The 3 Steps To Implementation

The most important thing that any thought leader will tell you is that, if you want your life to change, you need to do something different with what you know.

It’s not enough to just learn it… If education doesn’t create any tangible changes in action or behavior then it doesn’t do anything for you. Especially in personal development circles, that’s why so many people talk about the importance of implementation - because if you don’t then your efforts to actually change your life won’t amount to anything.

The definition of ‘implementation’ is “the process of putting a plan or decision into effect, to execute”. What that involves is using knowledge to do something in a different way that is more likely to generate the result that you want.

As I see it, there are 3 steps to implementation: Awareness, Action Plan, and Accountability.

Everything, including implementation, starts with awareness. You can’t consciously change something you’re not aware of, and you can’t know what you want to improve upon until you’re aware of what you want. This includes awareness of good ideas to try, awareness for the state of how things currently are, and awareness for the state of how you want things to be.

From there you can develop an action plan. This is a clearly outlined procedure for how you intend to take action, with all of the people, resources, timing, and details taken into consideration. You’re more likely to follow through on what you plan to do when you have an outlined system of execution. Most ideas that people hope to take action on don’t have an action plan behind them, and therefore they often don't transfer effectively into positive change.

Which leads us to the final component: Accountability. Having an action plan isn’t enough. Countless times people have said they were going to do something and then they lacked the discipline to actually do it. That’s what accountability helps with - it makes you honestly answer to what actually happened, if you followed through or not, and adds a consequence to skipping.

Poetically, accountability acts as a mirror so you can clearly see how you did. In other words, it creates awareness, and with that awareness you can adjust your action plan and try again.