Getting Started with Plan Board

How the Plan Board works

Everyone has some way to manage their to-do’s. You might stick stickies, create lists, make mental notes, send yourself texts, or track every action in a sophisticated, technical system. No matter how it works, your to-do system needs to help you do two key things: 1) capture and track everything you need to do, and 2) prioritize what to do next. Your LeadFirst Plan Board List pulls anything you own which is not yet in your plan into one list, prioritized by the next time you want to do something about each item.

Here are a few things to remember about your Plan Board:

Every MOR and project assigned to you is pulled into your Plan Board.
Some items may come from work breakdowns, and others could come from meetings. You can also add stand-alone action items right from the Plan Board.
The Plan Board groups items by their Stages (i.e., None, Not Started, In Progress, Completed and Cancelled)
You can move important items from your Plan Board to your plan so they are included in your self check-in and in your quarterly check-in.

How to find your Plan Board

By default, the Plan Board opens in a pinned side panel when you open your plan. It will stay open even as you navigate to other places in the system. You can close it by clicking the X.

After closing the Plan Board, you can open it again by either returning to your plan or clicking the Plan Board icon in the upper-right.

Note:

The orange badge on the To-Do List icon tells you how many items you have in the Today bucket.

Changing how often the To-Do List opens

If you prefer your To-Do List to NOT open each time you return to your plan, you can change it to only open when you click the To-Do List icon in the upper-right. Open the main three-bar menu > click on your hyperlinked name > at the bottom of your Team Member screen, turn off Auto open To-Do.

Re-ordering your Plan Board List

The Plan Board organizes items by their stages: None, Not Started, In Progress, Completed, and Cancelled.

The goal is to keep your tasks sorted by what you're currently working on and what’s coming next.

None: Use this stage for items you don’t need reminders for.
Ready to Assign: stage indicates that a task or project has been reviewed and is prepared for assignment.
Not Started: New assignments will appear here. When a task is assigned to you, you’ll receive a LeadFirst message, allowing you to review it and decide when to follow up.
In Progress: Tasks you are actively working on.
Completed: Finished tasks.
Cancelled: Tasks that are no longer relevant.

To stay organized, regularly update your task stages and ensure your focus remains on the most important work. See the next section for adding tasks to your plan.

Important:

By default, a project or MOR stage is set to Not Started, whether it is created from a plan, work breakdown, or added from a meeting.

You can change an item's follow-up date by double-clicking on the follow-up flag (or clicking the edit pencil ) > then either select one of the follow-up time buckets or select a specific date > and Save.

As time passes, items will work their way up your Plan Board based on their follow-up date, eventually appearing in your Today time bucket.

Tip:

For items you do not need to be reminded of, you can leave the forecast date empty.

Adding items to your plan

What is the relationship of your plan to your Plan board? The saying “Don’t lose the forest for the trees” applies here. Your Plan is the forest; your most important priorities (MORs and projects) that connect to the bigger picture (your department’s plan and the organization’s strategy). Your Plan Board is the trees; the devilish details of getting real work done. We often find Plans overwhelmed by small projects. Keeping those small projects out of the plan but in the Plan Board allows the plan to do its job: provide focus on your most important work.

Your Plan Board also functions as your inbox. Any new item assigned to you will appear here.

To add an item to your plan, hover over the row > click the add to plan icon > select the plan you want to add to > select the section of the plan to add to; the system defaults to Projects (rated quarterly).

Updating your Plan Board during your self check-in

You likely often (weekly, monthly, etc.) complete a self-check-in on the MOR and projects in your Individual Plan. This process focuses on your top priorities. But it is possible for plans to feel “out of touch” with the reality of your work because most of our day-to-day activity is more tactical. That is why we include a step to clean up your Plan Board within the self-check-in process. During your self-check-in, consider the following:

Clean up. Clean up your Today time bucket. Any To-Do’s that are overdue are likely piling up here. Mark anything complete you already have done. Reschedule the item’s Follow-Up for when you actually think you can work on it.
Plan. Plan what is needed Today, Tomorrow, and This Week.
Look ahead. Look ahead at Next Week, This Month, Next Month, etc. Do any of them need to be moved up? Is there anything missing from your To-Do List? Do you need to add any items to support these future actions/projects?
Prepare. As you clean up your To-Do List, prepare for your weekly team check-in. The weekly team check-in widget will prompt you to talk with your team about your big items, but smaller tactical issues should be added as agenda items.