Step 1: Write a Planning Statement

Now that we have decided on a plan of action, we are ready to write a planning statement in objective form. A planning statement is simply a description of exactly what we want to accomplish. Such a statement should have the following three characteristics:

Quantifiable

For example, the statement, “To have productive cross-functional team meetings”, does not communicate enough information. What does the word “productive” mean? How will I know when my team members are “productive”? Since my planning statement doesn’t give enough specific information about my goal, it will be hard to know when we are successful. To make the statement more quantifiable, I can specify behaviours or what the team members will do when they are productive. I could, for example, observe that:

• They will use the problem-solving process that we were taught.
• Team members will come to the meetings.

Result

A planning statement that only identifies behaviours is still not an effective way of specifying our future direction. We can also include end results. For example, I could expand my initial planning statement as follows:

• The team will use written problem-solving processes in 4 of the next weekly meetings.
• My team members will have a meeting absenteeism rate not more than 5%.

Completion Date

Finally, my planning statement should specify a date by which the plan will be accomplished. The planning statement would now look something like this:

Create a productive team by January the 5th by using problem-solving process in 4 of the next 6 weekly meetings and reducing absenteeism to not more than 5%.

There is nothing remarkable about step 1. It’s a regular goal or objective – a planning statement that includes measurability, a result and a completion date.