tasks and responsibilities to project managers and any person responsible

Assigning tasks and responsibilities is a key step in the action planning process, as it ensures that all the tasks have a designated person responsible for their completion. This step involves identifying who will be responsible for each of the necessary actions identified in the previous step and assigning ownership for the delivery of each task. It is important to ensure that responsibilities are clearly defined and that each person understands their role and what is expected of them.

Project managers play a central role in assigning responsibilities, as they are responsible for ensuring that the right person is assigned to each task. They work closely with team members to understand their strengths, skills, and availability, and make assignments based on this information.

They may also assign backup resources to ensure the team can complete tasks even if the primary person responsible is unavailable. It is important to remember that assigning responsibilities is a collaborative process, and that team members should have the opportunity to provide input and feedback. Employ team building exercises to promote teamwork, and provide streamlined methods for employees to communicate with managers and decision makers.

Step 4: Determine the timeline and deadlines

This step involves creating a timeline that outlines when each task should start and finish, and when milestones should be reached. The timeline should be based on the scope of the project, the availability of resources, and any other constraints. Use a calendar or gannt chart to outline the exact schedule for each step.

Having a clear timeline and deadlines helps to keep the project on track and ensures that tasks are completed in a timely manner. It also provides a clear visual representation of the project’s progress and helps to identify any potential issues or delays.

Deadlines also help to keep team members accountable and focused, as they know when they need to have their tasks completed. Deadlines also help to prioritize tasks and ensure that the most important work is completed first.

Step 5: Establish a system for monitoring progress

Establishing a system for monitoring progress provides a way to track the project’s progress and identify any issues or challenges that may arise. This step involves implementing tools, processes, and metrics that can be used to measure the project’s progress against the timeline and goals. The system for monitoring progress should be simple, efficient, and easy to use.

Having a system for monitoring progress is important for several reasons. First, it provides real-time visibility into the project’s progress, allowing the project manager and team to quickly identify any issues or challenges that may arise.

Second, it helps to keep everyone accountable and focused, as team members know that their work will be monitored and evaluated. Third, it allows for continuous improvement, as the project manager can use the data and metrics collected to identify areas for improvement and make adjustments as needed.

Step 6: Track progress, evaluate, and adjust as necessary

Evaluating and adjusting as necessary is a critical step in the action planning process, as it provides a way to ensure that the project remains on track and is executed effectively.

This step involves regularly reviewing the actual progress of the project and making any necessary adjustments to the plan, timeline, and actions. The evaluation should be based on the system for monitoring progress that was established in a previous step.

Tracking progress is an important part of this step, as it provides the data and metrics needed to evaluate the project’s progress and identify any areas for improvement. The project manager should use the system for monitoring progress to track key metrics, such as task completion rates, timeline progress, and resource utilization. This information can then be used to assess the project’s progress against the goals and timeline and to identify any areas for improvement.

By evaluating and adjusting as necessary, the project manager can ensure that the project remains on track and is executed effectively. This helps to minimize disruptions and delays and ensures that the project stays aligned with the goals and objectives.

The process of evaluating and adjusting should be continuous, with regular evaluations and progress reviews. This allows the project manager to respond quickly to any changes or challenges that may arise, and to make any necessary adjustments to keep the project moving forward. For example, you may need to employ some time saving tips or delegate to get back on schedule. Alternatively, you may need to try some new call to action examples to more effectively impact customer behavior to meet your goals.

Do I Need an Action Plan?

Everyone who has set business goals should strive for effective business planning . Without an action plan, it’s very easy to become overwhelmed by significant goals or lose sight of what perspectives should guide the decision-making process. Having an organized, realistic plan is how to stay motivated and stay focused on reaching success.

This is especially true for larger companies that are trying to navigate complex projects or launch multiple initiatives at the same time. An action plan can help them stay organized, track project progress, anticipate potential challenges, and simplify hiring .

Smaller businesses can also benefit from having an action plan, as it will provide a road map for scaling up operations in the future. An effective action plan should include strategies, resources, timelines, revenue targets , and measures of success. The business budget and cash flow should always be taken into account when creating an action plan.

Why Your Business Should Have an Action Plan

Every business should have an action plan as it’s essential to success and keeping your company on track. Here are five reasons your business needs one:

• Clarity of Purpose: An action plan lets everyone in your company know exactly what they need to accomplish, so they can stay focused and productive. Set call-to-action examples and performance expectations so everyone knows what to strive for.
• Measurable Results: Having specific goals and a timeline helps you keep track of your progress, see what’s working, and adjust plans when needed.
• Achievable Goals: Action plans make sure that you don’t set yourself up for failure by setting unrealistic objectives. Outline steps for success in manageable pieces.
• Effective Use of Resources : An action plan helps you prioritize tasks and resources, so you can get the best return on investment (ROI). Public relations strategies and campaigns are two common examples.
• Increased Accountability: By clearly defining roles, responsibilities, deadlines, and expectations, everyone involved is more accountable for their tasks and the success of the project overall.

Plan of Action Example (Template)

A well-structured action plan helps to keep the project on track and on schedule providing a clear path to success. Here’s an action plan template example you can use to inspire you for your own projects:

I. Define the goal:

A. Objective: Launch a new product line

B. SMART Goal: To launch a new product line in 6 months, generating $500,000 in revenue within the first year.

II. Identify necessary actions:

A. Conduct market research to determine the target audience and demand

B. Develop product prototypes and conduct testing

C. Create marketing materials and promotional campaigns

D. Set up the supply chain and logistics

E. Launch product through digital and physical channels

III. Assign responsibilities:

A. Market research: Marketing team

B. Product development: R&D team

C. Marketing plan , materials, and campaigns: Marketing team

D. Supply chain and logistics: Operations team

E. Product launch: Marketing and Operations teams

IV. Determine timeline and deadlines:

A. Market research: Month 1-2

B. Product development: Month 2-4

C. Marketing materials and campaigns: Month 4-5

D. Supply chain and logistics: Month 5-6

E. Product launch: Month 6

V. Establish a system for monitoring progress:

A. Key metrics: Revenue, market share, customer satisfaction

B. Tools: Project management software, weekly progress meetings

C. Progress review meetings: Every 2 weeks

VI. Evaluate and adjust as necessary:

A. Regularly review revenue and customer satisfaction data

B. Adjust marketing strategy and promotions as necessary

C. Monitor supply chain and logistics, and make adjustments as needed

D. Evaluate timeline and deadlines, and adjust as necessary to ensure a timely product launch.

Tips for Building a Fantastic Action Plan

Building an action plan is the first step to reaching your business goals. Here are five tips for creating a fantastic action plan:

• Be Clear & Specific: Make sure that everyone involved in the project understands what needs to be done and when it needs to be completed. Set measurable and achievable targets, with specific timelines and deadlines.
• Prioritize Tasks: Identify which tasks should take priority so you can focus on what’s important right now, while still having a plan for the future.
• Start Small: Break large projects down into smaller components that you can do in stages, rather than trying to accomplish everything at once. Team-building exercises are a great way to keep energy and motivation high.
• Outline Resources Needed: Research ahead of time what resources will be needed for each task and make sure you have everything in place beforehand.
• Include Room for Change: The reality is that things don’t always go as planned so be prepared to adjust timelines or objectives as needed along the way.

Action Plan Vs To-Do List

Action plans and to-do lists may seem similar at first glance, but they are two different tools that serve specific purposes. An action plan is an organized approach to achieving a goal. It helps you break down larger tasks into smaller, manageable pieces and outlines the steps you need to take in order to reach your objectives.

A to-do list is a tool used to keep track of day-to-day tasks or items that need attention. It’s typically used as a checklist for getting things done in a certain timeframe. While both can be helpful when it comes to staying organized and productive, action plans offer a more comprehensive approach to reaching longer-term goals.

Action Plan Vs Strategic Plan

An action plan and a strategic plan are two distinct frameworks used in planning and executing goals, each serving its unique function. An action plan is a detailed outline of the specific, immediate steps required to achieve a short-term objective. It focuses on the ‘how’ aspect, breaking down larger tasks into smaller, actionable items, typically with a shorter time horizon.

On the other hand, a strategic plan is a comprehensive roadmap designed for long-term goals. It involves a broader perspective, focusing on the ‘why’ behind the goals. This plan outlines the organization’s vision, mission, and core objectives over a more extended period, often including market analysis, competitive positioning, and long-term resource allocation. While action plans are more about tactical execution, strategic plans provide the overarching direction and purpose that guide these actions.

Both plans are crucial: the strategic plan sets the course, and the action plan drives the day-to-day activities needed to steer the ship towards the destination outlined in the strategic plan.

Action Plan Vs Project Plan

An action plan and a project plan are both tools used to help maintain organization and productivity when working toward a specific goal. Action plans focus on smaller tasks that need to be completed and prioritize them in an organized list.

Project plans are more comprehensive, providing an overview of all the steps required for completing a particular project. They usually include timelines, deadlines, resources needed, and other specifics. While action plans can help define the daily tasks necessary for completing a project, they should ultimately be formulated as part of the larger project plan.

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How to create an action plan (with free templates and examples)

An action plan template provides a ready-made framework for quickly adding the steps — like tasks, due dates, and assignees — to achieve your project goals. It’s a great way to ensure your project action plans are effective and consistent so everyone understands what’s expected.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to write an action plan step-by-step, with examples for inspiration. Plus, you can download two free action plan templates — including one from our Work OS — to get started immediately.

Download Excel template

What is an action plan?

An action plan is a detailed blueprint that outlines the steps you, your team, or your organization will take to achieve a specific goal. It includes specific tasks or actions with due dates and assignees, a timeline, and the resources required to accomplish your goal.

Action plans include detailed information, such as:

• A description of each action or task to complete
• The person responsible for each action
• Due dates for each task
• Resources required to complete the action
• Space to reflect or take notes after you have completed a task

What is an action plan template?

An action plan template is a pre-structured document that gives you a framework for crafting your new action plan. A practical action plan template has designated spaces for each aspect you need to cover, often presented in a table format like this.

Free action plan templates

Here are two free action plan templates you can download and use today:

Try monday.com’s Action Plan Template:

This action plan template breaks down goals into actionable steps that you can prioritize, assign ownership, and track progress. You can also add start and end dates for each action, plus relevant details and files.

Get the template

Download the free action plan template for Excel:

Why is an action plan template important?

Leaders and managers use action plan templates to speed up the strategic planning process . Rather than spending unnecessary time designing the document used for planning purposes, project managers can simply pull up their template, save a new copy — keeping the existing template intact — and get straight to work scheduling and assigning tasks.

Action plan templates ensure consistency

Additionally, templates help to ensure consistency across plans and teams. When your organization uses the same action plan template for the whole company, it’s easier for team members to interpret and understand the plan — because they’re familiar with the format — and it contributes toward an organized, professional appearance.

Action plan templates help you plan more effectively

Action plan templates help project organizers plan more effectively by offering predefined categories and columns, reducing the chance of human error or omitting information from an action plan. In addition, you can apply any learnings from the project management process to your template. That way, you’ll consistently improve subsequent action plans.

While completing a project, you might find that some of the tasks in your task lists didn’t have clear outcomes. In addition, it wasn’t immediately obvious how to identify when the task was complete. So, you could borrow from the SMART goals framework — Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound goals — and include a new column in your action plan template to note how you’ll measure if the task is complete.

And when using an action plan template built on a Work OS like monday.com, you can add your action plan to relevant project boards, create cross-team automations , and more — making it easier to collaborate with a distributed team in real time.

What are the essential features of an effective action plan template?

Action plan templates should contain the following features:

• Multiple views — such as tables, timelines, Kanban boards, and Gantt charts to visualize tasks.
• Task notifications — to detail and assign tasks to team members.
• Structured layouts — to plan tasks based on priority, status, and resource allocation.
• Collaboration ability — to maintain notes, comments, and files in one place.
• Automations — to update task status and notify owners.
• Status columns — to show the current status, such as Stuck, Working on it, and Done.
• Dashboards — to track overall progress, timelines, and budgets.

What is the difference between an action plan and a project plan?

A project plan is more detailed than an action plan. Both list the tasks, timelines, and resources required to achieve a desired goal. But project plans also include:

• Project goals and objectives
• Project milestones and deliverables
• Project scope and budget
• Project roles and responsibilities
• Project stakeholders and communication schedule
• Project risk mitigation and contingency plans
• Project success criteria

You can create an action plan from your project plan to outline the steps required to achieve your project goals.

What are the key elements of a well-written action plan?

A well-written action plan consists of seven components:

• Goals: define what the action plan aims to accomplish.
• Steps: detail the actions required to achieve each goal.
• Items: determine the task dependencies and priorities.
• Timeline: maps out the schedule and milestones from start to finish.
• Resources: identify the people, tools, and budget required.
• Responsibilities: assign tasks to an individual or a team.
• Review: monitor the overall progress of action items completed.

What are some examples of action plan templates?

Now that we know what they do, let’s look at a few action plan templates.

Business action plan template

This template outlines how to write an action plan to track progress toward a specific business goal.

( Image Source )

This action plan begins by detailing the primary goal, with the first column dedicated to a breakdown of each action required. For example, if your business goal was to design and launch a new website, your activities might include:

• Gathering design assets
• Choosing a color scheme
• Copywriting for new website pages
• Assembling design and development teams
• Creating design wireframes
• Design and development
• Launch and promotion

Note that the second to last column in this action plan template is reserved for noting potential hazards. This helps identify roadblocks that might get in the way of achieving your goals to plan around them.

Personal development action plan template

Though action plans are most often used in a business context, they can be a handy tool to help you stay motivated and work toward your personal goals.

