When planning for a change, you need reflective and purposeful steps. This change may be personal and or professional.

By setting a model for you to place objective thoughts into. As a leader, you will be better equipped to determine areas of success and which areas to proceed into next with planning and decisions.

• Adapted from Villa and Thousand (1995)

Below are questions (by no means comprehensive) that will help you think through, plan, and make successful action steps for a change.

Planning a Change Question Sheet

Vision

1. What is the purpose?
2. Who will it affect? How?
3. Why is it important to your team? The organization/business/community?
4. What made you decide that this is important?
5. Did you ask your team for input? If so, how and what was their input? If not, why not?
6. How will this change affect the staff? Those you serve (clients, customers, vendors, suppliers, supervisor(s), etc…)? You as a leader?
7. Describe the ideal state…Describe the current state…How will you achieve the ideal state?

Skills

1. In what ways might the staff and your existing skillset be useful for the change?
2. What new skills will be needed?
3. How will you accomplish training these new skills?
4. Explain in detail the necessary skill set for completion of change (if multiple people have/need multiple skills, list the key responsibilities of the change and the necessary skillsets for success)
5. What skills will you as leader(s) need for the implementation of the vision?
6. How can the Leadership team partner with you to enable completion?

Incentives

 Explain your plan to move your team and yourself towards the completion of this change

1. Why should we work towards this change?
2. How is this change relevant? Now? In the future?
3. Identify the resistors to the change.
4. Identify the champions of the change.
5. What will keep you, as the leader, motivated?
6. How will you continue to keep the team focused?
7. How will you measure success and failure?
8. What steps will you take to reward success and re-direct unmotivated team members?

Resources

Explain what you have and what you need

1. What kind of budget will be available?
2. How much time is needed?
3. Explain how this change will be delegated to staff members.
4. What will be the steps for follow-up and accountability?
5. What resource do you currently have available (list everything from paperwork to people to machines to policies – the more explicit you are in what you have, the better your completion will be)
6. What resources will you need (list everything from paperwork to people to machines to policies – the more explicit you are in what you need, the better your completion will be)
7. In what ways may you secure these needs?

Action Plan

Explain in detail what you are going to do and how it will get done

1. Re-visit your Vision – and break the change into steps.
2. What are the steps for completion?
3. Goal (Quality, Quantity, Time Frame, Resources) – What is the 1^st step for completion?
4. Strategy – In what ways might you implement a strategy for completion of the 1^st step?
5. Objective – How will you know that you have completed the 1^st step?
6. Responsibility – Who’s going to accomplish the objective?
7. Timeline – When is the implementer going to accomplish that objective?
8. Feedback and Evaluation – Who and how is the implementer going to know if they accomplished good or bad work on their objective?

Final Thoughts:

• How do you plan for a change?
• What existing processes do you / team/organization have in place for reflective thought?
• Would this system work for plans outside of change? What would be different?
• Describe how this applies to your current practice/life?