How To Organize Your Ideas into an Action Plan

If you work from home or are a member of a small team, it can be difficult to keep track of all the ideas you come up with on a weekly basis, let alone implement them to improve your business. One way to organize your thoughts is to devote an hour each week or so to one business theme. Think of it as an accountability meeting, similar to a weekly staff meeting you might have if you worked in a larger business environment. Here’s a sample agenda:

1. Review your business goals. Hopefully, you’ve taken some time to create yearly business goals. Each week, spend some time reviewing them so you can stay focused on what you need to accomplish to meet your goals by your desired timeline.
   
   
2. Decide what your focus will be. After reviewing your long term goals, it’s time to focus on short term goals. Just as you’d prepare a purpose for a meeting in the corporate world, you’ll do something similar for this session. Decide on a purpose for your session. Your focus might be your next actionable step, a way to get unstuck, or how to deal with this week’s major problem. For instance, perhaps you must create a step-by-step marketing plan for this month, plan your newsletter or deal with a problem client. Pick one thing that you can tackle in your allotted time frame.
   
   
3. Brainstorm. Give yourself 20-30 minutes or so just to come up with ideas and record the results. If you are doing this by yourself, just write down whatever comes to mind - don’t stop writing. Don’t think about what you’ve just written. Just write. Alternatively, you can record yourself with a tape or voice recorder - just say whatever comes to mind. If you’re working with other people, have one person be the idea collector who captures everyone ideas. Be creative - don’t worry if the idea isn’t plausible, feasible, or even legal at this point. That will come later.
   
   
4. Take a break. Once you’ve finished your brainstorming session, take a 5 minute break and allow yourself to shift gears.
   
   
5. Evaluate your ideas. Now that you’ve put your ideas on paper, it’s time to evaluate them. What are the strongest possibilities? Which are you most excited about? Now is the time to be analytical and evaluate the feasibility of your ideas.
   
   
6. Create an action plan. Once you’ve picked out the best ideas, it’s time to create a task list. What tasks must you complete to take action? In what order? By when? For instance, do you need to call publications and ask for their advertising rates? Find out how much it would cost to buy a list of 500 addresses? Write 3 articles for your newsletter? Make a list of each step along with a deadline.
   
   
7. Write a 1 page summary. Now that you have your action plan, formalize it into a 1 page summary that you review at the beginning of each day.
   
   

If you work from home and need an outsider’s perspective on your business, invite 2-3 of your most supportive friends, family members, and/or colleagues to lunch and run through the process. You’ll probably need to throw in some basic background information but otherwise, the process is the same. Make it fun and be sure to listen to all suggestions provided - you never know where your next idea might come from.

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