This template allows you to break down your actions into a step-by-step sequence and includes a “How will I know I’ve been successful?” column to ensure that the actions you write down have a clear outcome.

Corrective action plan template

Creating an action plan can also be a great way to solve a specific business problem or even an issue with a particular employee’s performance. This is known as a corrective action plan, as shown in the example template below.

A corrective action plan template includes important columns, such as “metrics and constraints” — to help users complete tasks and plan for potential roadblocks — and “percent completed” — to help measure the progress toward the goal.

monday.com’s Action Plan Template

As you’ve seen in the examples above, the typical action plan format is a PDF or Microsoft Word document. While this is fine for goal setting and creating the plan itself, it’s not so great for putting it into action.

That’s why we’ve purpose-built a flexible, customizable, intuitive action plan template to use with monday.com.

When you design your action plan on monday.com, you can:

• Access multiple views (such as a table, Kanban, and timeline) to work in a manner that suits your needs.

• Assign tasks to individuals and notify them instantly.
• Comment and collaborate on tasks to keep communication contextual.
• Design custom automations to save valuable time and ensure nothing slips through the cracks.
• Report on progress with the Progress Tracking Column.

Once there is buy-in from the team on the plan, it is easy to copy actions, dates, and assignees over to the task management board.

Because monday.com is a comprehensive Work OS, any action plans you create with this template also integrate with relevant project boards. In addition, comprehensive analytics make tracking easy.

How to write an action plan step-by-step

Never created an action plan before? Then, follow this simple guide and get started with the free template above.

1. Determine your goals

First, you need to understand what you’re trying to achieve. Then, make this goal as specific as possible.

For example, “increase sales” is not a clear enough goal. “Increase sales by 20% in quarter three” is more specific and allows you to set a metric for achieving it.

2. Break down the steps required to achieve each goal

What actions are necessary to get there?

In this example, that might include:

• Hire three new sales development representatives
• Increase content marketing budget by $20,000
• Implement a new sales training program for new hires

3. Determine task dependencies and priorities

Remember: you can’t do everything at once! So now that you’ve broken down that big goal into bite-sized chunks, you need to figure out the perfect order for completing the tasks. In the above instance, you need to hire new sales representatives before starting a sales training program.

4. Set milestones

Now, set some milestones for significant events or checkpoints along the project. Some typical milestones are:

• Completion of a substantial task or phase of the project
• A significant event, such as a product launch
• Important meetings, like customer review meetings

5. Add deadlines

When do you need to complete each task? Setting deadlines for each task helps your team stay on track and allows you to identify if your timeline for the larger goal is realistic.

6. Identify the resources you need

What’s getting in the way of completing these tasks? What do you require — perhaps from leadership or another team — to meet or exceed your goals? In our sales team example, we might need some assistance from the HR department to advertise an open role and attract new applicants.

7. Assign tasks to individuals

Who is responsible for each action? Assign a clear task owner to each task. Ownership doesn’t just make someone feel accountable; it empowers them to take the initiative and solve problems without dragging in management at every twist and turn.

8. Agree on a plan to review progress

Before you jump in and start your project, determine how you will measure progress toward your goals. For example:

• Will you review your action plan every day or every week?
• Will the task assignees or the project leader be responsible for updating the plan to reflect progress?

Determining these answers upfront means the action plan remains a living document reflecting actual progress.

Customize our Action Plan Template to your needs today

Prepare and present your action plans with our flexible, customizable Action Plan Template. Team members will love the multiple views, automations, and collaboration features to keep them on point. And you’ll benefit from the Progress Tracking column in your weekly reports to stakeholders.

FAQs about action plans

What’s the difference between an action plan and a to-do list.

An action plan and a to-do list are helpful tools for organizing tasks and achieving goals. A to-do list is a list of tasks to complete, but not necessarily for the same goal or project. Typically, to-do lists are less organized than action plans and can change daily. In contrast, an action plan follows specific steps and includes tasks that all lead to completing a common goal.

What's the difference between an action plan and a strategic plan?

An action plan and a strategic plan are essential for an organization’s long-term and short-term planning. A strategic plan outlines an organization’s vision for the future and helps prioritize goals, make resourcing decisions, and unite employees. On the other hand, an action plan makes the strategic plan operational by providing detailed instructions on how to accomplish those goals.

What’s the difference between an action plan and an implementation plan?

An implementation plan and an action plan are essential documents that help teams execute a project successfully. An action plan focuses on the specific tasks needed to achieve a goal. In contrast, an implementation plan is a more holistic document outlining the steps, teams, and resources required to execute a project successfully.

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How to Write an Action Plan That Drives Results + Examples ✍️

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Learn how to write an action plan and improve project management skills. Plus, explore components, action plan examples, formats, and helpful tips.

Projects often drift off course without a clear blueprint to guide them. If you've felt the weight of scattered tasks and uncertain directions, perhaps it's time for a change. 

In this guide, we'll take a look at action plans, a key tool in project management and strategic action planning. We'll also explain why they're important, break down their components, and walk you through how to write an action plan with examples you can put to use right away.

What is an action plan? 🤔

An action plan is a detailed document that outlines specific steps and resources required to achieve a certain goal within a defined timeframe. Although it may sound similar to a to-do list or a project plan , there are differences.

Unlike a simple to-do list of tasks without a comprehensive structure or a project plan that broadly oversees scope and milestones, action plans drill down into the how-to of each task, detailing the resources, timeline, and roles involved. They’re a vital tool for anyone aiming to reach a goal, whether working solo or in a team. Action plans shine in professional scenarios, ensuring people systematically approach and efficiently complete tasks.

Components of an action plan 📝

Action plans act as the bridge between a goal and its realization, offering clarity, focus, and a systematic approach to bring visions to life. But the process from goal-setting to reward-reaping requires a list of essential components, which are:

• Objectives: These guide the action plan by clearly outlining and communicating the desired outcomes. 
• Steps: Making up the core of the plan, steps detail what will happen to reach the goal, including targets and milestones. 
• Plan items: Action plan items are the actual nitty-gritty tasks that make up the steps. Think of them as the actionable items that need to be executed.
• Timeline: The action plan timeline lays out the entire schedule from beginning to end. 
• Resources: Action plan resources are the input needed to carry out the plan, such as time, finance, and tools. 
• Matrix: This serves as a tool to help decide which tasks need to be completed and in what order.
• Report: A report offers a snapshot of the action plan's progress.

Types of action plans 🌟

There are different types of action plans, and while they share similar foundational structures, their goals set them apart. Let's look at a few:

• Business action plan: This helps chart the course when launching or expanding a business.
• Operational action plan: It’s a short-term plan detailing everyday tasks required to run an operation, project, or event.
• Tactical action plan: Derived from strategic plans, these outline specific short-term actions to align with broader, long-term objectives.
• Emergency action plan: This is a preparedness plan crafted for swift response during emergencies or unexpected situations. 

What is the purpose of an action plan? 🔍

Action plans streamline the process of achieving goals by laying out tasks in a clear, step-by-step manner. They're valuable for project managers and individuals tackling both work and personal projects. By detailing the who, what, when, and how, action plans eliminate ambiguities and provide a coherent strategy, ensuring everyone involved understands their roles and responsibilities.

How to write an action plan in 8 steps 🪜

An action plan serves as the foundation for turning aspirations into tangible outcomes. While the concept might seem straightforward, writing an impactful action plan requires methodical thinking and a systematic approach. Here are eight steps to help you get started:

1. Set SMART goals and objectives 🎯

First things first –– project goals are different from project objectives. The former is the big-picture, high-level goal that the project will achieve for the business, while the latter is a more specific project deliverable that needs to be carried out to achieve the project goals. 

2. Determine the action steps 📖

Break down your primary objective into smaller, actionable steps. This makes the goal seem more achievable and outlines the groundwork needed.

3. Define and prioritize action items 🚨

Identify the small, individual nitty-gritty tasks that form the action steps you've outlined. 

Consider task dependencies, and assign the tasks a priority status so you complete them in the right order. 

4. Establish roles and allocate responsibilities 👥

Assign action items to your team members, and define and detail their roles and responsibilities. 

5. Identify resources ⚒️

List all the tools, finances, or other resources required to complete each task. This reduces potential roadblocks during execution.

6. Fix a timeline ⏳

Estimate a timeframe for completing each task and action step. This will help you create a timeline and effectively estimate the project’s length. 

7. Create an action plan template 🔥

Use or create a simple action plan template to list tasks, deadlines, and allocations. 

8. Monitor and revise the plan 🗣️

Consistently overseeing your team's progress and tweaking the plan when needed is vital.

Remember, your action plan should be flexible. 

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Best practices to create a successful action plan 💯.

A well-crafted action plan not only requires listing tasks but also designing a roadmap that's both comprehensive and executable. To make your action plan both effective and successful, consider the following practices: 

• Be realistic: While ambition is commendable, your action plan should be grounded in reality. Setting achievable goals and tasks ensures your plan remains actionable and doesn't lead to unnecessary frustration or burnout .
• Involve relevant stakeholders: Engage individuals or teams who’ll be directly responsible for tasks in the plan. Their insights can provide valuable perspectives, ensuring the plan is holistic and well-informed.
• Incorporate feedback mechanisms: Ensure there's a system in place for continuous feedback. Whether from team members executing tasks or stakeholders monitoring progress, feedback can provide insights to optimize the plan further.
• Celebrate milestones: Recognizing and celebrating key tasks or milestones serve as motivation. It reinforces positive progress and fosters a sense of achievement among all involved.

Action plan examples 🤩

Understanding the theory behind action plans is vital, but sometimes, a tangible example can provide the clarity needed to grasp the concept fully. Below are two concise examples for seeking inspiration:

Example 1: Increasing a brand’s social media engagement 📱

• Objective: Increase social media engagement by 20% over the next three months.
• Conduct a social media audit to identify current engagement rates.
• Develop a content calendar with diverse post types (e.g., videos, polls, and infographics).
• Launch a monthly social media challenge or contest to engage followers.
• Week 1: Complete social media audit.
• Weeks 2–4: Draft and finalize the content calendar.
• Month 2: Initiate the first social media challenge.
• Resources: Social media analytics tools, graphic design software, and budget for contest prizes.
• Responsibilities: Social media manager to oversee the entire plan, graphic designer for content creation, and marketing team for promotional efforts.
• Performance metrics: Track engagement rates weekly, and compare against the initial audit.

Example 2: Improving customer support response time 🤙

• Objective: Reduce average customer support response time by 30% within two months.
• Analyze current response time metrics.
• Train support staff on efficient ticket handling.
• Implement a new customer support software with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities.
• Week 1: Complete analysis of current metrics.
• Weeks 2–3: Conduct staff training sessions.
• Week 4: Introduce and integrate the new software.
• Resources: Customer support metrics, training materials, and AI-driven customer support software.
• Responsibilities: Customer support manager to supervise the plan, IT team for software integration, and HR for training facilitation.
• Performance metrics: Monitor response times weekly to gauge improvement.

Master strategic planning on Contra 🥳 

Behind all effective project management and strategic planning is a robust action plan. If you’re proficient in strategic planning and creating project roadmaps , Contra offers a remarkable platform to showcase and promote your freelance services commission-free. And for businesses, Contra is your gateway to top-tier project managers who understand your vision and can craft the perfect action plan tailored for your upcoming projects. Join Contra today .

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How to Write an Action Plan (Example Included)

What Is an Action Plan?

In project management, an action plan is a document that lists the action steps needed to achieve project goals and objectives. Therefore, an action plan clarifies what resources you’ll need to reach those goals, makes a timeline for the tasks or action items and determines what team members you’ll need. We’ll define what project goals, project objectives, action items and action steps are later in this guide.

An action plan documents the execution of the project plan; it’s a detailed list of the work that must be done to complete the project goals, including the action steps that are involved in getting from the start of the project to the finish. An action plan is similar to a project implementation plan and it’s very helpful during the project planning and project execution phases.

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Action Plan Template

Use this free Action Plan Template for Excel to manage your projects better.

Action Plan Components

An action plan answers the who, what and when of what you’re proposing. Those questions are answered by the various components that make up an action plan. The following are the basic building blocks of a successful action plan.

• Action Plan Steps: The action plan steps are the answer to the question of what. They’re the activities that’ll lead to achieving your goal. Action plan steps detail what will happen, and the more detail, the better.
• Action Items: The action items are the specific, small tasks that make up the action plan steps. These are the tasks that, when executed, lead to the next action plan step.
• Action Plan Timeline: An action plan timeline is the whole action plan laid out from start to finish. It shows the full duration of the action plan and every step and task is also plotted on this timeline, including their start and end dates.
• Action Plan Resources: Resources are anything needed to execute the action plan. That includes labor, materials, equipment, etc. You’ll want to identify the resources you’ll need for the action plan and attach them to the tasks to which they’ll be applied.
• Action Plan Matrix: A matrix is just a tool to help you determine which tasks you need to complete and in what order. Use our free action plan template to outline the steps, items, timeline and resources you’ll need to get the plan done right.
• Action Plan Report: Once you start to execute the action plan, you’ll need to ensure your actual progress matches your planned progress. To track progress, you’ll want to use an action plan report, which is a snapshot of your time, costs and more over a specific period.

Not only are you figuring out the action steps and timeline, but you’ll also determine who you’ll assemble for your project team to work on those tasks. This requires robust project management software like ProjectManager . ProjectManager offers multiple action planning tools such as Gantt charts, kanban boards, project calendars and more. Best of all, these project planning views sync with project dashboards, timesheets and workload charts to keep track of progress, project resources and costs.

