When tackling something new, whether it’s a new project or a new job, it’s important to start out with a plan. A good plan accounts for major milestones and deadlines. A great plan goes beyond that. Each of us needs something different to do our best work and experience a deep sense of satisfaction, but we don’t always know what that might be.  

A little over a year ago, Allison, a Benefits Technology Manager with over a decade of experience in her field, began working with Jill McCarthy to create a great action plan. At the end of the process, Allison said, “Work was work in the past, and now I feel a sense of pride. I feel stronger. I feel more prepared every day.” Beyond being more excited about her work and career, she also enabled her department to do four times the amount of work without feeling like she is underwater.

Wouldn’t you love to experience similar success and satisfaction? 

Allison calls the action plan she created with Jill a key part of reaching her goals, so we recently sat down with her to talk about the experience.

When she began working with Jill, Allison had just joined a new company where she would be a department of one.  She had the opportunity to build something from the ground up and wanted to lay a solid foundation for the future of her department, especially before growing a team.

Allison and Jill worked together to create a one-year timeline that outlined the standards, projects, and resources that were most critical for that foundation. Allison said that one of the most helpful things Jill did was remind her to use existing resources to stay on track:

“Jill encouraged me not to recreate the wheel, which is what I tend to do. Instead, I researched and used resources that were already out there from [other companies]. This made some of these projects very easy because I started off in the middle versus at the very beginning. By the end of the year, I had met all of my deadlines and was able to get through our busiest season scratch-free.”

The second thing Allison found helpful was the level of accountability that coaching provided:

“Every call [Jill] would check in and ask, ‘Hey, how are things going? Where is this?’ That kept me really on track and motivated. I wasn’t allowed to procrastinate because I was encouraged to keep myself accountable, to keep moving forward, to hit this goal for not only myself but for my department and the future of my company. It just kept me going and focused. Without her, I may have gotten distracted or gone down a different rabbit hole. With her helping me set up that timeline, I knew exactly where I needed to go."

While creating a realistic timeline and accountability were very important to the process, the real magic came when Allison began to understand and use her strengths. Her top CliftonStrength is Restorative®, which makes her exceptional at identifying the missing piece of a puzzle. With Jill, she learned to apply this strength as she created her action plan and began working towards her goals. That’s when she really began to enjoy the process:  

“It wasn’t work at that point. I had never had that before at any other company, where someone knew my strengths and encouraged me to use them. In other places, it was, ‘Okay, do the same work’ over and over again,’ or, ‘This is painful that I have to do this project.’” Organizing and using my strengths to accomplish my goals was definitely the fun part. And at the end of the year to see everything I had done was pretty awesome. It made work fun for me. 

Now, Allison uses the action planning framework as a communication tool with her leadership.

“I sat down at the beginning of this year and created another timeline…. This timeline I shared with my manager and gave her and the owners of the company a heads up that, ‘Hey, this is what I’m thinking.’ We moved a couple of clients around on the timeline, but it felt really good for them to trust my instincts and that there is a method to my madness. So right now, overall, I’ve completed the things I’ve set out to do.”

With all that in mind, Allison plans to use this process over and over again, and, most importantly, she will use the self-knowledge she developed to fuel future successes. She says, “I know what my strengths are and what I need from other people. I’m trying to lean into those, not back down, not second guess myself when I know something is right. Because of what Jill and I did last year, I feel very confident, very secure. Like I said, it’s a well-oiled machine now.”

We celebrate Allison and all that she has accomplished!

Do you or the managers in your organization need a better action planning strategy?