5W2H turns intention into execution by answering seven questions for every action: What, Why, Where, When, Who, How and How much it costs. It is the action plan format most widely accepted in ISO 9001 audits and the easiest one to follow up in a meeting: one row per action, with no ambiguity about the owner or the deadline.
The difference between a 5W2H that works and one that decorates a drawer comes down to three details. First, the Who is always a named person, never a department — when an action belongs to everybody, it belongs to nobody. Second, the When is a date, not a month ("by August 15", not "August"). Third, the Why connects the action to real data or to a real objective: if you cannot justify the action with a number or a requirement, it probably should not be in the plan at all.
The example below is a complete plan to cut delivery delays in a small manufacturing company. Notice that the actions attack different causes of the same problem (predictability of the order book, a machine bottleneck, communication with the customer) — a good action plan comes out of a root cause analysis, not out of a wish list.
To keep execution moving, add a status column (to do, in progress, done, late) and review the plan every two weeks in a short meeting. An action plan with no review routine has a half-life of three weeks: the first two actions get done and the rest quietly dies. If you would rather fill yours in online and download it as a PDF, use the free 5W2H tool linked on this page.