When you are developing your Operation Plan, you become much like a skilled reporter or author who asks the “who, what, when, where, and how” questions. You may start with a general statement of your objective, and then drill down into the specifics of how to reach your objective. It becomes an implementation tool for an individual, a group, or an organization.
The Operation Plan Questions
Let’s take a closer look at the questions behind the key elements of your operation plan. They are the salient points and should be identified at the start of building your plan:
• What – identifies the tasks and strategies that must be accomplished
• Who – the people who are/will be responsible for each of the tasks
• When – the timeline for completion of tasks
• How (much) – the financial resources to be applied to each task
• Where – where are the resources, raw materials, buyers, etc.
Unlike a strategic plan that is an overview and general guide for an objective, the operation plan breaks the elements down to specific and detailed activities and events necessary to the implementation of your strategies and objective. It gives you (and any other team member, department, or other stakeholder) a clear picture of what is to be accomplished, when, and by whom.
One additional element essential to the key questions is not, in itself, a question but it must be included in the operation plan – performance indicators. These may be milestone dates, benchmarks or other specific criteria for measuring success.
Operation Plan in the Round
Your operation plan could be developed in a linear report format. OR it can be developed and published “in the round.” plandisc.com offers cloud-based software tools for developing your operation plan. Their templates-in-the-round offer you a different way of assembling and presenting the elements of your plan.
Each template is a multi-ringed, multi-celled round into which data is entered. Each cell and ring of the template can be customized to accommodate your specific needs and to emphasize the elements to remind stakeholders of important dates and objectives. Each template can be used in a straight calendar form or can be modified to the timeframe needed.
Elements of Your Operational Plan
Once you have identified the who-what-where-when-how elements of your operation plan, it’s time to start entering specific activities into your template. Use your template to calendar critical events and their due dates. Some of those activities and events may include:
• Departmental budget preparation
• Delivery of prototype
• Presentation – preliminary marketing strategies for prototype
• Quarterly progress meeting
Use your template at the individual or departmental level to identify the people and resources that will be essential to accomplishing an objective. Incorporate key elements of the various templates into the overall (or “master”) operation plan template.
Seeing Your Operation Plan in the Round
The benefit of a circular operation plan is that you can see the steps of the entire plan at a glance. The target dates and the elements related to them are contained the cells of the template, day by week by month. See your starting and finishing points side by side, not screens or pages away from one another.
Publish your operation-plan-in-the-round in print, via Intranet, or your home page. Attach other documents to it (like Excel, PowerPoint, and Word), or attach it to any of those documents. Modify and update it at any time so that it keeps working for you, keeping you on track.