How to Apply Sustained Action When Running a Project or a Business

by Doug's Unlimited | Aug 28, 2018

When you run a project or a business, you need to take a lot of different actions in order to achieve your desired goals and objectives. There are a lot of factors that you need to consider in order to reach the success you want and need and you have plenty of daily tasks on your plate, one of which is effectively managing your project or business team.

But, how can you apply sustained action that will help you take every project to the finish line and make sure that your methods and strategies always lead to positive results? Keep scrolling to explore the most essential steps for achieving that.

Efficient action plans

Failing to plan is planning to fail, so never start a project or a business before developing an efficient action plan that will serve as a guide for executing and completing your daily tasks. Your action plan should address how you will operate and manage everything, including all the back-office activities that will keep your project or business running smoothly.

When creating an action plan, divide it into three main plans: operational plan, management plan, and contingency plan. Your operational plan needs to include all actions for supporting your strategic objectives and its primary purpose is to provide you and your team with a clear insight into all tasks and responsibilities.

The management plan should explain all the goals and objectives, together with the necessary activities for achieving them. It should also include steps for managing your employees and all the admin activities. The contingency plan should devise a course of action for properly responding to potential future events that may cause business disruption.

Focus on highest-impact issues

You should always focus on tasks that will have the biggest impact on your project or business because those tasks will help you build sustainable growth. Low-impact issues are also important, but you shouldn’t focus too much on them and leave yourself without enough time or resources to finish what’s really important. Focus on your core competencies and you’ll be on the right path to success.

Clear and agreed upon responsibilities

If you don’t make sure that everyone in your team clearly understands their responsibilities, they will have a hard time meeting their performance goals. They won’t know what is actually expected of them, so you will have trouble streamlining your daily operations and completing the necessary tasks for reaching your project or business goals.

Therefore, make sure that everyone’s responsibilities are crystal clear. When they’re clearly defined, everyone will respect and value the contributions of all team members, understanding that project success greatly depends on their unity and shared responsibility.

Regular execution of assigned duties

You need to ensure that every team member regularly carries out all their assigned duties so that you can effectively streamline all your operations and lead your projects to their successful completion. As the leader of a project, you are responsible for the execution phase and delivering the project’s expected results, that is, all deliverables and other direct outputs.

If the assigned duties are not executed regularly, you’ll face a lot of obstacles along the way and even miss important deadlines. Therefore, you need to regularly coordinate people and resources to properly integrate and perform your project’s activities in accordance with your action plans.

Avoid “flavor of the month” organization experiments

If you constantly implement “flavor of the month” experiments, you’ll eventually create chaos where no one works effectively. If you see every new idea as the best thing that will take your business to the next level and don’t really stick with it to ensure that it actually realizes your vision, not only will you not get the desired results, but your team will also become demotivated.

Instead of constantly starting new initiatives, focus on your existing ones and engage your entire organization in finding the best solutions for realizing your vision. Avoid “flavor of the month” syndrome and fully engage your entire team in every change initiative, boosting their morale with certainty and consistency.

Progress measurement to ensure accountability

You need to regularly monitor and measure the progress of a particular project so that you can have a clear insight into your team’s performance. Accountability is one of the most important factors for project success and measuring the progress will help you peek into every team member’s accountability.

It will also help you identify potential areas that may need adjustment, as well as all the strengths and weaknesses of the stakeholders so that you can implement proper actions for improvement. You’ll see why some tasks are not getting done – maybe no time was allocated to complete them, maybe they were too ambitious, or maybe something came up unexpectedly and disrupted the schedule.

In a nutshell, measuring a project’s progress will help you see where you stand on your path to achieving your goals and who is responsible for potential drawbacks so that you can take proper actions for making sure everyone’s work is perfectly aligned with the goals.

Compare metrics to projections

To make sure you’re on the right track to every project’s success, you need to regularly compare your projections to your actual results. If you don’t look at your metrics until your projects are actually completed, how will you know whether or not you’re doing everything right?

It goes without saying that you need to set measurable goals during the planning stage of a project or a business so that you can actually measure your success. But, failing to measure everything along the way and compare the metrics to your projections will probably lead to failure, so never underestimate the importance of numbers and all the necessary reports and analytics.

Applying sustained action when running a project or a business may seem challenging, but you can be sure that taking all these steps will always turn all your projects into successful ventures.