We at Ivy Sea, Inc. have cultivated the following tips to help you take your plan into action, make your goal reality and stay more energized while you're at it. For more information about each tip, visit the Ivy Sea Planning Tips Series (you'll find the link at the end of the tips).

(1) Set the goal that'll turn your plans into action

You know the saying, "If you don't know where you're going, it doesn't matter which road you take." Well, the road in question is also less likely to take you somewhere you want to be, via a journey you'll enjoy taking, if you don't have a destination in mind.

Action: Individually or with your group, articulate at least one goal you want to accomplish. The goal can be large or small, simple or complex. It can be a "one-stepper" or a whole program. As you develop your goal, answer the following questions:

• Vision — What does the ideal outcome look, sound and feel like?
• Reasoning — Why do you want to achieve this goal?
• Measurements — How will you know you reached your goal? (Include both qualitative and quantitative measures)
• Potential barriers — What’s hindered you (or could) from reaching this goal?
• Potential work-arounds — What strategies can help you jump the hurdles you've outlined in answer to the above question?

(2) Develop collaborative support for high performance on the goals

By engaging others in your plan for achieving your goal, you have the opportunity to build support and receive valuable input and ideas that strengthen your odds of accomplishing the goal at its highest potential.

Action: Initiate a dialogue or brainstorm discussion to discuss the goal, ways to achieve it and how each person present can participate in making the goal a reality. At the end of this meeting, get agreement on and schedule follow-up check-ins to gauge progress (you might put it as a recurring agenda item at the regular staff meetings, for example).

(3) Identify milestones and check-points to stay on track

Check points and check-ins, like the one you agreed upon and scheduled in Action Item #2, are crucial for sticking with and making regular progress towards goals that aren't immediately attainable. Breaking the larger goal down into smaller chunks helps make it more specific, and therefore easier to incorporate into your daily and weekly to-do list.

Action: After you've articulated your goal and brainstormed it with your group (or selected participants, if it's a personal goal), make sure you've identified milestones between the beginning and end of the path you will journey from speaking about your goal to having brought it about. You might even put "Establish Milestones" on your list of topics for Action Item #2 (above) or a subsequent check-in session.

(4) Identify and celebrate accomplishments

The path to the completion of some goals can seem long, and sometimes rocky and full of unexpected turns. Revisiting the original goal and its vision, and making an effort to identify and celebrate "mini-accomplishments" along the way, is a healthy, well-deserved ritual for enhancing your journey all the more. In addition, it will help make sure you're looking for and recognizing the many small accomplishments that lead to the Big Goal (and keep motivation and morale up along the way!).

Action: (a) Identify where you are today as compared to where you were on the path to your goal when you first started working toward it; (b) Create a celebration that breaks your normal patterns (it can be as big as a special luncheon or dinner, or as small as a mid-morning break for a cup of your favorite hot chocolate); (c) Make the mini-accomplishments public (by putting out a "kudos" email, or inviting your colleagues or "goal buddies" to lunch, for example); (d) Review your goal again to ensure that the tactics that have allowed for progress so far are incorporated throughout the rest of your goal-journey; (e) Chart the next mini-milestones that you'll be achieving on your path toward the goal and brainstorm fun ways to celebrate their accomplishment.

(5) Make mid-course adjustments

Just as you wouldn't lock your steering wheel in place at the beginning of a trip, you wouldn't continue "on plan" even when new information and experience suggested a better or more refined course. Taking into account your experience so far, including any new information or input that you've unearthed, your original map for achieving your goal may require updating.

Action: Make a date to reflect on and discuss progress thus far, and identify learnings that can be incorporated as a way of updating your goal-map. Don't forget to revisit your original vision, including what motivated you to set the goal in the first place. Update your plan, approach, tactics and celebration milestones accordingly.

(6) Incorporate a mid-plan B-12 energy booster

If you were following these tips on a linear calendar, this would be your mid-point. You would be half-way to achieving your goal. Regardless of how you're scheduling these tips into your goal-path, there comes a time when motivation and energy wanes. If not countered — the equivalent of refueling your car — you'll run out of energy before accomplishing your goal.

