Turning Initiative into Action

Kenneth has 14 years of healthcare experience in government and private industry. Over eight years of experience managing healthcare IT projects, operations, contracts, and personnel. His work experience includes project management, contracts and procurements, data analysis, claims adjudication, business writing, and business process modeling. Kenneth was certified in 2006 as a Project Management Professional.

  Strategy  

Every company and organization has initiatives that they want to engage in. These initiatives or visions could exist on whiteboards or in board meeting discussions, or even in the thoughts of managers and employees.

Once those initiatives reach a certain point, then leaders in the organization begin to invest in them—and expect them to turn into products or services. Taking that initiative from thought to action (or revenue stream) is the job of the project manager. Some of the work happens even before the project begins, and some of it goes on after the project is finished.

Justification
The justification is vital to everything that people will be working on to turn that initiative into reality. If there is not a solid justification for why the organization is headed down the road, then someone needs to take the time to ask those questions and find out why it is lacking.

Ideally, the leaders and stakeholders will be asking those questions and working through the thought process behind the initiative. All of this information and investigation should be reflected in the project documents created to initialize the project (for example, the charter and the initial plans for the project). This will help quell issues that may arise later about why certain decisions were made in the beginning.

The Starting Point
At some point, initiatives have to turn from ideas …

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