Action Planning: A Programmed Approach for Managing Change

Good strategy is not worth much unless it can be put into action. In practice it is usually implementation, not the underlying strategy, that makes a project succeed or fail. This article provides a framework for strategy implementation through action planning. This approach to implementing strategic change was originally prepared for the benefit of a major UK clearing bank and has been used by branch‐level managers to plan and implement wide‐reaching changes in the way in which small business customer relationships are handled.