David’s Action Plan – Frank Rouault, DBA

We are constantly searching for ways to optimize how we are going to grow and develop ourselves and help others to do the same.

Sonenshein, Dutton, Grant, Spreitzer, and Sutcliffe (2013) have proposed that employees develop three different types of growing: achieving, learning, and helping (ALH). When considering the issue of employee engagement and the growing emergence of the person-organization fit, it makes sense to leverage Sonenshein et al.’s findings towards formatting an action plan template that could enable a manager or employee to design and execute performance-oriented action plans that serve both organizational and people development in a mutually beneficial mode.

• Achieving invites engagement into actions that focus on organizational development and performance.

• Learning invites engagement into action that enables personal exploration and acquisition of new expertise, thus focusing on personal development and performance.

• Helping invites engagement into supporting others, thus fostering collective development and performance and generating through exemplarity constructive reciprocity.

Let’s look at an example of an action plan using the ALH model.

David is a young sales manager of a team of seven engineers who sell technical solutions in a B2B environment. He has just finished a course on “building a business mindset through sales forecasting,” and he is reflecting on a thorough action plan.

For achieving, he sets the target to be able to drive his team’s sales activity through forecasting by the end of September. This is a nine-month plan, and to achieve it, he needs to anticipate training his sales team on forecasting, to set up regular monthly meetings with the team to develop their next quarter forecasts, and to enhance his probing techniques to help the team come to the right conclusions and initiatives associated with the forecasting analysis.

For learning, he plans to deeply study the workbook associated with the course, to become familiar with the facilitation procedures, and to rehearse his delivery to his team.

For helping, he seeks to support a colleague in her use of the forecasting tools, and to share his experience and progress with his sales manager, he proposes becoming the “go to” person on forecasting within the country.

He has summarized his action plan through the following template:

Action Plan

Purpose: Making sales forecasting an asset

David’s action plan seems realistic, challenging, and valuable for the organization, his peers, and himself. Through this, he leverages the three different types of growing and sets the stage for solid results. We wish him the very best.

Bibliography

Sonenshein, S., Dutton, J.E.,
 Grant, A.M., Spreitzer, G.M., & Sutcliffe, K.M. (2013). Growing at work: Employees’ interpretations of progressive self-change in organizations. Organization Science, Vol. 24, No. 2, March–April 2013, pp. 552–570.