Types of Action Plans

There are many different types of action plans that are used on various kinds of strategic initiatives. Each is similar in makeup but differs in their goals. Here are a few of the varieties of action plans.

Business Action Plan

A business action plan is used to set goals and tasks when you want to start a business or grow an existing business. It outlines the vision for the business and the actions you’ll take to achieve that vision.

Project Action Plan

An action plan for a project is really no different from a general action plan. The only difference is that it’s about producing a deliverable at the end of the plan, whether that be a product or service.

Personal Action Plan

Again, a personal action plan differs little from any other action plan except for the goal. For example, a personal action plan might be for an individual to exercise more. Therefore, the goal might be to walk for a half-hour a day, say, during lunchtime.

Action Plan Sample

Take a look at this sample of an action plan. We used our free action plan template for Excel  and filled out some potential marketing tasks, phases and assignees. Download this action plan template for free from our site, and get started on your own plan today.

How to Write an Action Plan for Project Management in 10 Steps

The benefits of an action plan are simple: you’ve now outlined what action steps and what resources are needed to reach your stated project goals. By having this collected in a single project management document, you can more successfully plan out how to execute your project plan.

People get overwhelmed by project management jargon when having to plan out a project, but the word “action” everyone can understand. The fundamentals to getting an action plan together for any project follow these four project planning basic steps:

1. Define Your Project Goals

There’s a difference between project goals and project objectives. Project goals refer to the high-level goals that the project will achieve. Those generally align with the strategic planning and business objectives of organizations.

2. Define Your Project Objectives

The project objectives are much more specific than the project goals. Project objectives refer to the deliverables and milestones that need to be completed to achieve your project goals.

3. Define Action Steps

The action steps are a group of related tasks or action items that must be executed to produce project deliverables.

4. Identify and Prioritize Action Items

Action items are small, individual tasks that make up the action steps that are outlined in your action plan. First, you need to identify task dependencies among them, and then assign those action items a priority level so that they’re executed sequentially.

5. Define Roles & Responsibilities

Now that you’ve divided the work required to accomplish your action plan, you’ll need to assign action items to your project team members and define their roles and responsibilities.

6. Allocate Resources

As with your project plan, your action plan has resource requirements. Having identified your action steps and action items will help you understand what resources are needed for each task and allocate them accordingly.

7. Set SMART Goals

Your action plan needs to be monitored and controlled to measure its performance. That’s why it’s important that you set SMART goals for your action items, action steps and your project objectives. SMART goals stand for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely.

8. Set a Timeline for Your Action Plan

As a project manager, you’ll need to do your best to estimate how long it’ll take to complete your action items and action steps. Once you do so, you’ll have a timeline. You can use project management techniques like PERT charts or the critical path method to better estimate the duration of your project action plan.

9. Write an Action Plan Template

Create or use a simple action plan template to collect tasks, deadlines and assignments. This is the place where everything task-related goes in your project action plan, so you have a place for all this crucial information.

Writing an action plan template it’s a great idea because you’ll need to use that format throughout the project. That’s why we’ve created a free action plan template that you can download. There are also dozens of other free project management templates for Excel and Word that can help you with every phase of your project.

10. Use a Project Management Tool

Use a project management tool to keep you on task. ProjectManager has project planning features that help you monitor and report on project progress and performance. Get a high-level view of the action plan with our live dashboards. Unlike other tools, we don’t make you set up the dashboard.

Once you’ve mapped out your action plan, you can use project planning tools to zoom into all the details about your action steps and action items. With ProjectManager, you can calculate various metrics, such as project variance, workload and more. They’re displayed in easy-to-read charts and graphs. Share them with stakeholders to give them updates on action steps whenever they want.

Tips to Write an Action Plan

Once you have an action plan, how do you work with it to run a successful project? Here are some tips to help with implementing your action plan:

• Focus on priorities and what’s due now when identifying action steps and setting your action plan timeline
• When you complete action steps, mark them off
• Have your team members work on one project management platform
• Set up alerts
• Discuss pending or overdue tasks

Action Plan Example

We’ve been talking a lot about an action plan, but let’s take a look at one in-depth. Below, you’ll see our free action plan template . It’s set up for the development of a website.

It’s broken down into phases, the first being the project planning phase , which includes the action steps, market research and the design of the site. You’ll see that tasks are outlined for each action step, including a description of that task, who’s assigned to execute it, the priority and even the status of its completion.

This is followed by the third action step, which is the launch of the site. This is the execution phase of the action plan, but it follows the same format, such as noting the priority, who’s responsible for the work, what that work is and its status.

There’s also a timeline to define the start dates of each of the tasks in the action steps, including the planned hours. This allows you to determine the length of each task and the duration of the entire action plan, from start to finish.

Finally, there’s a place to add your resources. They’re broken down into departments, for example, marketing, web development, etc. Then the materials that are required for each task are listed, including their costs. This allows you to estimate the cost of the plan.

How to Make An Action Plan With ProjectManager

Follow along with this action plan example to see how action plans are typically laid out using project planning software .

1. Map Action Plan Steps Using Multiple Project Views

ProjectManager can help you build your action plan and then execute it. Collect all your action steps tasks on our list view, which does more than light-weight to-do list apps because it allows you to then map your action plan with Gantt charts , project calendars and kanban boards. These robust project management tools allow you to prioritize action items, customize tags and show the percentage complete for each task. Our online project management software gives you real-time data to help you create an action plan and stick to it.

2. Assign Action Items to Your Team Members

Once you’ve mapped out your action plan steps with ProjectManager’s project planning tools , you can assign tasks to your team members and indicate what resources are needed for the completion of each action item. Indicate their roles and responsibilities and set priority levels for each task to ensure the work is carried out properly.

3. Set Action Plan Steps and Deliverables

It’s important to note all the phases of the project timeline to know what action steps and tasks will take place and when. In addition, ProjectManager’s Gantt chart allows you to identify project phases, find the critical path, and set due dates for project milestones and deliverables

4. Track Progress With Real-Time Dashboards

Once you start the project, you’ll need to chart the progress of the work being done. This leads us to the real-time project dashboard , where you’ll check whether your action plan is on schedule and under budget.

Manage Your Project With an Action Plan

Getting a plan together is only the first part of managing a project . Remember, it’s not something to write and put away, but rather it’s a living document that should follow you throughout the project life cycle. Jennifer Bridges, PMP, offers more tips on how to write an action plan in the video below.

Here’s a screenshot for your reference:

ProjectManager’s Action Planning Tools are Ideal for Managing Action Plans

If you’re looking to make an action plan and then take action on it by executing, monitoring and reporting on a project, then you’ll want ProjectManager. Our online project management software lets you make an action plan online with multiple project planning tools such as Gantt charts, task lists, kanban boards and project calendars. Then, you can use timesheets, project dashboards and resource management tools to keep track of progress, time and costs.

Plan & Schedule With Gantt Charts

ProjectManager’s Gantt chart is ideal to map out your action plan on an interactive project timeline that helps you organize your tasks, link dependencies and set milestones. More than that, you can filter for the critical path. When you’re done scheduling your action steps you can set a baseline. This allows you to always see the planned versus actual progress of your action plan to help you stay on track.

Manage Action Items with Kanban Boards, Task Lists and Project Calendars

Once you’ve used the Gantt chart to create a timeline for your action plan, you can zoom into the nitty-gritty details of everyday work with kanban boards , task lists and project calendars. With these tools, you can assign tasks and give teams a collaborative platform to comment and share relevant documents with unlimited file storage and real-time communication features.

Track Progress, Resources and Costs With Real-Time Action Plan Dashboards

ProjectManager’s real-time action plan dashboards sync with all its project management tools so you can check the status of your action plan at any time. You can check on your team members’ progress to see who’s over or underallocated, check labor costs and track whether your team is on schedule.

ProjectManager gives you all the tools you need to create and implement a successful action plan. Regardless of the type of action plan that you need to create, our award-winning project management software makes it easy to do so. Get started with a free 30-day trial today. 

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Action Plan Template for Business Development

• Great for beginners
• Ready-to-use, fully customizable Subcategory
• Get started in seconds

• Formulate achievable goals and objectives
• Organize and track tasks so nothing gets forgotten
• Identify short-term wins while planning the long term game

Benefits of a Business Development Action Plan Template

• Identify your goals and objectives
• Develop a strategy to achieve those goals
• Track progress and revise as needed

Main Elements of a Action Plan Template for Business Development

• A timetable for completing the project
• Specific goals and objectives
• Identification of key partners and stakeholders
• Estimated budget and timeline
• Attributes on how the project will be evaluated
• Contact information for a representative to provide feedback

How to Use a Business Development Action Plan Template

1. establish goals., 2. conduct research., 3. assess current situation., 4. set objectives & timelines., 5. assign roles & responsibilities., 6. develop tactics / plans., 7. monitor & review progress regularly, 8. celebrate successes, related action plan templates.

• Leadership Action Plan Template
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• Construction Action Plan Template
• Warehouse Relocation Action Plan Template

Related Templates

• Action Plan Template for PR
• Action Plan Template for Event Planning
• Action Plan Template for Community Engagement
• Action Plan Template for College Student
• Action Plan Template for Sustainability

Template details

Free forever with 100mb storage.

Free training & 24-hours support

Serious about security & privacy

Highest levels of uptime the last 12 months

• Product Roadmap
• Affiliate & Referrals
• On-Demand Demo
• Integrations
• Consultants
• Gantt Chart
• Native Time Tracking
• Automations
• Kanban Board
• vs Airtable
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• Software Team Hub
• PM Software Guide

How to make a business plan

Table of Contents

How to make a good business plan: step-by-step guide.

A business plan is a strategic roadmap used to navigate the challenging journey of entrepreneurship. It's the foundation upon which you build a successful business.

A well-crafted business plan can help you define your vision, clarify your goals, and identify potential problems before they arise.

But where do you start? How do you create a business plan that sets you up for success?

This article will explore the step-by-step process of creating a comprehensive business plan.

What is a business plan?

A business plan is a formal document that outlines a business's objectives, strategies, and operational procedures. It typically includes the following information about a company:

Products or services

Target market

Competitors

Marketing and sales strategies

Financial plan

Management team

A business plan serves as a roadmap for a company's success and provides a blueprint for its growth and development. It helps entrepreneurs and business owners organize their ideas, evaluate the feasibility, and identify potential challenges and opportunities.

As well as serving as a guide for business owners, a business plan can attract investors and secure funding. It demonstrates the company's understanding of the market, its ability to generate revenue and profits, and its strategy for managing risks and achieving success.

Business plan vs. business model canvas

A business plan may seem similar to a business model canvas, but each document serves a different purpose.

A business model canvas is a high-level overview that helps entrepreneurs and business owners quickly test and iterate their ideas. It is often a one-page document that briefly outlines the following:

Key partnerships

Key activities

Key propositions

Customer relationships

Customer segments

Key resources

Cost structure

Revenue streams

On the other hand, a Business Plan Template provides a more in-depth analysis of a company's strategy and operations. It is typically a lengthy document and requires significant time and effort to develop.

A business model shouldn’t replace a business plan, and vice versa. Business owners should lay the foundations and visually capture the most important information with a Business Model Canvas Template . Because this is a fast and efficient way to communicate a business idea, a business model canvas is a good starting point before developing a more comprehensive business plan.

A business plan can aim to secure funding from investors or lenders, while a business model canvas communicates a business idea to potential customers or partners.

Why is a business plan important?

A business plan is crucial for any entrepreneur or business owner wanting to increase their chances of success.

Here are some of the many benefits of having a thorough business plan.

Helps to define the business goals and objectives

A business plan encourages you to think critically about your goals and objectives. Doing so lets you clearly understand what you want to achieve and how you plan to get there.

A well-defined set of goals, objectives, and key results also provides a sense of direction and purpose, which helps keep business owners focused and motivated.

Guides decision-making

A business plan requires you to consider different scenarios and potential problems that may arise in your business. This awareness allows you to devise strategies to deal with these issues and avoid pitfalls.

With a clear plan, entrepreneurs can make informed decisions aligning with their overall business goals and objectives. This helps reduce the risk of making costly mistakes and ensures they make decisions with long-term success in mind.

Attracts investors and secures funding

Investors and lenders often require a business plan before considering investing in your business. A document that outlines the company's goals, objectives, and financial forecasts can help instill confidence in potential investors and lenders.

A well-written business plan demonstrates that you have thoroughly thought through your business idea and have a solid plan for success.

Identifies potential challenges and risks

A business plan requires entrepreneurs to consider potential challenges and risks that could impact their business. For example:

Is there enough demand for my product or service?

Will I have enough capital to start my business?

Is the market oversaturated with too many competitors?

What will happen if my marketing strategy is ineffective?

By identifying these potential challenges, entrepreneurs can develop strategies to mitigate risks and overcome challenges. This can reduce the likelihood of costly mistakes and ensure the business is well-positioned to take on any challenges.

Provides a basis for measuring success

A business plan serves as a framework for measuring success by providing clear goals and financial projections . Entrepreneurs can regularly refer to the original business plan as a benchmark to measure progress. By comparing the current business position to initial forecasts, business owners can answer questions such as:

Are we where we want to be at this point?

Did we achieve our goals?

If not, why not, and what do we need to do?

After assessing whether the business is meeting its objectives or falling short, business owners can adjust their strategies as needed.

How to make a business plan step by step

The steps below will guide you through the process of creating a business plan and what key components you need to include.

1. Create an executive summary

Start with a brief overview of your entire plan. The executive summary should cover your business plan's main points and key takeaways.

Keep your executive summary concise and clear with the Executive Summary Template . The simple design helps readers understand the crux of your business plan without reading the entire document.

