How To Turn Ideas Into a Successful Action Plan

September 26, 2024

Whether it's an idea to achieve carbon neutrality by 2040 or to diversify the entire supply chain, every company's vision is achieved by bridging the gap between concept and reality. In part one of this Innovation to Reality series, we learned how to capture a vision by gaining understanding, articulating concepts and mobilizing people. In part two, we discovered how to use workshops to extract innovative ideas through effective facilitation, gathering insights, synthesizing and preparing for action. Now, it's time to conduct an impact assessment and begin action planning, where you'll establish what needs to be done and get it stamped for implementation.

Evaluate and Prioritize Your Top Ideas

Let's say your firm has a goal of reducing its carbon footprint. In previous steps, you brainstormed different tracks toward that goal, such as transitioning the fleet from gas to electric vehicles or leveraging solar technology to power manufacturing facilities. With so many ideas, the difficult task is deciding where to start.

Tools such as a cost-benefit matrix can help you prioritize ideas. Select three to seven concepts from the matrix. Then, choose a cross-section of big and small ideas as well as near- and long-term ideas. You want the right blend of initiatives characterized as "low-hanging fruit" and those that will produce sustainable, long-term, material gains.

Move From an Idea to Discovery

Step One: Form Groups To Explore and Champion Your Ideas

Each short-listed idea should represent a workstream. Assign a small working team with no more than seven people (anything larger runs the risk of groupthink, and logistically, scheduling can be a nightmare) to conduct a deep-dive assessment of the concept. At least one team member should originate from the earlier brainstorming session and, if possible, include the original facilitator. Both individuals can communicate the idea's background and ensure the working group doesn't stray too far from the original concept. The rest of the group members should bring relevant expertise, such as supply chain management or operations.

Step Two: Develop a Charter and Define Major Milestones

The first step for each workstream is to define relevant considerations for the proposed initiative. A project charter can help align the team and work through discovery discussions that might include:

Primary metrics or goals for the workstream to accomplish
Sponsorships you might need to ask for
Individuals who should be consulted
Major milestones and feasible time horizons to implement

Step Three: Establish Measures and Quantify Value

As you discuss these considerations, formulate rough, back-of-the-envelope calculations. Start by itemizing the idea's costs and benefits; it's more important to define how to quantify the cost or value rather than creating exact calculations. Throughout this exercise, the group will naturally discuss assumptions, dependencies and further considerations. Be sure to document these items to ensure alignment on the initiative's measures and forecasts.

Step Four: Decide if the Initiative Has Value

Now, it's time to determine if there is enough value to advance the workstream to the next stage or if it should be replaced with another higher-value initiative from the benefit-effort matrix. Remember, it's OK to defer an initiative to a future time! It's important to make these decisions upfront to prevent bad decisions caused by groups foolishly escalating commitments or unnecessarily sinking costs into unfruitful efforts.

Define and Confirm

Once discovery is complete, you can point the team to action planning. Conduct a group exercise where you discuss details and define:

What specifically must be done to realize the targeted value?
Who is best qualified to execute that action?
When should we have those actions completed?
Do any of the actions have a dependency on an upstream/downstream item?

To answer these questions, assign independent work to various team members — such as meeting with relevant consultants or external suppliers. After a week or so, have the project lead pull everybody back together and aggregate the ownership assignments and deadlines into a consolidated action register.

At this point, your team should have produced both initial estimates and a tactical line-item action plan. This is a good time to refine the major milestones and confirm that the formulas and measures are sound. The group should review together as a team and have a high degree of confidence in the initiative's economic estimates.

Presenting and Green Lighting Your Concept

Now it's time to package up all this work and present your concrete findings to leadership. To do this, gather all the deliverables from your various workstreams. Consider laying out options aligned to budget (e.g., with a $1 million budget, I would recommend we do A, B, C; with $10 million, I would recommend A, B, C and D). Summarize your recommendations and major project milestones into a one-page "Executive Summary," followed by a one-pager detailing each initiative's assumptions, dependencies and milestones. Be sure to connect each idea to the primary objective leadership has laid out.

Expect leadership to hone in on each idea's cost or investment aspect. They may also be concerned with the logistics or tactical side of the implementation plan. However, the feasibility process is designed to give you all of those details, so you should be able to justify everything within the investment request.

Let the Entire Innovation-to-Reality Process Move You Forward

The idea-to-fruition process concludes with your leadership authorizing the initiatives and offering internal sponsorship. Everyone is clear on how the idea will integrate into the business, the project can be brought into the budgeting process, sponsors can task out the action plans and everyone can start accumulating benefits!

The entire ideation process is a fantastic tool to lean on for major and minor decisions alike, allowing your team to be generative and innovative, rapidly assess feasibility and ultimately act on ideas that offer the most rewards. When you use a process that delivers a real roadmap, translating broad visions into a concrete and actionable work product, your business will be better suited to generate creative ideas and watch those solutions come to life.

Uncommon Knowledge

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