Action: Schedule in periodic or mid-point energy boosters. The best way to rejuvenate is to revisit and recharge your original vision, goals and action plan. Discuss the reasons for setting the goal, how it benefits everyone involved, how you'll feel when you've accomplished it, how others might benefit, etc. Then review the next two milestones on your goal-path and confirm when your next "mini-accomplishment" celebration will occur.

(7) Take an ethics pulsecheck: Who does your plan affect, and how?

Every action has an effect of some sort, and much of what you do affects others in some way. To feel good about your march toward your goals, and to stay energized as you journey toward their accomplishment, it's good to know that you're not adversely affecting someone else. Better yet, it's great to know that both your journey and your accomplishing of your goal will benefit both you and others in tangible and intangible ways.

Action: Metaphorically speaking, suspend all of your masks, filters and social norms (the Ego and Super Ego, if you will), and review your goals, action plan and approach thus far "in the raw" — just you and your conscience. Ask yourself (or yourselves, if working in a group): Who is affected by your activities? Who will be affected as you work toward and when you achieve your goal? Are the effects positive or negative? If negative, how might you adjust your approach or goal to turn the effect on others to a positive one? What positive consequences of your plan make you most proud, excited or energized? Is there a way to apply learnings from these areas to the other areas or your action plan that don't seem as energizing or positive?

(8) Bridge the spirit of your plan with your actions

Have you ever worked toward or even accomplished an objective, but somehow didn't feel connected to it or energized by it? Or, despite completing action items in your plan, don't feel as motivated to continue working toward the goals or action items remaining in your plan? If so, chances are good that you're not carrying out your goals in a manner consistent with the original intent — or spirit — that you defined at the start. Or (shame, shame), perhaps you didn't reflect on what your originating spirit, vision or intent was when you jumped right in and started the "doing" part of your plan.

Action: Infuse your action plan with a little authentic spirit and vision by doing the following: (a) Take a look at your master plan (or goal) and reflect for a moment on why you developed it and what you hope to create or have result from it. If you're having trouble coming up with something, start fresh by asking yourself how you and others can benefit from getting the plan accomplished (and/or accomplished in a specific manner); (b) Pretend for a moment that you are in your customer's shoes (or the shoes of whomever else is affected by or whose efforts are needed to fulfill your plan). Looking from that person's perspective, what reference or feedback would you like to be able to give as a result of your plan being accomplished at the highest standards? (c) Finally, check back in with your master plan and identify how you can continue with the various action steps to ensure the best possible chance at earning your ideal results and feedback.

(9) Integrate past, present and future

Many people work the days, weeks and months away task by task, checking off items on their to-do list as if those "to-do's" weren't connected to anything larger. And we wonder why we get bored, distracted or off-track! Accomplishing tasks on a daily basis is crucial to making headway toward our goals and vision, but allowing the tasks to become disconnected from the larger purpose is a sure recipe for diffusing the energy, purpose and potential positive impact of your activities.

Action: At pre-scheduled check-in points or milestone reviews, always endeavor to make a bridge between the past, present and future. With this bridge in place, you don't have to worry quite as much about careening off a cliff or turning onto a dead-end road instead of journeying on toward the completion of your plan. To create a bridge: (a) Select two "to-do" or action items that you or your group have already accomplished, and take a general look behind you at how your plan is going so far. Take a few minutes to focus on these mini-goals and how you achieved them. What did you learn? How can you integrate those learnings in future activity, starting immediately? What would you have changed? How can you incorporate those learnings? (b) Now identify two action items or goals that remain to be completed in your plan. Consider how your efforts and learnings thus far can be used to refine and complete those goals at your ideal standards. (c) Update your remaining action plan to incorporate these reflections, refinements and learnings, and share the insights and updates with the other people who are affected by or involved in your plan.

(10) Align your expectations with reality

When you created your plan, did you consider the implications of how the plan would play in the real-world of your group, organization or situation? When you reviewed and updated your plan, were there areas where the ideal actions collided with reality, and were therefore not realistic in practice? Too often, groups take this reality-check as a sign of failure, when in actuality, any plan will have to be fine-tuned as the plan becomes practice. Your original plan is an ideal, a roadmap that guides you. Your actions in reality sometimes require adjustment in the face of unexpected resistance or road blocks.

