Good managers foster widespread support for team initiatives. Great managers develop precise plans to help their teams accomplish what they say they will. Using what motivational scientists call if-then planning to express and implement your team’s intentions can significantly improve execution, says Heidi Grant Halvorson, associate director of Columbia Business School’s Motivation Science Center.
“When people decide exactly when, where and how they will fulfill their goals, they create a link in their brains between a certain situation or cue (“If or when X happens”) and the behavior that should follow (“then I will do Y). In this way, they establish powerful triggers for action,” Grant Halvorson explains in Harvard Business Review.
Often, when groups set goals, they tend to make sweeping statements and omit details essential to execution. If-then planning pinpoints conditions for success, increases everyone’s sense of responsibility, and helps close the gap between knowing and doing. Grant Halvorson breaks the design of if-then plans into four key steps:
1. Establish the organizational goal.
2. Break the goal down into specific concrete subgoals.
3. Identify detailed actions — and the who, when and where — for reaching each subgoal.
4. Create if-then plans that trigger the actions.
“If-then planning enables groups to do more of what they mean to — and do it better — by fostering ownership and essentially reprogramming people to execute.”