2. Write your company description

Provide a detailed explanation of your company. Include information on what your company does, the mission statement, and your vision for the future.

Provide additional background information on the history of your company, the founders, and any notable achievements or milestones.

3. Conduct a market analysis

Conduct an in-depth analysis of your industry, competitors, and target market. This is best done with a SWOT analysis to identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Next, identify your target market's needs, demographics, and behaviors.

Use the Competitive Analysis Template to brainstorm answers to simple questions like:

What does the current market look like?

Who are your competitors?

What are they offering?

What will give you a competitive advantage?

Who is your target market?

What are they looking for and why?

How will your product or service satisfy a need?

These questions should give you valuable insights into the current market and where your business stands.

4. Describe your products and services

Provide detailed information about your products and services. This includes pricing information, product features, and any unique selling points.

Use the Product/Market Fit Template to explain how your products meet the needs of your target market. Describe what sets them apart from the competition.

5. Design a marketing and sales strategy

Outline how you plan to promote and sell your products. Your marketing strategy and sales strategy should include information about your:

Pricing strategy

Advertising and promotional tactics

Sales channels

The Go to Market Strategy Template is a great way to visually map how you plan to launch your product or service in a new or existing market.

6. Determine budget and financial projections

Document detailed information on your business’ finances. Describe the current financial position of the company and how you expect the finances to play out.

Some details to include in this section are:

Startup costs

Revenue projections

Profit and loss statement

Funding you have received or plan to receive

Strategy for raising funds

7. Set the organization and management structure

Define how your company is structured and who will be responsible for each aspect of the business. Use the Business Organizational Chart Template to visually map the company’s teams, roles, and hierarchy.

As well as the organization and management structure, discuss the legal structure of your business. Clarify whether your business is a corporation, partnership, sole proprietorship, or LLC.

8. Make an action plan

At this point in your business plan, you’ve described what you’re aiming for. But how are you going to get there? The Action Plan Template describes the following steps to move your business plan forward. Outline the next steps you plan to take to bring your business plan to fruition.

Types of business plans

Several types of business plans cater to different purposes and stages of a company's lifecycle. Here are some of the most common types of business plans.

Startup business plan

A startup business plan is typically an entrepreneur's first business plan. This document helps entrepreneurs articulate their business idea when starting a new business.

Not sure how to make a business plan for a startup? It’s pretty similar to a regular business plan, except the primary purpose of a startup business plan is to convince investors to provide funding for the business. A startup business plan also outlines the potential target market, product/service offering, marketing plan, and financial projections.

Strategic business plan

A strategic business plan is a long-term plan that outlines a company's overall strategy, objectives, and tactics. This type of strategic plan focuses on the big picture and helps business owners set goals and priorities and measure progress.

The primary purpose of a strategic business plan is to provide direction and guidance to the company's management team and stakeholders. The plan typically covers a period of three to five years.

Operational business plan

An operational business plan is a detailed document that outlines the day-to-day operations of a business. It focuses on the specific activities and processes required to run the business, such as:

Organizational structure

Staffing plan

Production plan

Quality control

Inventory management

Supply chain

The primary purpose of an operational business plan is to ensure that the business runs efficiently and effectively. It helps business owners manage their resources, track their performance, and identify areas for improvement.

Growth-business plan

A growth-business plan is a strategic plan that outlines how a company plans to expand its business. It helps business owners identify new market opportunities and increase revenue and profitability. The primary purpose of a growth-business plan is to provide a roadmap for the company's expansion and growth.

The 3 Horizons of Growth Template is a great tool to identify new areas of growth. This framework categorizes growth opportunities into three categories: Horizon 1 (core business), Horizon 2 (emerging business), and Horizon 3 (potential business).

One-page business plan

A one-page business plan is a condensed version of a full business plan that focuses on the most critical aspects of a business. It’s a great tool for entrepreneurs who want to quickly communicate their business idea to potential investors, partners, or employees.

A one-page business plan typically includes sections such as business concept, value proposition, revenue streams, and cost structure.

Best practices for how to make a good business plan

Here are some additional tips for creating a business plan:

Use a template

A template can help you organize your thoughts and effectively communicate your business ideas and strategies. Starting with a template can also save you time and effort when formatting your plan.

Miro’s extensive library of customizable templates includes all the necessary sections for a comprehensive business plan. With our templates, you can confidently present your business plans to stakeholders and investors.

Be practical

Avoid overestimating revenue projections or underestimating expenses. Your business plan should be grounded in practical realities like your budget, resources, and capabilities.

Be specific

Provide as much detail as possible in your business plan. A specific plan is easier to execute because it provides clear guidance on what needs to be done and how. Without specific details, your plan may be too broad or vague, making it difficult to know where to start or how to measure success.

Be thorough with your research

Conduct thorough research to fully understand the market, your competitors, and your target audience . By conducting thorough research, you can identify potential risks and challenges your business may face and develop strategies to mitigate them.

Get input from others

It can be easy to become overly focused on your vision and ideas, leading to tunnel vision and a lack of objectivity. By seeking input from others, you can identify potential opportunities you may have overlooked.

Review and revise regularly

A business plan is a living document. You should update it regularly to reflect market, industry, and business changes. Set aside time for regular reviews and revisions to ensure your plan remains relevant and effective.

Create a winning business plan to chart your path to success

Starting or growing a business can be challenging, but it doesn't have to be. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting, a well-written business plan can make or break your business’ success.

The purpose of a business plan is more than just to secure funding and attract investors. It also serves as a roadmap for achieving your business goals and realizing your vision. With the right mindset, tools, and strategies, you can develop a visually appealing, persuasive business plan.

Ready to make an effective business plan that works for you? Check out our library of ready-made strategy and planning templates and chart your path to success.

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How to Develop a Strategic Plan for Business Development [Free Template]

Published: May 01, 2023

Business development is usually confused with sales , often overlooked, and only sometimes given the strategic focus it deserves. Having a business development strategy, however, is crucial to long-term success. It ensures that everyone in your company is working toward a common goal.

But how do you develop a business development plan? Pull up a chair and stay awhile, I’m diving into that and more below.

Free Strategic Planning Template

Access a business strategic planning template to grow your business.

• Sales and Revenue Growth
• Growth of Customer Base
• Expansion into New Regions

You're all set!

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Fill out this form to get the strategic growth template.

Business development.

Business development is the practice of identifying, attracting, and acquiring new business to further your company’s revenue and growth goals. How you achieve these goals is sometimes referred to as a business development strategy — and it applies to and benefits everyone at your company.

It’s not unusual to mistake business development with sales, but there’s an important distinction between the two. Business development refers to many activities and functions inside and outside the traditional sales team structure. In some companies, business development is part of the larger sales operations team. In others, it’s part of the marketing team or sits on its own team altogether.

Because business development can look so different among industries and businesses, the strategy behind this function is expansive. Below, we outline each step in the strategy and how to apply it to your business development plan.

Business Development Strategy

• Understand your competitive landscape.
• Choose effective KPIs.
• Develop long-term customer relationships.
• Implement customer feedback.
• Keep your website content and user interface fresh.
• Speed up your response time.
• Leverage a sales plan to identify areas of growth.
• Implement a social listening strategy.
• Sponsor industry organizations, conferences, and events.

1. Understand your competitive landscape.

Before you can develop a strategic plan to drive business growth, you must have a solid understanding of the competitive landscape in your industry. When you know who your ideal customer is and what problem they are looking to solve with your product or service, research who else is providing a viable solution in your industry.

Identify other companies operating in your space. What features do their products have? How competitive is their pricing? Do their systems integrate with other third-party solutions? Get crystal-clear on what the competition is offering so you know how to differentiate your product to your customers.

Featured Resource: 10 Competitive Analysis Templates

2. Choose effective KPIs.

How will you know if your business development efforts are successful? Ensure you can measure your goals with relevant, meaningful key performance indicators (KPIs) that reflect the health of your business. The result of these metrics should give you a strong indication of how effective your business development efforts are.

Featured Resource: Sales Metrics Calculator Dashboard

3. Develop long-term customer relationships.

Do you engage with your customers even after the deal has been closed? If not, it’s time to develop a plan to keep your buyers engaged. Building long-term relationships with your customers pays off. A grand majority of a company's business comes from repeat customers, and returning customers are cheaper to convert. Indeed, it’s famously known that it costs five times more to convert new customers than it does to sell to returning customers.

Not only are repeat customers easier to sell to, they can also provide valuable feedback and insights to help you improve your business. Additionally, customer testimonials can be used for valuable content that can attract your next buyer.

4. Implement customer feedback.

If and when you have customers who are willing to provide feedback on your sales process and offerings, make sure you hear them out and implement it. Your customers offer a unique, valuable perspective because they chose your product over the competition — their insights can help shape your strategy to keep your business ahead of the curve.

5. Keep your website content and user interface fresh.

When was the last time your company had a website refresh? Can you ensure that all links are working, that your site is easy to navigate, and that it is laid out and intuitive for those who want to buy from you?

Keeping your website up-to-date and easy to use can make or break the sale for customers who know they are ready to buy. Don’t make it too difficult for potential customers to get in touch with you or purchase your product directly (if that suits your business model).

6. Speed up your response time.

How fast your sales team responds to your leads can make or break your ability to close the deal. If you notice your sales process has some lag time that prevents you from responding to prospects as soon as possible, these could be areas to prioritize improvement.

7. Leverage a sales plan to identify areas of growth.

No business development strategy is complete without a sales plan . If you’ve already established a plan, make sure to unify it with your business development efforts. Your plan should outline your target audience, identify potential obstacles, provide a “game plan” for sales reps, outline responsibilities for team members, and define market conditions.

While a sales plan primarily affects your sales team, it can inform the activities of your business development reps. A sales plan can help them understand where the business needs growth — whether it’s in a new vertical, a new audience, or a new need that’s recently come to light in the industry.

Not sure how to create a sales plan? Download the following template to get started.

Featured Resource: Sales Plan Template

8. Implement a social listening strategy.

While social listening is mainly used in a marketing and customer service context, it’s also an essential practice for business development. There are more than 4 billion social media users worldwide. Naturally, social media is one of the best places to hear directly from consumers and businesses — without needing to reach out to them first.

In business development, you can use social listening to track what the general public is saying about your brand, industry, product offerings, product category, and more. It can help you identify key weaknesses in the industry, making it a prime opportunity to be the first to address those pitfalls.

Use a social listening tool to pick up on trends before they gain traction.

9. Sponsor industry organizations, conferences, and events.

A key facet of business development is reaching potential customers where they are. One of the easiest ways to do that is by sponsoring industry organizations, conferences, and events. This strategy will guarantee that your business development reps get valuable face-to-face time with your business’ target audience. The additional visibility can also help establish your business as a leader in the field.

Now that you understand what business development entails, it's time to create a plan to set your strategy in motion.

How to Develop a Strategic Plan

When we refer to a business development strategic plan, we’re referring to a roadmap that guides the whole company and requires everyone’s assistance to execute successfully and move your customer through the flywheel . With a plan, you’ll close more deals and quantify success.

Let’s go over the steps you should take to create a strategic plan.

1. Download our strategic plan template .

First, download our free growth strategy template to create a rock-solid strategic plan. With this template, you can map a growth plan for increasing sales, revenue, and customer acquisition rates. You can also create action plans for adding new locations, creating new product lines, and expanding into new regions.

Featured Resource: Strategic Plan Template

2. Craft your elevator pitch.

What is your company’s mission and how do you explain it to potential clients in 30 seconds or less? Keeping your elevator pitch at the forefront of all strategic planning will remind everyone what you’re working toward and why.

Some people believe the best pitch isn’t a pitch at all , but a story. Others have their favorite types of pitches , from a one-word pitch to a Twitter pitch that forces you to boil down your elevator pitch to just 280 characters.

Find the elevator pitch that works best for your reps, company, and offer, and document it in your business development strategy.

3. Include an executive summary.

You’ll share your strategic plan with executives and maybe even board members, so it’s important they have a high-level overview to skim. Pick the most salient points from your strategic plan and list or summarize them here.

You might already have an executive summary for your company if you’ve written a business proposal or value proposition . Use this as a jumping off point but create one that’s unique to your business development goals and priorities.

Once your executives have read your summary, they should have a pretty good idea of your direction for growing the business — without having to read the rest of your strategy.

3. Set SMART goals.

What are your goals for this strategy? If you don’t know, it will be difficult for your company and team to align behind your plan. So, set SMART goals . Remember, SMART stands for:

Featured Resource: SMART Goal Setting Template

Download the template now.

If one of your goals is for 5% of monthly revenue to come from upsells or cross-sells, make this goal specific by identifying what types of clients you’ll target.

Identify how you’ll measure success. Is success when reps conduct upsell outreach to 30 clients every month, or is it when they successfully upsell a customer and close the deal? To make your goal attainable, ensure everyone on your team understands who is responsible for this goal: in this case, sales or business development reps.

This goal is relevant because it will help your company grow, and likely contributes to larger company-wide goals. To make it time-based, set a timeline for success and action. In this case, your sales team must achieve that 5% upsell/cross-sell number by the end of the quarter.

4. Conduct SWOT analysis.

SWOT is a strategic planning technique used to identify a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Before conducting a SWOT, identify what your goal is. For example, “We’d like to use SWOT to learn how best to conduct outreach to prospective buyers.”

Once you’ve identified what you’re working toward, conduct market research by talking with your staff, business partners, and customers.

Next, identify your business’ strengths. Perhaps you have low employee turnover, a central location that makes it easy to visit with prospects in person, or an in-demand feature your competitors haven’t been able to mimic.