Action: Assess the reality of your organizational culture (or other real-world circumstances), and compare your assessment with the "reality" assumed by the action items and objectives in your plan. For example, have you slated a task that requires fast turnaround input and approval from the executive team, when in reality this group routinely takes a long time for the review process? Or have you scheduled a one-month timeframe to change the way your group or business operates, when in reality such a change requires more time? Adjust your timeline, delivery approach or action item as needed to maintain forward-momentum toward your goal.

(11) Assess accountability and consequences

You've set expectations for your group based on your plan, and had group meetings to ensure that everyone was committed to achieving the goal. Now that the plan is in action, though, you see that certain group members or other stakeholders are neither meeting expectations nor acting accountably. What are you prepared to do to make sure participants have bought in and are following through on their responsibilities for the plan?

Action: Know what your "line in the sand" is with regard to your own and others' participation in bringing the plan to fruition. Plot out the worst-case performance scenarios that could crop up during the plan timeline, and identify limits and consequences that you'll act on should the worst-case scenario occur. For example, if you decide that you will remove a team member from the project team if he doesn't reliably follow through on his commitments to the plan, you must make sure you're ready and willing to take such action should that scenario occur. Clearly communicate expectations and consequences, and follow up with action that demonstrates the importance of the goal and participants' follow-through. It's also very helpful at this juncture to revisit and emphasize how the group and each participant or stakeholder benefits from the completion of (and good work toward) the ultimate goal.

(12) Identify learnings for future use

One of the greatest benefits as you move toward completion of a plan or goal is that your experience to-date offers rich learnings to refine your skills, mindset and performance relative to future goals. Adopting a mindset and process that allow you to recognize, record, learn from and appreciate learnings taps into the very core of how human beings learn and stay motivated.

Action: Take the time to record and learn from your experience as you near completion of (or re-routing of) a plan or goal. And there are benefits in addition to identifying and recording key issues, insights, events and learnings for application to your next project or plan. Most plans require significant effort, patience, endurance and a good bit of hope and energy, which is why it's very important to make time throughout the journey to identify and celebrate "little wins" and have some ritual for closure as you wrap up activity on one plan and head into a new one. Before heading on to new efforts, reflect and debrief on what went well, what you accomplished, what you learned and how the experience benefitted partipants and affected constituents. Make it a celebration.

(13) Apply your learnings to next year's plan

By incorporating more dynamic planning and plan-into-action processes, you've boosted confidenced, clarified thinking, raised productivity, aligned intentions with actions, sustained motivation and morale, and learned a tremendous amount. Congratulations! Now, how can you make sure all that new skill and momentum doesn't just sputter along or disappear altogether just because one project has wrapped?

Action: In your closure debriefing and celebration, include an agenda item for discussing how to carry new skills and learnings into other upcoming activities. Agree on a follow-up communication that will help reinforce your ideas for incorporating the riches gained from your recent accomplishments into subsequent work. For example, if most team members use time-management planners, the "Ideas for Incorporating Skills and Learnings from Project X" could be reproduced on a page that could be inserted into the planning-binder and referenced when participants needed a motivating reminder of recent successes. Or, you could add the ideas to an inhouse "Learnings and Successes" list that you keep on the intranet.

(14) Don't forget your "A&O" summary

So many projects and plans burn brightly for a period of time, then, for whatever reason, flicker out. Some are completed, others derailed or rerouted, and others just fall flat because of poor project-planning or failure to clarify an originating vision and sustain the connection in the day-to-day.

Action: Regardless of the status of your project, plan or journey toward your goal, when it comes time to wrap it up and move on, make sure you've noted your accomplishments and the opportunities unearthed by your efforts. Call this your "Accomplishments and Opportunity Summary," and, at the very least, make this part of your project-closure activities. Your A&O summaries also make terrific communications to other key people in your organization or group. For your next plan, schedule in periodic "A&O" summaries, so that the group can gauge all along the "small wins" and the opportunities for upcoming phases of the journey.

Remember, this information is food-for-thought, not customized counsel. The most effective interpersonal and organizational communication program is one that's been tailored to meet the unique needs of your group. If you have questions, connect with a communication advisor or e-mail us for suggestions.