One quick search of ‘action planning’ on Google demonstrates that it is not only a hot topic at the moment, but that huge swathes of organisations have action plans about a range of issues. It is clearly a diverse and encompassing topic – but what actually is action planning?
Action Planning is a process referring to the steps, tasks and processes involved in turning insights from data into tangible benefits. We present an alternative approach to action planning – an approach that is not based on the outputs of a traditional survey, but is instead focused on crowdsourcing validated solutions. This is illustrated in our new Action Planning Guide.
The Challenges of Action Planning from Conventional Surveys
The challenge facing conventional surveys with regards to action planning is that they often contain numerous Agree/Disagree Likert scale questions which can often be vague and impressionistic. It is very difficult to tell what is actually on people’s minds because they are not writing a considered response, but often just ticking a box. Conventional surveys also have difficulty in capturing the complexity of how organisations work and the associated nuances involved. This is because one underlying issue (eg dissatisfaction with line management or being passed over for promotion) can affect the outcome of multiple statements in a survey – even if they are not directly related. The figures below illustrate this point. This means that it can often be difficult to get reliable and actionable results.
Why is Crowdoscope better?
Crowdoscope, is a new type of survey and discussion tool that uses Social Collective Intelligence to gain real insights. It overcomes many of the problems associated with traditional surveys. Crowdoscope identifies issues through crowdsourcing and gets participants to offer solutions as to how these issues could be resolved or improved within the organisation. The solutions are validated by other participants within the community using two evaluation criteria to ensure the best suggestions and ideas bubble to the surface. Whereas the outputs of traditional surveys are about benchmarks and numbers, Crowdoscope provides specific and validated suggestions which means that decision makers do not procrastinate in explaining away various scores or trying to work out what a particular score means.
Once the top themes/suggestions have been identified by Crowdoscope, you can prioritise these suggestions using one of Crowdoscope’s suggested Action Planning Exercises. These exercises help identify suggestions that can be implemented easily with high impact or identify suggestions that require further investigation as to whether they can be actioned. Crowdoscope’s Action Planning Guide also provides a synthesis of what needs to be done in order to implement the suggestions put forward by participants and who should be accountable for implementation.
We hope you find this action planning guide useful within your organisation. You can download the full guide here.
