The ‘Plan of results’
We are all familiar with the phrase ‘a plan of action’ — usually in the context when there is a desire to get something done.
A ‘Plan of action’, particularly if it remains flexible to realize the benefits of planning without the downside of rigidity, can help set expectations, improve coordination, and other benefits in the context of execution. Action planning has been the dominant form of planning for more than a century and it's very possible it has been since the beginning of human collaborative work. I’ve speculated previously in this publication as to why actions dominate planning — the summation is that action plans have a concreteness and absence of uncertainty that appeals to our human nature. In this post, and building on ideas I have shared in ‘Important ingredients for better planning and execution’, I put forward the case that in many scenarios, whilst action planning is the dominant paradigm, it is not the most effective way to plan.
Action planning has been the dominant form of planning for more than a century
Competitive, fast-moving environments require approaches to planning which are more dynamic and adaptable. The advantages of a ‘Plan of action’ are constrained as typically they are limited because when starting with the actions and working out from there, the context i.e. the purpose of the work and the problem are often conceptually “bolted on” or adjacent to the work. The primary form of success becomes the completion of work and assessment of the impact of the work is often after the fact or even is not considered at all. At its worst “benefits realization” (how popular project management approaches refer to understanding impact) becomes a sub-element of managing a project instead of being the main concern to be continuously optimised for.
The primary theme of this publication is that we are witnessing a shift or reorientation of how work is approached which puts action planning in service of results planning. Put simply, that thinking about work begins with WHAT rather than HOW. It is true that there have been approaches to working this way going a long way back but in no period of history could we say this has been the dominant paradigm.
I suggest an alternative approach may take its rightful place as the primary form of planning. At its heart, it is about starting with the end in mind at the centre of planning, understanding why it will have the desired impact and defining what will be the evidence of impact to be used to understand progress. That is what we call for the purpose of this post, a ‘Plan of results’, a plan which establishes the current understanding of the results to be achieved (objectives/outcomes, the WHAT), how each result relates to each other (the logic or WHY behind the WHAT; more on this idea later), and how these relate to measures or evidence of progress and the steps or actions to be taken (the HOW; if we must — in my experience these details could be left out from the plan when the clarity of the plan is such that it empowers people to address these details successfully without that noise in the plan itself). I will use this rather generic phrase because in practice there are lots of approaches for defining planning this way and the practices in this area are actively evolving. Examples include approaches such as Result Maps, Outcome Roadmaps, Bet boards, Opportunity Solution Trees and ideas dating back to Theory of Constraints and before. It's too early to tell which practices may emerge as the preferred approaches and this is why I find it such an interesting space to explore and study.
In my experience, I have found that using the practices which are more of a ‘plan of results’ rather than a ‘plan of action’ can do away with much of the effort in what would otherwise be involved in action planning or at very least exist together. A plan of results and the actions that contribute to that plan are by definition are dynamic and adaptive and not as rigid as traditional action plans may have been. This is possible because the effort is exerted into understanding and evolving the context within which you are working. This effort can be far more impactful than effort exerted into context-free or context-light coordination. The agile and lean movements demonstrated some of the potential improving the context teams have that can improve the efficiency of delivery. This is because they can use their evolving understanding of what is working as a way to optimise the work not done — i.e. knowing what tasks and actions will not contribute to the impact being sought.
A plan of results may involve differently named artefacts (result maps, opportunity trees, bet boards etc.) depending on which framework or approach you may be using to achieve this — as a developing area there is a diverse range of approaches available — I will write in more detail on the many options available and how they can be applied in future posts. If you are experimenting with these practices and approaches let me know what you are doing and what your experience has been in the comments.
