For businesses and corporations worldwide, it is very important to layout a comprehensive plan for every project, venture, or any other task for everybody else to follow. It helps with keeping them on track for everything else, planning out the necessary steps ahead of time to prevent wasting time and resources on going in blind. A good and comprehensive plan just brings the idea together really well and helps turn the vision into reality. These plans are more commonly known as action plans, as they essentially dictate what action to take to ensure that the end goal is reached. A really good action plan goes a long way for the fulfillment of whatever you, an individual, or a company might be doing. And it doesn’t even have to be exclusively used by multi-million dollar corporations, even individuals who wish to work on a project, or have a personal goal, can develop an action plan as well.
Planning ahead of time helps you prepare for whatever obstacles you might come across during development and also keep you on track of your overall progress. Monthly action plans do this really well, planning as far as a month ahead makes sure that everybody working on the project has enough time for preparations. Writing an action plan seems fairly easy on paper, but there are a lot of factors to be considered and you have to make sure that the plan is feasible enough to be accomplished. To learn more about monthly action plans, check out these samples listed below that could help you get acquainted with the document.
5+ Monthly Action Plan Samples
1. Monthly Action Plan Sample
2. Individual Monthly Action Plan
3. Standard Monthly Action Plan
4. Printable Monthly Action Plan
5. Formal Monthly Action Plan
6. Monthly Action Plan Tracker
What Is a Monthly Action Plan?
Action plans are documents that contain detailed, strategic, and specified outline for project planning and implementation. Action plans can be used for the fulfillment of projects of any scale, shapes, and sizes. It doesn’t matter overall, if you want your project to be a success, then writing an action plan is the best step to take. Essentially, it’s sort of like a checklist for the tasks that need to be done in order to reach your goals.
Hence action plan. This document is usually comprised of more than a couple pages, depending on the length of the project or the timeframe set in the plan. For monthly action plans, it spans an entire month and could cover a lot of tasks for just a segment of the entire project. The contents such as the steps and tasks have to be detailed enough for the team members to immediately know what they have to do. Vagueness really doesn’t help and more often than not, could just lead to confusion instead of clarity.
This document doesn’t have to be flashy or colorful, but adding some well placed visuals could alleviate the crudeness of your document and bring some much needed life into it. This document might not be much, for some, it might only be a plan, but you’d be right not to underestimate an action plan. There’s so much power in having your entire team know where you’re going and how you intend to get there. So be sure to write your action plan in the best way possible.
How to Write a Monthly Action Plan
From the looks of it, writing an action plan might be relatively easy, but don’t let yourself be fooled as there is significant challenge in knowing what you want to do and explaining it concisely and effectively for everybody to understand. There are several important steps you have to follow in writing an action plan to get the best out of it. Making sure that the information within isn’t convoluted at all and that the steps are doable and the goals are achievable. These key steps will be discussed in detail right below.
- Define your goal
Make sure you have a proper idea of what you are aiming for. Going in blindly without a clear scope of what you want to do and achieve is only setting yourself up for failure. Analyze the situation and explore solutions before even considering them. Applying the SMART criteria should ensure that your goal is properly screened and that it is actually attainable and feasible. - List down the steps
Write a checklist of the things that you will be taking and doing in order to fulfill your goals. Give enough parameters and details to ensure that the task is done exactly as how it should be, and that no steps are skipped during development. - Prioritize tasks and deadlines
After figuring out your tasks, reorganize the list by prioritizing the most labor intensive tasks and the ones that require a much more significant amount of resources. Some steps might require other steps to be done beforehand, and other action plans might have to be developed to acquire the resources that you need. - Set milestones
It’s always nice to celebrate the small victories. These small achievements add up to eventually become larger milestones and achievements. Adding milestones along the way help keep the team motivated by having something to look forward to even if the deadline is still quite a ways away. - Identify the resources needed
It is best to have everything you need for the project and more. Making sure you are well equipped just saves you a lot of time by setting your focus fully on developing the project rather than having to gather resources mid-development. Don’t be too complacent in resource gathering either, having more than what you need is better than having a shortage of resources. - Visualize your plan
Make sure that the plan clearly communicates the elements that you have identified, the risks along the way, the tasks, the chain of command for the tasks, assignments, deadlines, and a full inventory of the resources. Visualizing the plan should help you gauge whether it really is achievable or not. - Monitor, Evaluate, Update
The writing process just doesn’t end after putting the plan to paper. These are live documents, meaning they are susceptible to change over time. It’s best to keep track of both the plan and the team’s progress, and evaluate if everything is working as you have imagined it, and update whenever need be.
FAQs
What makes a good action plan?
A well written action plan outlines all the necessary steps needed to achieve the goals set by establishing a timeframe in which every step can be fulfilled.
What are action steps?
An action step refers to specific efforts that are made to reach the goals that you have set. Action steps are most commonly the exact details pf your action plan.
What is the importance of an action plan?
An action plan can enable you to map out your strategies and steps you will be taking towards achieving your goal. It can help work these goals out and how and when you want to achieve them.
A well written action plan ensures that whatever vision or goals you might have, it will be achieved. It helps with keeping everyone on your team on the right track, to avoid problems and delays during development of your project. Think of it as a road, or a path, a well-made path can easily guide you through the whole area to get to your destination without much of a problem.
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