What any plan or project also needs are:

1. An ongoing communications process so that everyone affected is kept apprised of milestones reached or not reached, and the gaps that still need to be closed to reach the milestones. This is also a good time to ask for additional feedback, e.g. we thought we were on the right path, but we’re coming up short, so how can we correct that?

A broad-based communications process is important. Even if responsibility for the plan or project only dwells within one department, if you step back and look at your overall organizational structure, you’ll recognize that there are other departments affected as well. So it’s important to keep them in the loop.

2. A “gated process,” meaning that until one step of the plan has been completed, and signed off on by whoever is charged with doing so, no one has permission to advance to the next step until the current step has been successfully completed. And the accent is on “successfully” rather than merely “completed.” For example, training is a particular area where completion often takes precedence over success. “Yeah, we completed the training, here’s the manual,” instead of “Here’s what our trainees knew previously, and here’s what [this percentage of them] they know now, here are the gaps that still need to be closed, and here’s how we’re going to do that.”

The gated process is necessary to keep the plan or the project on the right path toward success. A common temptation is to say “We didn’t quite complete that step, but we’ve got to move on, so we’ll come back and fix it later.” And then guess what? It never gets fixed. Plan or project deadlines can and should be adjusted to ensure successful completion of each step rather than trying to meet a deadline just for the sake of meeting the deadline. The challenge is to balance the urgency of meeting an often artificial deadline with the measured approach to making the plan or project a success.