Action Management: One of the most important disciplines you’ve probably never heard of – Part 2.

This is the second in a two part series introducing the discipline of Action Management.

So what is an Action? Why is it different to a Project or a Transaction?

Fundamentally the difference is that the output or result of a Project or Transaction is known and well defined before the process starts, whereas the output of an Action is often unknown at its inception. The unknown output may vary in scale from the simple “There, it is fixed” to the complex “Wow, a whole redesign is needed to fix this”.  

Because the output is unknown, it is very difficult to pre-define a process that will get you to the result. The nature of the output and the timeframe in which it can be delivered may change as the Action is worked on. So the nature of Action Management is that it is thoughtful and iterative rather than a structured and defined process to follow. This means that some of the traditional tools for Project and Transaction Management are not appropriate for Action Management, though there are some lessons from them that can be applied.

Let me give you a simple example – one of your major customers has complained about the performance of your service team. You need to have it fixed pronto, but at this stage you don’t know what the cause is, nor whether it is the service team that is at fault. You need to set up an action to identify the problem, analyse potential causes and fixes, recommend and implement the fix. So the action has structure, but we know little about its content. The solution may be simple or complex and may require innovation, thoughtfulness, iteration and testing. Project Management and Transaction Management do not fit this problem – though a complex solution may require project management to implement. Action Management, on the other hand, gives you simple tools based on 5 key questions to ensure the action is well defined and managed through to completion.

In the above example, I have seen many managers jump to conclusions about that is wrong (it’s the manager, an individual on the team, the customer, the system is broken etc), firing off “FIX IT NOW” emails to their prime suspects, only to find the real cause is something completely different.  Action Management attempts to resolve this by ensuring the right open questions are answered for each action.

Where do Actions come from?

Actions arrive in organisations from all sorts of situations. Projects will have Issues that are raised for resolution by the management team. Transactions will have Exceptions in the business process, that were not considered in the design, that now need to be resolved. Customers will make Complaints about things that have gone wrong that the Customer Service Team cannot resolve. Finance will demand Stretches for ever increasing revenues and ever decreasing costs from your team and you need to find answers.

These Actions generally flow into the management team for resolution. The higher up in the team you sit, the more of these Actions you will accumulate. In fact, when you think about it, the job of an executive manager is largely the management of Actions. 

Yet surprisingly, we have no common systems deployed for managing Actions, no training, no common philosophy. It is almost as if good managers should learn Action Management on-the-job, by osmosis. Yes we get some training around Managing Meetings, or Presentation Skills or Managing Difficult People, but for the day to day part of our jobs – there is very little! 

So that is probably why we have never heard about it. It is somehow supposed to be innate, a skill that we develop ourselves, those that have it get to the top, those that don’t, won’t.

What makes for successful Actions? Can it be learned?

Yes, of course it can!  The thing to focus on first in Action Management is not the output, but the input. Making sure that all the right things are in place when defining the Action in the first place. If the right elements are in place then the Action has a far greater likelihood of successful and timely completion.

In future articles I will show typical reasons why Actions don’t get completed and illustrate how the Action Manager’s High Five© provides a simple model for Action definition.