Bill Canady walks through step four of a 100-day business plan: building an action plan that actually moves. He warns against teams wasting time perfecting forms instead of committing to goals, sharing a story about a three-day off-site that failed because people focused on documentation rather than decisions.
Today we're going to talk about step 4 of the 100-day plan to take command of your business. We're going to turn it to action plans. In the first 100 days, the 4th and final step is drafting and implementing an action plan. Step 4 aims for progress and not perfection. This step is critically important. Ownership is what makes the difference between success and failure. When I look back over my career, I'm reminded of a time when we got to this point, took everyone offsite to go and create the action plan. It was a 3-day event at a local community college and took hundreds of people's worth of their time. It was a complete failure. We were focused on the wrong things. We were focused on filling out the forms perfectly. The color just had to be absolute perfect of the Excel charts, and all the actions were hyperlinked to the Bola chart. It was truly a work of art, except no one actually believed in the goals. They just wanted to get the job at hand completed and moved on. They could get back to their day job. You must avoid this at all costs. You're the leader. Your job is to set that goal, define the mission. You don't do this alone, but you do make the final decision whether you realize it or not.