Featured Resource: Market Research Kit with SWOT Analysis Template

Your business’ weaknesses are next. Has your product recently glitched? Have you been unable to successfully build out a customer service team that can meet the demands of your customers?

Then, switch to opportunities. For example, have you made a new business partnership that will transition you into a previously untapped market segment?

What are the threats? Is your physical space getting crowded? What about your market space? Is increasing competition an issue?

Use SWOT results to identify a better way forward for your company.

5. Determine how you’ll measure success.

You’ve identified strengths and weaknesses and set SMART goals , but how will you measure it all ? It’s important for your team to know just how they will be measured, goaled, and rewarded. Common key performance indicators (KPIs) for business development include:

• Company growth
• Lead conversion rate
• Leads generated per month
• Client satisfaction
• Pipeline value

6. Set a budget.

What will your budget be for achieving your goals? Review financial documents, historical budgets, and operational estimates to set a budget that’s realistic.

Once you have a “draft” budget, check it against other businesses in your industry and region to make sure you’re not overlooking or misjudging any numbers. Don’t forget to factor in payroll, facilities costs, insurance, and other operational line items that tend to add up.

7. Identify your target customer.

Who will your business development team pursue? Your target market is the group of customers your product/service was built for. For example, if you sell a suite of products for facilities teams at enterprise-level companies, your target market might be facilities or janitorial coordinators at companies with 1000+ employees. To identify your target market:

• Analyze your product or service
• Check out the competition
• Choose criteria to segment by
• Perform research

Your target customer is the person most likely to buy your product. Do your homework and make sure your business development plan addresses the right people. Only then will you be able to grow your business.

8. Choose an outreach strategy.

What tactics will you use to attract new business for your sales team to close? You might focus on a single tactic or a blend of a few. Once you know who your target market is and where they “hang out,” then you can choose an appropriate outreach strategy.

Will your business development plan rely heavily on thought leadership such as speaking at or attending conferences? Will you host a local meetup for others in your industry? Or will your reps network heavily on LinkedIn and social media?

If referrals will be pivotal to your business’ growth, consider at which stage of the buying process your BDRs will ask for referrals. Will you ask for a referral even if a prospect decides they like your product/service but aren’t a good fit? Or will you wait until a customer has been using your solution for a few months? Define these parameters in your strategy.

Upselling and Cross-Selling

Upselling and cross-selling are a cost-effective way of growing your business. But it’s important that this tactic is used with guardrails. Only upsell clients on features that will benefit them as well as your bottom line. Don’t bloat client accounts with features or services they really don’t need — that’s when turnover and churn start to happen.

Sponsorship and Advertising

Will your BDR work with or be on the marketing team to develop paid advertising campaigns? If so, how will your BDRs support these campaigns? And which channels will your strategy include? If you sell a product, you might want to feature heavily on Instagram or Facebook. If you’re selling a SaaS platform, LinkedIn or Twitter might be more appropriate.

What’s your outreach strategy? Will your BDRs be held to a quota to make 25 calls a week and send 15 emails? Will your outreach strategy be inbound , outbound , or a healthy combination of both? Identify the outreach guardrails that best match your company values for doing business.

Strategic Plan Example

Let’s put all of these moving parts in action with a strategic plan example featuring good ol’ Dunder Mifflin Paper Company.

Elevator Pitch Example for Strategic Plan

Dunder Mifflin is a local paper company dedicated to providing excellent customer support and the paper your business needs to excel today and grow tomorrow.

Here are some additional resources for inspiration:

• Elevator Pitch Examples to Inspire Your Own
• Components of an Elevator Pitch

Executive Summary Example for Strategic Plan

At Dunder Mifflin, our strengths are our customer service, speed of delivery, and our local appeal. Our weakness is that our sales cycle is too long.

To shorten the sales cycle 5% by the end of Q4, we need to ask for more referrals (which already enjoy a 15% faster sales cycle), sponsor local professional events, and outreach to big box store customers who suffer from poor customer support and are more likely to exit their contract. These tactics should allow us to meet our goal in the agreed-upon timeline.

• How to Write an Incredibly Well-Written Executive Summary [+ Example]
• Executive Summary Template

SMART Goals Example for Strategic Plan

Dunder Mifflin’s goal is to decrease our sales cycle 5% by the end of Q4. We will do this by more proactively scheduling follow-up meetings, sourcing more qualified, ready-to-buy leads, and asking for 25% more referrals (which have a 15% shorter sales cycle already). We will measure success by looking at the sales pipeline and calculating the average length of time it takes a prospect to become closed won or closed lost.

• 5 Dos and Don'ts When Making a SMART Goal [Examples]
• How to Write a SMART Goal
• SMART Marketing Goals Template

SWOT Analysis Example for Strategic Plan

Strengths: Our strengths are our reputation in the greater Scranton area, our customer service team (led by Kelly Kapoor), and our warehouse team, who ship same-day reams to our customers — something the big box stores cannot offer.

Weaknesses: Our greatest weakness is that our sales team has been unable to successfully counter prospects who choose big box stores for their paper supply. This results in a longer-than-average sales cycle, which costs money and time.

Opportunities: Our greatest business opportunity is to conduct better-targeted outreach to prospects who are ready to buy, ask for more referrals from existing customers, and follow up with closed lost business that’s likely coming up on the end of an annual contract with a big box store.

Threats: Our biggest threat is large box stores offering lower prices to our prospects and customers and a sales cycle that is too long, resulting in low revenue and slow growth.

• How to Conduct Competitive Analysis
• How to Run a SWOT Analysis for Your Business [+ Template]
• SWOT Analysis Template and Market Research Kit

Measurement of Success Example for Strategic Plan

We will measure success by looking at the sales pipeline and calculating the average length of time it takes a prospect to become closed won or closed lost.

Budget Example for Strategic Plan

You've laid out the SMART goals and the way you'll measure for success. The budget section's goal is to estimate how much investment it will take to achieve those goals. This will likely end up being a big-picture overview, broken down into a budget by a program or a summary of key investments. Consider laying it out in a table format like so:

• Budgeting Templates
• How to Write an Incredible Startup Marketing Budget

Target Customer Example for Strategic Plan

Our target customer is office managers at small- to medium-sized companies in the greater Scranton, PA area. They are buying paper for the entire office, primarily for use in office printers, custom letterhead, fax machines. They are busy managing the office and value good customer service and a fast solution for their paper needs.

• How to Create Detailed Buyer Personas for Your Business
• Make My Persona Tool

Outreach Strategy Example for Strategic Plan

Networking, sponsorships, and referrals will be our primary mode of outreach. We will focus on networking at regional paper conferences, HR conferences, and local office manager meetups. We will sponsor local professional events. And we will increase the volume of referrals we request from existing customers.

Create a Strategic Plan for Business Development

Without a strategic plan, you can invest resources, time, and funds into business development initiatives that won't grow your business. A strategic plan is crucial as it aligns your business development and sales teams. With a solid business development strategic plan, everyone will be working toward the greater good of your company.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in January 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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• Published: 08 May 2024

Facing the storm: Developing corporate adaptation and resilience action plans amid climate uncertainty

• Katharina Hennes   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0001-1779-4877 1 ,
• David Bendig 1 &
• Andreas Löschel   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3366-8053 2 , 3 , 4  

npj Climate Action volume  3 , Article number:  37 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Climate sciences

Climate hazards disrupt global value chains and business operations, leading to €52 billion in losses for the European Union in 2022 alone. In response to this escalating crisis, there is a need for corporate climate adaptation and resilience strategies (henceforth: CCAR) to effectively integrate climate risk challenges into strategic planning. Despite this urgency, there is a shortfall of research synthesising the drivers, strategies, and outcomes of corporate adaptation and resilience. Our study addresses this gap by conducting a systematic literature review to elucidate the academic status quo. From an initial dataset of over 3000 publications, we narrowed the sample to 66 papers, which specifically focus on these topics in the private sector. Grounded in this comprehensive review and regulatory observations, we delineate a CCAR typology to define the key elements required for a corporate approach to physical climate risks. This typology is translated into an actionable business adaptation framework, offering a clear path to begin the adaptation journey. Our in-depth content analysis contributes to the existing literature by identifying two main themes and several gaps: Current research covers the drivers, detailing why companies embark on such initiatives. Another stream focuses on how companies adapt, examining strategies to overcome these climate risks. However, work on the effectiveness and outcomes thereof is scarce. Consequently, our study delineates six trajectories for future research, the outcomes of which can serve as catalysts for advancing future CCAR efforts.

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Introduction.

The climate crisis and its physical risks have become a pressing issue for humanity—every tenth of a degree beyond the 1.5 °C target has the potential to dramatically alter the world as we know and understand it today through cascading physical climate risks 1 . Increasing in frequency and intensity 1 , these range from acute risks (e.g., floods, heat waves, wildfires) to chronic impacts (e.g., changing precipitation patterns, rising average temperatures) 2 . One of the very (financially) costly consequences is that human-made systems, such as global value chains, are substantially disrupted 3 . Beyond these physical impacts, the private sector faces liability 4 and transition risks 5 , 6 , for instance being sued for lack of climate initiatives or misleading reporting thereupon 4 , 7 . Thus, climate risks become relevant not only to the natural environment but also to our human systems, i.e., our economies, that are dependent on it 1 .

In today’s business reality, there are numerous examples of physical consequences building up to a systemic risk that threatens financial stability 6 , 8 , 9 . For instance, in 2021, Hurricane Ida caused losses of $65 billion in North America 10 . Only one year later, US companies were exposed to extreme droughts that built up to supply chain costs of $20 billion 11 —simultaneously, floods caused economic losses and reconstruction costs of over $31 billion to Pakistan’s economy 12 . These disruptions demonstrate the challenges that the private sector faces globally. Various weather extremes can strike in a relatively short timeframe, causing infrastructural damages, supply chain disconnections, wreaked production sites 3 , 13 , or surges in global raw material prices 14 —to name but a few. Following these incidents, it is common for businesses to shut down operations, at least temporarily, to accommodate repairs and rebuilds, if financially viable 15 , 16 .

Decarbonisation aims to tackle the root cause of climate change, but insufficient progress 17 leads to intensifying rather than declining feedback loops, requiring corporates to prepare for these challenges 18 . This is where corporate climate adaptation and resilience (henceforth: CCAR) comes in—it acknowledges the reality of a changing climate and focuses on adjusting to a world where some consequences are now inevitable and where requirements for corporate disclosure of physical risks are growing 4 . Despite this scientific clarity and emerging regulations, most corporates currently do not understand how to prepare for the acute extremes that we are already seeing today, nor how to adapt to the long-term chronic impacts 19 . This calls for a translation of scientific evidence and risk disclosure standards into the operationalisation of corporate adaptation 20 . To date, no such conversion has been conducted and there is limited research on the corporate level. This is noteworthy given the vital role businesses play in adaptive efforts 21 to maintain societal functioning amid surging climate crises. Consequently, it is crucial to identify what motivates globally operating businesses to engage in adaptation, how they do it, and the results of these efforts.

Although corporate climate adaptation and resilience have recently been addressed by some prominent publications 14 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 and regulations 26 , 27 , we still see three gaps. Firstly, even though existing research has broadly investigated overall climate risk impact, small businesses’ issues with infrastructure, agriculture, tourism, or the public sector’s role, a synthesis of CCAR knowledge that corporates can leverage has been largely overlooked. Secondly, the absence of a concise, universally applicable typology that defines the key elements of CCAR at the firm-level leaves too much room for interpretation or missteps and thus presents another gap. Lastly, from a practical lens, there is a lack of operationalisation of academic knowledge coupled with reporting insights into an actionable first-step adaptation guide. This could assist the private sector in informing its strategies, operations, and disclosure approaches. From a theoretical perspective, this would also serve as a basis for identifying areas requiring further research. In an effort to close these gaps and thereby answer manifold research calls 14 , 25 , we conduct a systematic literature review aiming to bring clarity to the following questions:

(i) What is and what is not known about CCAR from an academic perspective?

(ii) What defines CCAR for practice?

(iii) What adaptive steps can businesses take to enhance their climate resilience?

As our study’s foundation, the systematic literature review presents the latest adaptation and resilience insights, specifically focused on the private sector (i). Thoroughly evaluating existing academic knowledge at the firm-level, we contribute to the current literature by identifying what is known about corporate adaptation drivers, strategies, and outcomes. By incorporating observations on recent regulatory developments in climate risk disclosure, we enrich these academic findings and establish the foundation for our subsequent analyses to answer research questions (ii) and (iii). This synthesis enables us to delineate a CCAR typology at the firm-level, which defines the key elements required for a corporate approach to physical climate risk challenges. To the best of our knowledge, we are among the first to turn these theoretical contributions into practical firm-level guidance. More specifically, we translate the CCAR elements of the typology into an actionable business adaptation framework, thereby offering corporates a clear path to begin their adaptation journey. This is designed to bridge the gap between the current state of business and the identification, adaptation and eventual disclosure of climate risks. Lastly, we highlight central research blindspots. Going forward, topics like the measurement of CCAR outcomes or conducive regulatory incentives warrant further investigation (Box 1 elaborates on research pathways).

Building an academic foundation for CCAR

To compile the dataset of relevant articles, we followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) procedure 28 and began by (1) searching four central databases at the hand of 12 keywords (please refer to Fig. 1 or the Supplementary Methods 1 for further information on the selection of keywords.): EBSCO, Web of Science, Scopus, Science Direct. Between 2010 and 2022, a total of 3030 papers were published. As a second step, we (2) filtered via exclusion criteria (English language, peer-reviewed, Scimago Top 2000 rank), which left us with 983 articles. Lower-ranked journals were included to account for the fact that CCAR is a new topic of academic interest. Subsequently, we (3) systematically analysed all 983 articles’ abstracts to distill those that do indeed address sustainability in the private sector. Due to a multitude of unsuitable works (e.g., unrelated, small business, public sector or CSR focused, sustainability only as a side topic), we eliminated 860 papers.

