The Tactical Implementation Plan (TIP) – A road map for Change Management Success

It would be unwise to attempt any major organisational change initiative without a road map. Use of a relevant map:

• Simplifies implementation of the change process
• Provides written documentation of the initial planning stage
• Provides a, “ to do list,” with all-important order and timings for the actions required to achieve business goals and targets
• Minimizes repeat communication related to clarification of new procedures and
• Facilitates more rapid and effective performance and process transformation

Generally, performance and process improvement programs have significantly less chance of success, without such a plan. As such, most, currently utilized, methodologies make use of a relevant plan to facilitate team members to navigate their way through required process changes.

Visual appearance and contents of such plans varies according to the chosen change management methodology and the particular strategy it employs. Lean Six Sigma, a popular methodology, for example, relies heavily on a data and measurement driven approach which necessitates a plan format that can display and record relevant constants and variables. The most commonly chosen plan used to document and drive this methodology is the Tactical Implementation plan or TIP.

Before a TIP can be drafted, a series of preliminary assessments must be made to evaluate the current system. These often include Value Stream Mapping, Lean Assessments, Benchmarking, Diagnostic Assessment and Value Planning Process. Brainstorming and team suggestions, alongside the crafting of a vision statement and a Future State Value Stream map are all used in the creation of a TIP. Generally everyone from Lean team members to the Head of Plant is involved in this process. The aim is to define the vision or future state of the department.

Such methodology ensures that business goals and targets are not subjectively arrived at. The information gathered from such assessments and activities enables gap analysis i.e. an evaluation of the gulf between the current state and the future (aspired to) state. The TIP then becomes a visual schedule of the tasks necessary to achieve the desired future state through realizing business goals and targets.

Once a gap analysis has been defined, department managers, change agents and process delivers can proceed to list the day to day actions required to achieve the previously defined future state within a challenging timescale. These steps are ultimately sequenced in correct order and broken down into micro-step detail. The TIP is then displayed on an excel spreadsheet.

Each TIP must document all micro-steps, all activity owners and all associated project milestones and timescales. Once this stage has been reached, it is imperative to the success of any project that a signature from the department head or equivalent is seen to endorse management’s approval of the plan. For greatest effectiveness such plans need to be easily interpreted, concise (preferably 1 page) and prominently displayed.

Each tip has a start and finish date and a person who is accountable for delivery. Each task is ticked off and sometimes evaluated by measurement, as it is performed, so that any gap where the process is behind schedule or off-track is clearly visible. An escalation process is then used to ensure timely resolution of major issues.

TIPS have proved invaluable in facilitating effective change within a short timescale. The risks of not having a TIP include:

• Failure through setting over ambitious goals
• Absence of the data measurement records essential to the evaluation of progress
• Sub-standard process resulting from lack of clarity of the required procedure
• Long lag phases and poor customer delivery
• Lack of distinction between process performance related to different operators
• Failure to pinpoint links between process changes and performance indicators

Mahatma Gandhi asserted that, “The first step in fighting injustice, is to make it visible”.

In terms of change management, perhaps we might amend the statement to “The first step in performance and process enhancement, is to make it visible”.
The Tactical Implementation plan or TIP, is the essential Toolbox asset, that it makes this possible.

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