Write a brief introduction (2 to 3 sentences) to your proposal that outlines the issue you are attempting to solve, the part of the organization in which the plan would be carried out, and the desired outcome. This will set the stage for the sections below.
Objective
Describe what your plan will do and what you hope it will accomplish in one or two succinct sentences. Also, comment on how the objective, if achieved, will improve organizational or patient outcomes. For example:
Test a double-loop feedback model for evaluating new product risk with a small group of project managers with the goal of reducing the number of new products that fail to launch. This objective is aligned to the broader organizational goal of becoming more efficient taking products to market and, if successful, should improve outcomes by reducing waste.
Questions and Predictions
For this section ask yourself 3 to 5 questions about your objective and your overall plan. Make a prediction for each question by answering the question you posed. This helps you to define the important aspects of your plan as well as limit the scope and check its ability to be implemented.
For example:
- How much time will using a double-loop feedback model add to a project manager’s workload?
- At first, it will likely increase their workloads by 5 to 10 percent. However, as the process is refined and project managers become more familiar and efficient, that percentage will decrease.
Change Theories and Leadership Strategies
For this section, you may wish to draw upon the research you did regarding change theories and leadership for the Interview and Interdisciplinary Issue Identification assessment. The focus of this section is how those best practices will create buy-in for the project from an interdisciplinary team, improve their collaboration, and/or foster the team’s ability to implement the plan. Be sure that you are including at least one change theory and at least one leadership strategy in your explanation. Always remember to cite your sources; direct quotes require quotation marks and a page or paragraph number to be included in the citation.
Another way to approach your explanations in this section is to think through the following:
- What is the theory or strategy?
- How will it likely help an interdisciplinary team to collaborate, implement, and/or buy in to the project plan?
- Make sure to frame this explanation within the organizational context of the proposed plan, that is, your interviewee’s organization.
Team Collaboration Strategy
In this section, begin by further defining the responsibilities and actions that represent the implementation of the plan. One strategy to defining this is to take a “who, what, where, and when” approach for each team member.
For example:
- Project Manager A will apply the double-loop feedback model on one new product project for a single quarter.
- Project Manager B will apply the double-loop feedback model on all new product projects for a quarter.
Vice President A will review the workloads of project managers using the double-loop feedback model every Thursday for one quarter.
After you have roughly outlined the roles and responsibilities of team members, you will explain one or more collaborative approaches that will enable the team to work efficiently to achieve the plan’s objective. As with the change theories and leadership strategies, you may draw on the research you conducted for the Interview and Interdisciplinary Issue Identification assessment. However, you are being asked to give a more in-depth explanation of the collaboration approaches and look at how they will help the theoretical interdisciplinary team in your plan proposal.
Another way to approach your explanations in this section is to think through the following:
- What is the collaboration approach?
- What types of collaboration and teamwork will best help the interdisciplinary team be successful?
- How is the collaboration approach relevant to the team’s needs and will it help drive success?
- Make sure to frame this explanation in terms of the subject of the plan proposal; that is, your interviewee’s organization.
Required Organizational Resources
For this section, you will be making rough estimates of the resources needed for your plan proposal to be successful. This section does not have to be exact but the estimates should be realistic for the chosen organization.
Items you should include or address in this section:
- What are the staffing needs for your plan proposal?
- What equipment or supplies are needed for your plan proposal?
- Does the organization already have these?
- If so, what is the cost associated with using these resources?
- If not, what is the cost of acquiring these resources?
- Does the organization already have these?
- What access (to patients, departments, and so forth) is needed?
- Are there any costs associated with these?
- What is the overall financial budget request for the plan proposal?
- Staff time, resource use, resource acquisition, and access charged?
- Remember to include a specific dollar amount in your request.
- Staff time, resource use, resource acquisition, and access charged?
After you have detailed your budget, make sure that you explain any impacts on organizational resources that could happen if your plan is not undertaken and successful. In other words, if the issue you are try to solve through your plan proposal persists or gets worse, what will be the potential costs to the organization?