The flow diagram, generated according to PRISMA, describes the process of the systematic literature review, including all steps from the identification of the initial sample to the analysis of the final sample. Each step details the number of articles that were included or excluded and the reasons for their inclusion or exclusion. The abbreviations have the following meaning: corp. corporate; bus. business.

This narrowed the dataset down to 123 articles for a detailed review of corporate adaptation. Lastly (4), we dropped 83 further papers that did not focus on firm-level analyses. This distilled a sample of 40 papers, which are all corporate-focused and specifically encompass adaptation drivers, levers, and outcomes. In light of recent regulatory changes regarding climate risks, we conducted a further search for important accounting and regulatory research articles that were not identified in our initial search. Specifically, we focused on articles relevant to the period between 01/2023 and 01/2024 using forward snowballing and cross-referencing techniques to review the dataset. Once we added these articles, our final sample increased to 66 papers (please refer to Supplementary Table 1 , which contains the full list). An in-depth analysis of all articles was performed by applying a review framework we developed to cover the breadth of potential CCAR topics (please refer to Supplementary Discussion 1 for limitations and Supplementary Methods 2 and 3 for details on the review framework). The review framework’s functionality was also tested with other business sustainability academics. Systematically extracting data from the final sample, we found manifold insights.

Research foci

For instance, the sample demonstrates geographical and topical patterns. As such, the CCAR literature originates from the Global North, offering a perspective mainly from the private sectors of highly developed nations. This trend is no surprise, considering that these regions wield sizeable global corporate influence and resources to devote to adaptation and resilience research 29 , 30 . This raises questions about the equitability of these efforts. It prompts consideration of the disparity between corporations with the financial means to pre-emptively adapt and well-functioning institutions surrounding them that provide regulatory support or guidance, versus those in developing countries that already face some of the most acute climate risks 1 . This also suggests that a key adaptation aspect of corporates’ global operations might be ignored, i.e., their suppliers and manufacturers at the start of the value chain.

Beyond geographical implications, our analysis displays a limited sectoral focus, as only half (45%) of the articles are industry-specific (percentages represent the relative emphasis of an adaptation aspect). Among these, over three quarters (36% overall) originate from two broader sectoral spectrums: (1) manufacturing and producing industries (18%), (2) management and finance (18%). All others contribute about two to three percent each. This is substantiated when examining business functions, as roughly a fourth of the papers display a concentration on organisations’ accounting & finance (27%). It is mirrored by production/operations (21%) and followed by other streams dedicated to management, administration, marketing and sales (15%) and sustainability (6%). Notably, about a third of the papers do not entail information regarding business functions (30%). Given these foci, we delineate a research tendency towards manufacturing, resource-intensive businesses and the management thereof, which points to the need for strategic planning in response to the high operational impact of these physical risks.

Review insights

Investigating adaptation to physical climate risks in the selected papers, two clear streams were detected: (1) Current CCAR literature provides considerable knowledge on antecedents, with the majority of the papers analysing the driving forces that lead corporates to engage in adaptation. (2) Another substantial body of work examines adaptation strategies, meaning what levers do corporates employ to overcome physical climate risks.

(1) A key conclusion from our analysis is that particularly a company’s value chain positioning, as well as its resulting climate risk exposure and managerial awareness thereof, are key predictors of its engagement in adaptation. Specifically, over two-thirds (71%) of the underlying literature elaborates on adaptation-inducing factors. As a corporate’s exposure to climate risks 31 , 32 has a measurable negative impact on revenue potential or performance indicators like sales 33 , 34 , 35 or stock market performance 36 , 37 , 38 , it plays a critical role in whether and how businesses adapt. The papers emphasise that action upon these risks can only be taken if there is managerial awareness thereof. Thus, internalities like key personnel’s (climate) risk perception 22 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 and general integration of risk management into corporate processes 24 , 31 , 44 are adaptation facilitators. Beyond these firm-internal factors, externalities are also acknowledged as crucial determinants, such as institutional pressures 45 , 46 , 47 like specific climate regulation 48 , 49 , disclosure requirements 50 , 51 or a company’s embeddedness and interdependencies within its business network 52 , 53 .

(2) In response to these drivers, corporates implement specific strategic or operational adaptation and resilience levers. Approximately half of the underlying papers (53%) showcase strategic initiatives like climate risk measurement and monitoring 24 , 31 , 44 , 54 , 55 , 56 or building cross-company adaptation networks 52 , 57 , 58 . They also highlight strategic compensation for business interruption or cash flow shortfalls due to physical hazards. Examples thereof are financial mechanisms such as weather 34 , 53 , 59 , 60 or climate change news 61 hedging. Adjusted leverage structures 62 , 63 , 64 , cash holdings 65 or loss provisions 66 also aim to mitigate these physical impacts. From a decision-making perspective, statistical approaches to incorporate adaptation considerations into pricing 67 , 68 and investment 69 are on the rise. Further operational dimensions (35%) can be adjustments to supply chains or production processes 57 , 70 in terms of, e.g., flexibilisation of inputs or logistics chains 15 , 71 , 72 , fortification of infrastructure 14 or even relocation thereof 59 , 73 . All of the above changes for long-term adaptation should, in theory, be mirrored by resilience levers that corporates employ to address sudden climate events. However, our analysis reveals that only a minor proportion of the literature (11%) touches upon acute disaster recovery measures like emergency response and disaster relief plans 16 , 24 , 48 . This limited acute resilience focus raises concerns, particularly given the ongoing occurrence of extreme weather events 1 . Failing to develop effective countermeasures exposes corporates to multiple risks like disrupted input logistics, damaged production sites and consequently financial losses 14 , 59 , 73 . Ultimately leading to bigger systemic impacts, this threatens the financial stability across a variety of sectors and economies 51 .

Regulatory and reporting influences

In recognition of these emerging global risks, regulators and standard-setters are increasingly demanding transparency in how companies assess and respond to them 74 . A variety of reporting standards have now emerged to facilitate this: voluntary ones companies choose to implement such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) or the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP); nationally adapted ones as in the state of California 75 based on, e.g., the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) or the Standards 1 and 2 of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) 76 ; or legally mandated cross-country ones such as the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) 1 and 2. Amidst the need for comparability between various disclosures and expanding regulatory demands 77 , climate risk reporting standards are beginning to converge, as evidenced by the recent shift of TCFD monitoring responsibilities to the ISSB 78 . In this evolving regulatory landscape, disclosure is becoming increasingly pertinent to corporates. More specifically, various states have already initiated legislative processes (e.g., California 75 , EU 27 , New Zealand 79 , UK 26 ), or have announced to do so recently (e.g., US SEC 80 , 81 ). As these come into force, companies will be legally obliged to focus on the impact of physical risks on their financials or beyond, depending on, e.g., size or operational boundaries. In this respect, the EU’s ESRS, starting in 2024, stands out as one of the most advanced 76 in terms of an internationally agreed, legally binding reporting standard that investigates not only financial but also the impact materiality of physical climate risks 82 .

Creating transparency on the concept of climate adaptation for private sector organisations

Blending the systematic literature review with the regulatory insights presented above, we understand that distinct factors drive corporate adaptation, and, in response, organisations employ specific measures. Despite rising academic attention to CCAR due to noticeable climate extremes and increased concern from countries and regulators, there remains confusion in the public discourse about the nature of adaptation and resilience for businesses. This is not surprising, as, to date, the reporting suggestions can be imprecise 83 and there is no succinct definition of CCAR on the firm-level 14 , leaving considerable ambiguity. Consequently, we usually do not see corporates with a clearly defined action plan for both acute (short-term) and chronic (long-term) climate impacts yet 84 —generally speaking, there is limited clarity on where the private sector stands 85 . This uncertainty calls into question its comprehension of climate risk disclosure standards like TCFD or ESRS and the sincerity of its ambition and ability to tackle these impacts today and in the future 50 . Acknowledging the complexity of the adaptation action and regulation landscape underscores the need for a common CCAR understanding to accelerate its momentum.

To build this foundational understanding, it is essential to define a universally applicable typology as a frame of reference that outlines the fundamental elements of firms’ adaptation and resilience efforts. It is critical that these are clarified so that they are comprehensible to every firm before they begin to engage in or report on CCAR. Derived from our review and the key notions of climate risk regulation, we conceptualise a triad of overarching elements (Fig. 2 ). Convinced that these are integral to a comprehensive CCAR strategy, we propose the following: (1) Well-researched scientific knowledge and risk assessments present the basis of any climate-related strategy, i.e., ‘ Climate proficiency’ is key. On this base, (2) acute, short-term climate impacts must be urgently confronted, i.e., ‘Resilience to acute risks’ , while (3) chronic, long-term changes need to be prepared for, i.e., ‘ Adaptation to chronic risks’ . This triad stems from seeing a focus on time- and physical-risk-oriented movements in our systematic literature review—one toward short-term natural disasters and the other toward long-term adaptation planning.

Figure 2 outlines the three key elements that need to be incorporated into a strategy to address physical climate risks. For clarity in the following business adaptation framework (see Fig. 3 ), each component is distinctly colour-coded. In this context, the adjectives ‘short-term’ and ‘acute’ are used interchangeably. The same applies to ‘long-term’ and ‘chronic’.

Climate proficiency

‘ Climate proficiency’ presents the initial element of this holistic CCAR typology. It is grounded in our learning that managerial perception of climate change and a company’s exposure to its risks are significant determinants of adaptation 22 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 . Given the clear importance of awareness as a base, companies need to enable and upskill their staff 50 . Thus, this first element encompasses integrating climate science as key knowledge for a firm to be able to conduct thorough climate risk assessments. As such, scientific (climate) literacy implies an up-to-date understanding of current climate and regulatory developments. Spreading these insights develops managerial awareness and perception of this cause’s urgency. Any company aiming for high literacy should thus regularly monitor the latest science 50 , e.g., provided by the IPCC, to update its risk exposures according to changes in predictions 13 , 86 , 87 . Ultimately, this supports the process of identifying and quantifying acute and chronic impacts on a company’s operations along its value chain 3 , 31 , 56 , 88 .

Resilience to acute risks

Engaging in fast risk management today is especially relevant for short-term, unpredictable events like sudden hurricanes or wildfires 1 , 89 . Consequently, the second element of the CCAR typology is ’ Resilience to acute risks’ . It draws on the literature highlighting how climate risks affect business operations 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , and how embeddedness in networks and value chains 52 , 53 can assist in responding to these immediate shocks. As such, this second element encapsulates both the operational and value chain strength required to deal with sudden physical impacts. Operational resilience refers to the imperative to have a ready-to-implement plan to assure production continuity and maintain essential functions in the face of all types of extreme weather events 15 , 24 , 90 . As an enabler thereof, simultaneous value chain resilience is of the essence. This is equally critical, as reflected in the literature discussing modifications of the supply chain 15 , 71 , 72 . It suggests resilience measures such as supplier choice or transportation flexibility to withstand or recover from such short-term disruptions 52 .

Adaptation to chronic risks

Simultaneously, responses to chronic risks like rising temperatures or changes in precipitation need to be developed 1 . Thus, underpinned by the CCAR literature’s focus on long-term strategic 59 , 73 , financial 34 , 53 , 59 , 60 or company-internal adjustments 56 , 58 , 70 , 91 , 92 , 93 , 94 , the last element of this holistic CCAR typology is ‘ Adaptation to chronic risks’ . Based on identified future vulnerabilities, strategically adaptive measures can be delineated and planned accordingly. In line with the foreseeability of such chronic impacts, this element also links to the anticipated regulatory landscape for climate risks 95 . Currently under development and already mandatory in some countries, companies will soon be required to acknowledge the potential (non-)financial impacts on their business and disclose their corresponding risk mitigation strategies 74 . They therefore need to adjust internal reporting mechanisms 95 to take account of these new measurements 55 and to disclose them externally 47 .

Operationalising a practical business adaptation and resilience framework

Following this definition of the CCAR typology, we now turn to the question: How does a company operationalise these elements to navigate toward a climate-adapted and -resilient way of doing business? Grounded in our analyses, we answer this question by delineating a practical business adaptation framework. As such, it aims to bridge the gap between the private sector’s current and aspirational, climate-adapted state, which should be disclosed to regulatory bodies (Fig. 3 ). It is a practical tool that firms can leverage to get an overview on which first steps to take toward a thorough CCAR strategy. As a step-by-step process, the business adaptation framework operates through a question series and starts by building a baseline to review the status quo. Key actions for adaptation and resilience are identified. Ultimately, these form part of a publicly disclosed CCAR strategy that is integrated into a firm’s business strategy.

This figure presents a practical application of the CCAR typology elements (see Fig. 2 ), transforming them into actionable steps within the business adaptation framework. On the left side, pivotal questions corresponding to the three typology elements prompt strategic considerations for each operational step of the framework, which is illustrated on the right. The colour-coding establishes a visual link between each step of the framework and its respective element within the CCAR typology.

