Translating wishes into plans

Wishes are commonplace, translating them into working plans is a challenge for academic clinician/leaders. This methodology can help.

One of the biggest challenges for a busy academic clinician/leader is to ‘get things done’. Although project management is a routine part of training for our administrative colleagues, academic clinician/leaders rarely spend time studying the topic. In fact, we commonly ‘get things done’ by leveraging our strength-of-will and we pack this activity in the nooks and crannies around our clinical duties. Nevertheless, we must manage our resources, mobilize our teams, and implement action plans - our success as academic clinician/leaders depends upon this proficiency.

The following is a brief description of a methodology to ensure that all elements of a plan are carefully thought out and ready for execution. You can think of this approach as a mental shorthand to focus your thoughts, think through the entire initiative, and drive subsequent action. I am not sure of exactly where it came from, but it has served me well over the years.

Without this methodology, I found that I commonly came up with great ideas, but had trouble communicating the fullness of the concept with others – and commonly failed to follow through. Too many plans simply faded away in my dustbin of unhatched ideas. The exercise required to develop a plan using the following method is not easy but rest assured that the mental energy required will pay off in terms of productivity – just try it once and you will see…

A personal anecdote as an example - I used this technique successfully when I was interviewed for the role of Surgeon-In-Chief at the Hospital for Sick Children. I had a vision for where the role could go and the vision was made up of several initiatives. I used the methodology described below to make a one-page plan for each major envisioned initiative - and (KEY POINT) I distributed the group of Plans to the Search Committee several days before meeting with them. Having all the details concisely worked out in advance allowed me to convey my entire vision for the role of Surgeon-in-Chief to the Search Committee in advance of our meeting. At the search committee meeting, the discussion was able to flow at a very high level and, I am sure, made a clear impression that I was very well prepared to hit the ground running.

IMPORTANT: A fully developed plan should not occupy more than a single page! If you need more words, you haven’t sufficiently clarified your thoughts!

A brief description of each of the Elements of a Plan is listed below. As you read, keep in mind that the hardest part of this methodology is to concisely summarize the Objective, Rationale, and Strategy. If you don’t get these right, your plan will fail. If you invest the time to gain clarity on these nebulous concepts, your plan will write itself – and you will execute it with more proficiency because you will truly understand it.

Here we go:

OBJECTIVE: What are you actually trying to achieve? This sounds like a straightforward question, but requires considerable introspection. The more you can focus the objective into a discrete, measurable, and achievable objective the better.

RATIONALE: This is the item that most people omit. Why do you want to achieve your objective? How will achieving this objective support your overall vision for the direction of your unit?

STRATEGY: What is the general approach that you will employ to achieve your objective? This should NOT be a list of tactics (see below). The Strategy is a high-level description how you will engage assets to achieve your Objective. For example (with full apology for my limited understanding of the topic), Lord Nelson’s strategy at Trafalgar was to push decision making to the captains of the ships in his fleet, create chaos when the fleets engaged, and leverage the independent decision-making capability of his captains while the Spanish were in disarray due to the battle-induced failure of central communication.

TACTICS: This is where most people believe a plan starts (while omitting Objective, Rationale, and Strategy). Each of the tactics will become part of a list of action items which might differ considerably in depth and focus but share one key characteristic – the tactics are all coherent in terms of supporting the Objective. Tactics should have a definable objective within them so that you can easily determine when they are achieved. If a tactic is focused on a very large objective, consider extracting the Tactic and upgrading it to an Objective in a separate plan. (Kind of like fractals…)

LOGISTICS: What will you need in terms of resources to power each of the tactics listed above? Don’t forget to estimate the personal time commitments required to execute tactics. Sometimes resources can be carved out of existing resource pools, but in other circumstances new resources might be required. Your request for such resources will be better supported by demonstrating the soundness of the tactic, but more importantly, the clear demonstration that the tactic is part of a group of tactics that are coherently aimed at a well-defined objective with a reasonable rationale and a clear strategy.

TIMETABLE: Each tactic should have an action timetable for each step. Mapping out the ‘gates and dates’ will help you to keep eyes on all aspects of the plan and, importantly, ensure that momentum is maintained by your team. A brief weekly report on the status of the timetable will keep you (and your team) focused on getting things done.

CONTINGENCIES: What will happen if you are unable to allocate a resource, meet a performance metric, obtain an approval, etc…? There may be some failures which cause a tactic to be abandoned, others might require a pivot in direction. Time spent planning for failures in advance will make you more resilient when the inevitable failures occur.

PERFORMANCE INDICATORS: You should be able to track performance of each of your tactics in real time as they evolve. these indicators will be leading indicators for your overall objective. Your lagging indicator, reaching your overall objective, will be a late demonstration of the efficacy of your plan. Leading indicators indicate progress in a day-to-day time frame and therefore help you to make adjustments in direction as you proceed. The lagging indicator is more like a navigational aid to steer towards - it provides delayed feedback at a very high level and is not useful for steering on a day-to-day basis – but will ultimately measure the success of your plan.

OK, that is all there is to it. Give it a try on your next plan, you won’t regret it.

Remember that a wish is a vague and powerless notion which suggests that an objective would be nice to achieve, but Wishes do not accomplish much. A document which thoughtfully defines the Elements listed above will Translate a Wish into a Plan – and will empower you to achieve your objectives using a consistent and reproducible methodology.

Good luck! Let us know how it works out!