A design for action is fundamentally different from a plan of action. Action plans, and their close relatives, procedures, are only as good as the ability of the planners to identify in advance what contingencies might arise. That’s why they never survive first contact with the enemy, who ordinarily is not a willing contributor to the planning process.
Designs for action, on the other hand, are system architectures that specify capabilities and the interactions between them. There is no time dimension in such a design. There are no activities in such a design. There is only the specification of:
1. The outcome that the organisation is missioned to produce ...
2. The type of effects, or outcomes, that each design element (role) is accountable for producing ...
3. Who is accountable for producing and who for receiving each category of outcome,
4. What are the constraint/restraint boundaries governing the deployment of the capabilities ...
A design for action is a role and accountability design that defines who owes what to whom. In a stable environment, the roles can be dispatched in advance. This results in a schedule or a process design. Because things are sufficiently predicable, the premium is on efficient -- even six sigma -- execution of the schedule. The design for action is transformed into an plan of action by the people at the top of the organisation. [....] In this mindset, deviations from the plan are considered defects.