Step 1: Setting a CCAR foundation by identifying climate risks and their impact

Initially, the business adaptation framework directly links to the CCAR typology’s first element—‘ Climate proficiency’ . Its subdimensions ( scientific literacy and risk assessment ) present the starting point for identifying and categorising climate risks. These can be either physical (acute and chronic) or liability and transition-related consequences of physical risks 24 , 94 . Depending on the jurisdiction in which a company operates, it could use the global TCFD guidelines as a working basis for this first step—many countries and regional governments also provide useful local climate risk assessments. Having assessed which climate risks the business is exposed to along the value chain from procurement to sales 31 , 56 , 88 , these should be further analysed to rank them according to their likelihood of occurrence under different global warming scenarios. For instance, the Network for Greening the Financial System’s ‘Scenarios Portal’ could be leveraged for a global overview 96 . This prioritisation exercise should be carried out for varying timeframes 56 —i.e., what are the key climate risks today, in 10, 15 and 20 years’ time? Communicating these evaluations internally enables corporates to build the foundational knowledge, i.e., the scientific literacy and risk assessment , necessary to fully operationalise element 1.

Step 2: Building acute climate resilience operationally and along the supply chain

Having identified the base (where, how, and when climate risks are likely to occur), the business adaptation framework’s next step draws the connection to the second element ‘ Resilience to acute risks’ . Corporates increasingly realise that not all climate risks can be foreseen and mitigated pre-emptively, as some impacts happen suddenly and without warning. Referring to both subdimensions of element 2, companies must develop short-term resilience levers to have the capability to react immediately upon acute physical impact 15 , 97 . These levers aim at both their own operations as well as aspects up and down their supply chain. For instance, rapid response mechanisms could include establishing a climate disaster task force, implementing emergency operations plans, or even storing slack inventory 15 , 16 , 97 . Beyond that, companies could also investigate parametric vs. indemnity arrangements with their insurers to cover potential losses due to acute impacts 98 .

Step 3: Developing strategic adaptation initiatives for chronic impacts

As climate science clearly shows that long-term chronic impacts are coming, there is immense value for companies to be proactive in addressing these. While element 2 is about creating reactive, short-term measures to face acute risks, element 3 dives into proactive, long-term levers to address chronic impacts. Thus, the business adaptation framework’s third step focuses on developing adaptation actions that enable businesses to mitigate these. Firms need to think strategically and initiate such adaptation 14 , 40 early to implement countermeasures for foreseeable climate change impacts 91 . Operational tactics may include modified production processes, locations or fortification of infrastructure. From a more strategic perspective, corporates could explore new markets and products, or financially hedge chronic risks such as changed precipitation or temperature patterns with, e.g., weather derivatives 34 , 53 .

Step 4: Integrating CCAR with business strategy and disclosure requirements

The final step operationalises the last part of the CCAR typology’s third element by preparing the adaptation and resilience efforts for integration into the business strategy and disclosure to external stakeholders. In this step, corporates first translate the CCAR strategy into concrete initiatives and targets, covering both long-term adaptations and short-term reactivity. To implement these in the business strategy 92 , 99 , 100 , companies could set up cross-functional teams that hold responsibility for aligning stakeholders in the implementation of these levers and ensuring that they are considered in budgeting decisions. They also need to introduce climate risk assessments into routine business operations, aligning CCAR goals with business objectives. Ultimately, to evaluate the levers’ success, established evaluation processes should track both initiative progress and effectiveness using pre-defined key performance indicators. Leveraging the latter, companies can complement their existing disclosures by reporting on material climate risks and their plans to address them.

While this paper develops a CCAR typology and an operationalisation thereof as a practical business adaptation framework, our work also uncovers a noticeable shortfall of research probing the outcomes and performance of these initiatives, i.e., measuring CCAR success in terms of financial, market or societal benefits. Just a tenth of the reviewed literature delves into financial outcomes of adaptive actions (11%) 31 , 59 , 60 , 99 —even fewer studies investigate consequences such as keeping up the status quo (6%) 59 , 101 , reputation or even innovation opportunities (5% each) 88 , 102 , 103 , 104 . This limited outcome-oriented exploration underlines the scarcity of attention paid to actual CCAR measurement. Without robust measurement of a lever’s success, its long-term viability and efficacy remain unproven. Hence, it is unclear whether the strategic or operational levers hold when faced with increasing climate risks. As the stakes of maladapting are high, these knowledge gaps constitute essential areas for future investigation.

Intriguingly, the emphasis of CCAR research seems to be solely on nature-based risks, as a significant proportion of the papers analysed (79%) concentrate on physical impacts. In contrast, only a minority also dive into regulatory and liability (29%) or financial and transition risks (33%). Academics’ high focus on physical aspects is interesting considering that some businesses may perceive regulatory ones as the most critical 92 , 100 . It showcases a discrepancy between researchers and the private sector’s perception of the risks posed by the climate crisis. This misalignment could also be due to the so-called ‘tragedy of the horizon’, as companies and managers may have a shorter-term focus on what is most relevant 5 than academics. In line with their focus on physical risks, a number of tools have been developed to assess companies’ exposure to physical impacts 105 . Given the wide variation in the results of the assessments 105 , it is crucial to point out that the transition towards adaptation and resilience is a continuously evolving process for both academics and practitioners 14 , 106 —it is by no means static or a one-time event. As a testament to the topic’s dynamic nature 52 , 56 , evolving CCAR research could balance its focus with the private sector’s practical concerns. For example, to better understand CCAR and its effectiveness, future work could develop standardised measures of industry risk exposure and examine the outcomes of efforts to adapt to these risks. The exploration of regulatory incentives as a complement to existing disclosure standards may also prove conducive to this transition. We elaborate on these pathways in Box 1 to encourage future scholarly inquiries.

Box 1 Crucial research pathways for CCAR academics

1. Improve measurement of climate risk exposure across industries

Based on our review, we conclude that if existing research sets a focus, it is on manufacturing sectors 49 , 88 , 93 , 102 rather than physical climate risks. The extent of these risks’ impacts varies strongly depending on the assessment tool in question 105 . This is why their key takeaways should be taken cautiously when generalising to differing industries or when comparing one score 105 or rating 8 to another, as they use varying methodologies, input data and climate scenarios 74 . Thus, a globally agreed-upon and consistent methodology to measure these physical risks is needed. If this is not developed, policymakers and industry bodies may establish CCAR incentives of which the effectiveness would be limited or potentially even detrimental due to misleading industry- or risk-specific insights.

2. Build theorising on outcomes of CCAR initiatives

Currently, we do not know much about or measure whether corporates’ pilot adaptation and resilience levers prove to be successful when climate risks strike 13 , 86 . Only very few papers theorise and investigate how, e.g., financial hedging may lead to more stable financial outcomes for corporates 34 , 53 , 59 , 60 . However, this financial perspective is only one of many outcomes of adaptation and resilience initiatives. Others could be, e.g., potential for technological innovation 14 , cross-company partnerships 71 or cooperations with the public sector 14 . To assess these opportunities, theory is needed that dives into levers and their potential outcomes. Only then can we test this ‘black box’ and assess whether current assumptions about the effectiveness of initiatives are correct or need improvement.

3. Develop quantitative measurements to assess corporates’ extent of CCAR engagement

Building on the above, approaches to measuring CCAR implementation are currently limited with only a few approximations 87 , 107 , 108 . Ultimately, this makes it difficult to assess the progress and outcomes of firms’ adaptation. The definition of standardised performance indicators to capture the extent of corporate CCAR engagement is therefore crucial. Only when a measurement base is established will it be possible to highlight best practices and inform policymakers. Such a standardised perspective could be put forward by a consortium of regulatory bodies, overlooking a variety of climate risk disclosure approaches. This would also be useful for comparing future disclosures by firms which, given the current state of regulation, do not seem to have a clear method for doing so 84 . In light of these considerations, the role of company-internal accounting and reporting departments will become increasingly important in developing and/or reporting these standardised CCAR indicators 55 .

4. Assess opportunities of public-private partnerships

As the private sector faces complex changes, it might seek external support to tackle these. Cooperations like public-private partnerships have the potential to advance topics that surpass the capacity of any single actor 109 , 110 . As one of these topics, CCAR promises to be an interesting partnership area. Combining the strengths of public and private actors could create a robust platform for innovation and solutions, as exemplified by the Green Climate Fund 111 . An in-depth examination could look at how resources should be pooled to drive adaptation and what public incentives could kickstart CCAR initiatives. Diving into this will yield crucial insights for both policy and practice.

5. Encompass the Global South to develop a CCAR understanding across diverging regions

Predominantly stemming from the Global North, CCAR research does not provide a global picture. It is widely known that climate change disproportionally affects the Global South 1 ; their private sectors face different challenges than peers in the Global North. Among such hurdles, limited institutional or regulatory support can hinder this transition 112 , 113 . Current CCAR work in economics and management neglects to address these regions, limiting the development of geography-specific adaptation pathways. Cross-regional studies could solve this and provide an inclusive overview.

6. Expand the knowledge of climate risks’ true cost

An initial understanding of the overall economic costs of climate-related events has been developed 114 , 115 . Still, it is limited by a lack of precision on the sectoral level. Overlooking the specific cost and benefit implications for particular industries is dangerous, as the true cost of non-adaptation cannot be established 13 , 14 . Only this knowledge can adequately inform strategic decisions and help prioritise investments—both from a public and private sector lens. Addressing this, interdisciplinary research should involve economics and management, environmental, and risk science. Pilot case studies could explore these costs in-depth, ultimately enabling the development of effective CCAR strategies across sectors.

Our review of the most prominent business adaptation papers enabled us to develop a thorough understanding of the existing body of knowledge on corporate climate adaptation and resilience. We complemented this synthesis of the academic status quo with valuable regulatory insights to propose CCAR tools for corporates. Specifically, we contribute a firm-level typology of private sector adaptation and resilience to the academic discourse. It defines the crucial elements necessary for a corporate approach to physical climate risks. Exemplifying the urgency of addressing acute threats, planning for long-term chronic impacts, and the need for disclosure and integration across the organisation, this is particularly relevant for businesses looking to begin their adaptation journey. For a practical perspective, we operationalised this typology into concrete steps by introducing the business adaptation framework. As a demonstration of the CCAR typology, it is designed as a globally applicable, step-by-step process to kickstart companies seeking to improve their climate resilience or that will soon be subject to disclosure requirements. Complementing regulatory standards, our framework helps businesses take the first steps to systematically assess risks and strategise countermeasures; thereby aiming to set a precedent for climate-adapted businesses.

Integrating theoretical knowledge and practical CCAR implications, we facilitate a nuanced understanding of what state of climate adaptation and resilience corporates should strive for. To develop this further, the systematic literature review allowed us to identify blindspots where future academic work is required. Highlighting these gaps, we aim to direct research towards areas that will best support private sector adaptation endeavours. As the climate crisis accelerates, the ability of corporates to adapt will be critical. This research should serve as a stepping stone, equipping businesses with a better understanding of how to navigate the complexities that lie ahead.

Reporting summary

Further information on research design is available in the Nature Research Reporting Summary linked to this article.

Data availability

All articles included in this systematic literature review are available in the Supplementary Information. Further data that support the findings of this study will be made available upon reasonable request by the Corresponding Author.

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K.H. conducted the analyses, developed the concepts and wrote the manuscript. D.B. and A.L. contributed with project administration, supervision and conceptual support. All authors approved the final version and assumed responsibility for the paper.

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Correspondence to Katharina Hennes , David Bendig or Andreas Löschel .

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Elgin Courier-News | Elgin council signs off on expansion to sports…

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Elgin Courier-News

Elgin courier-news | elgin council signs off on expansion to sports complex with an eye toward fall construction.

The $17.5 million project calls for two new synthetic sports fields, a 1,991-square-foot concession building with public restrooms, a new maintenance building and a 1,920-square-foot open-air pavilion. A total of 271 parking spaces will be added along with a central plaza for events and a walking trail around the new fields.

A new entrance to the complex off Route 31 is part of the plan.

Construction bids are being solicited and need to be submitted by May 16, Parks and Recreation Director Maria Cumpata said. Recommendations for contracts will be presented to the council at its June 12 meeting, she said.

“The preliminary work phases needed to obtain permitting for the various facets of the site improvements continue,” Cumpata said. “Unforeseen site conditions have necessitated additional work that is lengthening the time before shovels hit the ground, but work is currently on track to begin this fall.”

The new amenities will be going in on the 87 acres of land purchased from the state of Illinois in 2013. The property is adjacent to the already existing 410-acre regional park.

Planning and Zoning Commission members voted to recommend the council approve the plan, with only resident Darlene Castelvecchi voicing her concerns at that meeting about the potential for increased noise, air pollution and traffic in the area and the wildlife that will be displaced by the development.

“I know there’s a lot of excitement,” said Castelvecchi, who also spoke about her objections at Wednesday’s council meeting. “It’s going to bring a lot of wonderful recreation (opportunities). It’s going to bring revenue in. But you’ve got to look past that.

“As we go forward, I’m going to ask for due diligence as a city and proceed with caution,” she said. “I’m reaching out to you as a council. Please think before you do.”

The council approved the plan, with Councilman Anthony Ortiz asking whether the sports complex construction would overlap with the road work being done on Route 31. The two-year project involves replacing a bridge over Route 20.

Cumpata acknowledged the two projects will be going on simultaneously.

“Everybody will have to play nice,” she said.

Gloria Casas is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.

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Generative AI has taken the business world by storm with its potential to wildly transform various industry sectors. Enterprises are exploring areas of opportunity to apply GenAI to be more efficient and productive, encourage creativity among functions, and deliver superior customer and employee experiences, to name a few. 

AI is exciting, but its success rate needs improvement

But the journey from aspirations of an AI-driven operation to the successful implementation of AI tools can be a tough one. So tough that a significant number of AI projects — estimated at roughly 80% in recent years — never make it to launch. There are a host of reasons why this happens, ranging from internal misalignment to an unclear governance strategy to a lack of specific technological expertise.

