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hi I'm Kylie Dunn and in this video we're going to briefly look at operational planning how and why we do it planning is a large part of the work inside every organization it happens at all levels increasing in detail as it reaches delivery operational plans are designed to help an organization outline how it will achieve its strategic goals required changes and standard service requirements it's important to remember that all planning is designed to help you think for operational plans that's thinking through your priorities for the work what it will take to complete it how you will know you've achieved it and what might stop that from happening let's look at all of that in a little bit more detail for most organizations planning starts at the strategic level your executive or senior leadership will decide what they want the organization to look like in the future and set goals to reach that vision this means a strategic plan will usually include statements around your mission and vision as well as the strategic goals for the next three plus years this is usually three to five years but some goals have a longer lead time the strategic goals of an organization are one input into your operational plan importantly there is no set format for this type of document or strict rules around which level in the organization creates a plan we'll talk about this a little more shortly when you are developing this document you need to consider a range of internal and external factors for your organization internally we usually conduct stakeholder consultations to ensure the appropriate people have input into the process this can include input from people you provide a service to and for your staff your customers management and any other relevant groups externally we usually conduct some form of environmental scan to ensure we're thinking through possible issues and opportunities yes this should have been done strategically but that's at a much higher level and considers longer-term impacts these scans help us consider possible global impacts on our business financial legal changes social trends and possibly new technologies we can leverage it's also a chance to view threats to our business either competitors or disruptive industry changes and we should also consider the impact things like climate change and yeah as we're now more than aware global pandemics whatever form our plan takes it needs to capture how we're going to contribute towards the strategic goals that our part of the business can actually drive the changes we might need to make broadly for example if we know new legislation is coming then what changes will we need to make to our processes and systems to cater to that any other initiatives we might have to improve our service delivery identified continuous improvement activities reviews we will conduct and the like and of course our business as usual requirements the key performance indicators or service agreements for our day-to-day work so in short it should outline who we are as a business unit and the services we provide to the business why we exist and how the business benefits from what we do what goals and measures we are working towards achieving for the business and then how we're planning on delivering that now how at this level is not detailed plans or actions think of it as the list of projects and changes not the actual project plans themselves I'll show you an example shortly as I mentioned operational plans can take many forms it might be a dedicated document that outlines all the content mentioned earlier it might be a program of work it could be multiple documents one that captures all your businesses you will work in KPIs and another outlining initiatives and projects it's really a free-for-all in this space I've included a very simple example of what an operational plan could look like yours is probably something very different in this example section a outlines who the business unit is and the services they provide if you have an operational plan that has this sort of information then it's also a great communication tool for your stakeholders as well as your staff consider sharing and broadly section B are the strategic goals the business unit is contributing towards section C are the businesses usual KPIs the ones that are reported up to the rest of the business you might have others at a team or individual level but this would really only capture the higher reported ones section D of high level resources that the manager has to deliver the work outlined in this plan this isn't essential but it can come in handy particularly when you're trying to have conversations around why you can't deliver additional work that people are requesting and lastly section e lists the out-of-the-ordinary initiatives projects and activities the business unit is planning to do this is the high-level how what strategic goals are we're working towards what is the activity we're planning to do who is responsible the anticipated date of delivery and high-level KPIs you could also include the budget note if you have this detailed then you can turn this into a reporting template to track the progress of your planned activities you might add a status column to support that regardless of the format it takes operational planning requires you to document somewhere the initiatives you're planning to complete and the resources you have for the work how you're going to measure and monitor progress and let's quickly talk about what you're planning on measuring because lots of organizations get this wrong they continue to measure what is easy or what they've always measured always remember that what you measure is what becomes important changing what we measure can change focus and behaviors for example if you have a focus on improving safety and declare yourself a safety first organization but your focus on reporting is production levels and meeting efficiency targets that you are not safety first you are production first your measures need to help you monitor progress towards goals and agreements but they also need to align to the focus and behaviors you want from your teams lastly somewhere in this or another document you need to consider possible risks these can be actions or incidents that will either stop your achieving your goals or that might provide you with an opportunity to shift focus and achieve something more than you expected and along with this are any contingency plans you might develop that will help you deal with the risks either to help you recover quicker or rapidly progress an activity okay that's all for our overview on operational planning thank you for your time