The final steps of any analysis, experiment, or survey is to take action on the results. It is often helpful to have an action plan in place once the results come in. Here’s a way to help turn an insight or finding into change.

Determine your action plan basics:

1. An owner who is responsible for making things happen
2. A schedule for what is supposed to happen by when
3. A metric so you know that a task is done (e.g., 100% of a population attend a training)
4. A schedule for updates to your stakeholders (e.g., monthly or quarterly)
5. A plan for communicating results to your employees

When proposing a change to your organization, you might encounter some resistance. You may want to try and pre-identify potential barriers to action and plan how to overcome them.

Some challenges can include:

1. Denial: “These results are just a one-off.”
2. Analysis paralysis: “Let’s get some more data. Can we run another experiment?”
3. Resistance to change: “This change is really hard. Our program is good enough right now.”

Involve the right leaders of your organization throughout the process of defining, investigating, and taking action on findings. They will be supportive of your proposed actions, but they can be powerful advocates on your behalf to overcome some of these challenges.