smARTstart

An action plan is a detailed, prioritized list of steps you must take to achieve your organization's goals.

Creating an action plan is the process of determining which steps are necessary.

Prioritizing the plan is the process of determining which of these steps have the highest positive impact with the least amount of capital or effort. This helps you determine the important items you are most likely to accomplish given current resources.

As you develop and prioritize your action plan—each action item that you want to do as an organization—you should use this chart to help you prioritize and to start thinking about strategies—what you need to do to achieve the action step.

Download and print this chart: (doc) (pdf)

• Capacity - our ability to achieve the action step, given our resources
• Impact - the degree to which the action step will positively affect us

To use this chart, write each action item separately on sticky notes. Place each action item on the chart in the location that matches that item's capacity and impact.

Lower left quadrant
How would you prioritize an action step if it falls in the lower left quadrant? Low priority, you may even consider dismissing that step from the plan.

Upper right quadrant
How would you prioritize an action step if it falls in the upper right quadrant?

• If you have the capacity and the action item has high positive impact, we might give it high priority.

Lower right quadrant
How would you prioritize an action step that falls in the lower right, for example building a Parking Lot? You might decide that because of the high impact, you need to develop a strategy to increase your capacity to do it.

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