Intertwined with each of these challenges is the need for integrated data, not only to inform business strategy, but to train AI and GenAI models to perform their magic. 

Is your integration infrastructure ready for GenAI? Learn how enterprises are modernizing from legacy integration tools to a scalable, AI-ready iPaaS to stay competitive .

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Modern organizations are managing mountains of data from a variety of disparate applications (CRM, ERP, etc.) and data sources (web servers, databases, APIs etc.). Centralizing this information is critical to controlling how it flows, how it’s transformed, and how to keep it secure.

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What does flexibility mean in this context? Flexible data architecture allows you to seamlessly connect data and systems that don’t easily connect, (e.g., on-premises and cloud deployments). This is critical — not only for adding new AI tools to your tech stack — but also for giving your organization the ability to access and combine data from your diverse range of inputs, and leverage it for applying advanced technologies. 

This coordination can significantly lower the total cost of ownership of AI tools, and speed up the development process, to not only succeed but to scale. 

Develop a coordinated plan of action for AI

GenAI is still in a developmental stage with expansive possibilities yet to be explored. Getting it right is possible, with a defined process for integrating generative AI technologies into a business, from ideation to launch and beyond.

Start by building out a list of potential processes or workflows that could benefit from generative AI. Think creatively about use cases and goals, such as automating tedious tasks, enhancing creative processes, or improving customer and employee experiences. 

Rank your Gen AI use cases in priority order. Consider factors such as potential ROI, feasibility, and alignment with overall business goals. Prioritizing initiatives effectively ensures optimal resource allocation and creates a roadmap for GenAI integration.

Get the guide ↘ Generative AI in Action: Adoption Trends, Emerging Use Cases, and Tips for IT Leaders

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California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said he and his staff have been reviewing former President Trump’s second-term agenda in detail to prepare a potential onslaught of environmental, immigration and civil rights lawsuits in the event Trump defeats President Biden.

“We can’t be caught flat-footed,” Bonta said in in interview Thursday in Washington. “Fortunately and unfortunately, we have four years of Trump 1.0. We know some of the moves and priorities; we expect them to be different.”

Bonta, a Democrat who is mulling a run for governor, said he has been reviewing the work of his predecessor, Xavier Becerra, who filed more than 100 suits against Trump policies before leaving the office to become Biden’s secretary of Health and Human Services. Bonta and his deputies are also looking closely at a document drafted by the Heritage Foundation, a Trump-aligned think tank, known as “Project 2025,” that offers a blueprint for Trump’s second-term policy goals.

California’s slate of Democratic politicians have long seen themselves as a bulwark against conservative policies, never more so than during Trump’s presidency, when the state became the de facto headquarters of the so-called resistance. The challenges to Trump, while popular with many supporters, at times put Democrats in the awkward position of asserting states’ rights after long advocating for standards that would apply across the country. Critics said the constant lawsuits were politically motivated and distracted from the attorney general’s other duties, including protecting consumers.

The challenges also helped Trump politically at times, as it allowed him to use the state as a foil when he failed to carry out some of his agenda.

The divided states of America: Florida, California and the future of political polarization

Divided government in Washington will push even more of the nation’s fiercest political fights to the states.

Nov. 17, 2022

With states growing increasingly polarized, attorneys general from both red and blue states now play high-profile roles in feuding with the federal government when it’s run by the opposite political party. The Obama administration was sued 58 times by Republican attorneys general, according to a tally maintained by Paul Nolette, a political science professor at Marquette University. Since Biden has been in office, GOP attorneys general have filed 55 lawsuits against his administration’s policies.

The figures represent a substantial increase from prior administrations. And the lawyers have generally won. Republican attorneys general beat Obama in court 64% of the time, and they are defeating Biden at a 76% rate, according to Nolette. Democratic attorneys general, who sued Trump 155 times, won 83% of the time.

Bonta singled out several efforts to thwart Trump, including former Gov. Jerry Brown’s decision to sign the Paris climate accord after Trump dropped out “to maintain that leadership role in the world that we’re gonna continue with climate action.”

Becerra challenged Trump’s power on a number of fronts, including climate, healthcare, immigration, gun control and civil rights. He won many of those battles, including Trump’s plan to repeal an Obama administration order to protect so-called Dreamers from deportation. Trump abandoned plans to add a citizenship question to the census after a multistate lawsuit that included California.

A second Trump term would likely also invite new challenges on abortion laws, LGBTQ+ rights and the rights of parents and children to seek transgender treatment, Bonta said.

“So there’s a whole lot of contingencies and then, you know, looking at the different constitutional clauses and component parts of the Constitution that would be the groundwork and the basis for our potential challenges,” he said.

California vs. Trump hits the 100-lawsuit mark with new challenge to environmental rules

California reached a milestone Friday in its ongoing legal feud with President Trump when Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra announced he had filed his 100th lawsuit against the administration, this time challenging changes in environmental rules.

Aug. 28, 2020

There are limits to the legal strategy that even Bonta acknowledged. The federal government has control over immigration enforcement, Trump’s top priority. While states can decline some assistance to the federal government, they cannot protect immigrants who are in the country illegally from deportation.

“If it’s the federal government’s job, they can do it,” he said.

The state can provide legal assistance and ensure that people get due process, but “immigration has long been an area of federal law.”

Asked for comment on Bonta’s plans, Anna Kelly, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, said, “California liberals will try anything to spread their failed, fringe-left agenda far and wide, but they won’t stop President Trump from making America great again.”

Bonta was in Washington for an event with Vice President Kamala Harris, another one of his predecessors, to celebrate Asian & Pacific American Heritage Month. He acknowledged that he is considering a run for governor in 2026 and said he would decide after the November election. He could also run for another term as attorney general.

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Apple Will Revamp Siri to Catch Up to Its Chatbot Competitors

Apple plans to announce that it will bring generative A.I. to iPhones after the company’s most significant reorganization in a decade.

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By Tripp Mickle ,  Brian X. Chen and Cade Metz

Tripp Mickle, Brian X. Chen and Cade Metz have been reporting on Apple’s plans for generative A.I. for this article since the fall of 2023.

Apple’s top software executives decided early last year that Siri, the company’s virtual assistant, needed a brain transplant.

The decision came after the executives Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea spent weeks testing OpenAI’s new chatbot, ChatGPT . The product’s use of generative artificial intelligence , which can write poetry, create computer code and answer complex questions, made Siri look antiquated, said two people familiar with the company’s work, who didn’t have permission to speak publicly.

Introduced in 2011 as the original virtual assistant in every iPhone, Siri had been limited for years to individual requests and had never been able to follow a conversation. It often misunderstood questions. ChatGPT, on the other hand, knew that if someone asked for the weather in San Francisco and then said, “What about New York?” that user wanted another forecast.

The realization that new technology had leapfrogged Siri set in motion the tech giant’s most significant reorganization in more than a decade. Determined to catch up in the tech industry’s A.I. race, Apple has made generative A.I. a tent pole project — the company’s special, internal label that it uses to organize employees around once-in-a-decade initiatives.

Apple is expected to show off its A.I. work at its annual developers conference on June 10 when it releases an improved Siri that is more conversational and versatile, according to three people familiar with the company’s work, who didn’t have permission to speak publicly. Siri’s underlying technology will include a new generative A.I. system that will allow it to chat rather than respond to questions one at a time.

The update to Siri is at the forefront of a broader effort to embrace generative A.I. across Apple’s business. The company is also increasing the memory in this year’s iPhones to support its new Siri capabilities. And it has discussed licensing complementary A.I. models that power chatbots from several companies, including Google, Cohere and OpenAI.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

Apple executives worry that new A.I. technology threatens the company’s dominance of the global smartphone market because it has the potential to become the primary operating system, displacing the iPhone’s iOS software, said two people familiar with the thinking of Apple’s leadership, who didn’t have permission to speak publicly. This new technology could also create an ecosystem of A.I. apps, known as agents, that can order Ubers or make calendar appointments, undermining Apple’s App Store, which generates about $24 billion in annual sales.

Apple also fears that if it fails to develop its own A.I. system, the iPhone could become a “dumb brick” compared with other technology. While it is unclear how many people regularly use Siri, the iPhone currently takes 85 percent of global smartphone profits and generates more than $200 billion in sales.

That sense of urgency contributed to Apple’s decision to cancel its other big bet — a $10 billion project to develop a self-driving car — and reassign hundreds of engineers to work on A.I.

Apple has also explored creating servers that are powered by its iPhone and Mac processors, two of these people said. Doing so could help Apple save money and create consistency between the tools used for processes in the cloud and on its devices.

Rather than compete directly with ChatGPT by releasing a chatbot that does things like write poetry, the three people familiar with its work said, Apple has focused on making Siri better at handling tasks that it already does, including setting timers, creating calendar appointments and adding items to a grocery list. It also would be able to summarize text messages.

Apple plans to bill the improved Siri as more private than rival A.I. services because it will process requests on iPhones rather than remotely in data centers. The strategy will also save money. OpenAI spends about 12 cents for about 1,000 words that ChatGPT generates because of cloud computing costs.

(The New York Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, in December for copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems.)

But Apple faces risks by relying on a smaller A.I. system housed on iPhones rather than a larger one stored in a data center. Research has found that smaller A.I. systems could be more likely to make errors, known as hallucinations, than larger ones.

“It’s always been the Siri vision to have a conversational interface that understands language and context, but it’s a hard problem,” said Tom Gruber, a co-founder of Siri who worked at Apple until 2018. “Now that the technology has changed, it should be possible to do a much better job of that. So long as it’s not a one-size-fits-all effort to answer anything, then they should be able to avoid trouble.”

Apple has several advantages in the A.I. race, including more than two billion devices in use around the world where it can distribute A.I. products. It also has a leading semiconductor team that has been making sophisticated chips capable of powering A.I. tasks like facial recognition.

But for the past decade, Apple has struggled to develop a comprehensive A.I. strategy, and Siri has not had major improvements since its introduction. The assistant’s struggles blunted the appeal of the company’s HomePod smart speaker because it couldn’t consistently perform simple tasks like fulfilling a song request.

The Siri team has failed to get the kind of attention and resources that went to other groups inside Apple, said John Burkey, who worked on Siri for two years before founding a generative A.I. platform, Brighten.ai. The company’s divisions, such as software and hardware, operate independently of one another and share limited information. But A.I. needs to be threaded through products to succeed.

“It’s not in Apple’s DNA,” Mr. Burkey said. “It’s a blind spot.”

Apple has also struggled to recruit and retain leading A.I. researchers. Over the years, it has acquired A.I. companies led by leaders in the field, but they all left after a few years.

The reasons for their departures vary, but one factor is Apple’s secrecy. The company publishes fewer papers on its A.I. work than Google, Meta and Microsoft, and it doesn’t participate in conferences in the same way that its rivals do.

“Research scientists say: ‘What are my other options? Can I go back into academia? Can I go to a research institute, some place where I can work a bit more in the open?’” said Ruslan Salakhutdinov, a leading A.I. researcher, who left Apple in 2020 to return to Carnegie Mellon University.

In recent months, Apple has increased the number of A.I. papers it has published. But prominent A.I. researchers have questioned the value of the papers, saying they are more about creating the impression of meaningful work than providing examples of what Apple may bring to market.

Tsu-Jui Fu, an Apple intern and A.I. doctoral student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, wrote one of Apple’s recent A.I. papers . He spent last summer developing a system for editing photos with written commands rather than Photoshop tools. He said that Apple supported the project by providing him with the necessary G.P.U.s to train the system, but that he had no interaction with the A.I. team working on Apple products.

Though he said he had interviewed for full-time jobs at Adobe and Nvidia, he plans to return to Apple after he graduates because he thinks he can make a bigger difference there.

“A.I. product and research is emerging in Apple, but most companies are very mature,” Mr. Fu said in an interview with The Times. “At Apple, I can have more room to lead a project instead of just being a member of a team doing something.”

Tell us how your law firm is using A.I.

We’d like to hear from lawyers working with generative A.I., including contract lawyers who have been brought on for assignments related to A.I. We won’t publish your name or any part of your submission without contacting you first.

Tripp Mickle reports on Apple and Silicon Valley for The Times and is based in San Francisco. His focus on Apple includes product launches, manufacturing issues and political challenges. He also writes about trends across the tech industry, including layoffs, generative A.I. and robot taxis. More about Tripp Mickle

Brian X. Chen is the lead consumer technology writer for The Times. He reviews products and writes Tech Fix , a column about the social implications of the tech we use. More about Brian X. Chen

Cade Metz writes about artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging areas of technology. More about Cade Metz

Explore Our Coverage of Artificial Intelligence

News  and Analysis

As experts warn that A.I.-generated images, audio and video could influence the 2024 elections, OpenAI is releasing a tool designed to detect content created by DALL-E , its popular image generator.

American and Chinese diplomats plan to meet in Geneva to begin what amounts to the first, tentative arms control talks  over the use of A.I.

Wayve, a London maker of A.I. systems for autonomous vehicles, said that it had raised $1 billion , an illustration of investor optimism about A.I.’s ability to reshape industries.

The Age of A.I.

A new category of apps promises to relieve parents of drudgery, with an assist from A.I.  But a family’s grunt work is more human, and valuable, than it seems.

Despite Mark Zuckerberg’s hope for Meta’s A.I. assistant to be the smartest , it struggles with facts, numbers and web search.

Much as ChatGPT generates poetry, a new A.I. system devises blueprints for microscopic mechanisms  that can edit your DNA.

Which A.I. system writes the best computer code or generates the most realistic image? Right now, there’s no easy way to answer those questions, our technology columnist writes .

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