--- name: mutual-action-plan description: "The implementation-plan discipline pointed at a deal instead of an internal rollout: milestones toward the target close date, each owned by you, the buyer, or jointly — with days remaining, overdue and unowned milestones, and a mutuality check computed, not asserted, so a one-sided plan can't quietly pass as a real mutual commitment. Use when: The deal has real momentum — a business case is in motion or already built — and you want a dated, checkable path to close instead of a loose verbal understanding. You want to know honestly whether the buyer has actually committed to anything with a name and a date attached, not just nodded along. Not for: The deal is still in discovery — build a value hypothesis and a business case first; this tool assumes there's already a real commitment to sequence toward close, not a pitch still being made. You don't have a real target close date yet — pin that down with the buyer first, or the days-remaining and overdue math has nothing real to measure against." --- # Mutual action plan The implementation-plan discipline pointed at a deal instead of an internal rollout: milestones toward the target close date, each owned by you, the buyer, or jointly — with days remaining, overdue and unowned milestones, and a mutuality check computed, not asserted, so a one-sided plan can't quietly pass as a real mutual commitment. Family: Kaizen events · Format: .xlsx · Domain: commercial ## What it is A mutual action plan is the implementation-plan discipline pointed at a deal instead of an internal rollout: a real, dated sequence of milestones converging on the target close date, each one owned by your side, the buyer's side, or jointly. Days remaining, overdue milestones, and unowned milestones are all computed from what's actually in the plan, never asserted. The check that matters most here: if every milestone belongs to your own side, that's flagged directly, not smoothed over — a 'mutual' action plan where the buyer hasn't committed to a single dated action of their own isn't actually mutual, and that's exactly the kind of one-sided plan that stalls at the finish line. ## When to use it Use it when: - The deal has real momentum — a business case is in motion or already built — and you want a dated, checkable path to close instead of a loose verbal understanding. - You want to know honestly whether the buyer has actually committed to anything with a name and a date attached, not just nodded along. - You're heading into procurement, legal, or a multi-stakeholder approval process where the sequence of who does what, by when, genuinely matters. Not when: - The deal is still in discovery — build a value hypothesis and a business case first; this tool assumes there's already a real commitment to sequence toward close, not a pitch still being made. - You don't have a real target close date yet — pin that down with the buyer first, or the days-remaining and overdue math has nothing real to measure against. - You're tempted to write every milestone as something you'll handle, to avoid an awkward conversation about what the buyer needs to do — that's exactly the one-sided plan the mutuality check exists to catch. ## How to fill it in - **milestones** — Describe the deal roughly — a first-pass milestone sequence gets drafted, each with who it depends on (you, the buyer, or joint) and a target date. Assign a real named owner on each side afterward; that's never guessed for you. - **coverage** — Computed from your milestones and dates — nothing to enter here. - **risks** — Drafted alongside the milestones — what could realistically stall this deal before close. - **narrative** — Drafted from the plan actually built. ## What good looks like The example below sequences Northline Freight's path to close on the Beacon Analytics deal, built as the natural next step after Northline's own business case — one milestone is already honestly overdue, one on Northline's side has no named owner yet, and the plan genuinely splits across both sides rather than reading as Beacon Analytics doing all the work. Full worked example, on-screen and as a downloadable .xlsx: https://www.katafacts.com/katas/mutual-action-plan ## Common mistakes - **Writing every milestone as something your own side handles.** — A plan where every milestone is yours isn't actually mutual — the buyer never has to commit to a dated action, which is precisely the tell that a deal isn't as real as it looks, and this tool's mutuality check exists to catch it plainly. - **Leaving the buyer's milestones unowned rather than naming a real stakeholder.** — An unowned milestone on the buyer's side is a real risk to close, not a formatting detail — naming the gap is what lets you go get a real commitment before it costs the deal. - **Padding the plan with vague risks instead of specific, named ones.** — 'Priorities could shift' isn't a risk you can act on — 'the CFO sign-off historically takes 3+ weeks at this account' is, and it's the kind of specific finding this tool exists to surface. ## What it connects to Upstream: - **Business case builder** (`business-case-builder`) — The case that earns a champion's real commitment is what this plan turns into a dated, checkable sequence. - **Value hypothesis** (`value-hypothesis`) — A proof point already validated in a value hypothesis is exactly the kind of evidence a milestone's own risk can point back to. Downstream: - **Deal A3 — win-rate root cause analysis** (`deal-a3`) — A plan that stalls, or turns out to have been one-sided all along, is exactly what an eventual deal A3's root cause analysis would trace back to. ## Where AI helps Judgement — stays with you: - Deciding whether a drafted milestone's ownerParty judgement is actually right for this deal - Deciding which overdue or unowned milestone to chase down before it costs the deal Analysis — AI helps: - Drafting a milestone sequence and real risks from a rough description of the deal - Drafting the narrative from the plan actually built Drudgery — automated: - Computing days to target close, overdue count, and the ownership split - Flagging which milestones have no named owner yet - Exporting to xlsx in the house format --- Mutual action plan is licensed [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Attribution: Katafacts (katafacts.com). ## Using this skill Apply this method as part of whatever broader task, instructions, or deliverable you're already working on -- it's a method to use, not a standalone conversation to start. There is no generation tool for this catalogue yet, so draft the artifact's actual content yourself, following the fields above, the same way a person filling this out by hand would. The canonical guide page and a downloadable worked example (.xlsx) are at https://www.katafacts.com/katas/mutual-action-plan.