ABSTRACT
The American writer William Arthur Ward is attributed the following quotation: 'The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails'. This defines the moment at which one change from talking to acting. The organization should start to manifest new behaviours. Once goals are known and the options are selected, a course plan has been formed: the roadmap. The roadmap needs to be elaborated into concrete actions and placed in a logical sequence, diverging parts of the organization need to work together to design the action plans. The transactional and the contextual environment both play a role during action planning. The way an organization is organized and structured influences the way the organization is set in motion. In fact the structure often reflects the customers and the external reality: it was no accident that the change from geographical regions to business lines coincided with the macroeconomic trend of increasing ICT capability and globalization.
