Why do plans sometimes fail

Take the Cascade personality test. Share this post:. Lack of buy in from the team You can't execute a strategy alone! Use tools like surveys, meetings and face to face discussions to gather feedback from your whole organization on topics like: - The organization's strengths and weaknesses - How they feel about the current Vision of the organization - Who they admire in the industry competitors and why Involving people as early as possible will make the next phase of the process communication go so much more smoothly!

Unclear Objectives Strategic planning is both easy and hard. In our experience, well written objectives are those which: - Have a clear link to the Vision of the organization - Contain a clear action a verb , a metric where possible, as well as a tightly defined window of execution a start and end date - Have a single owner or captain - others can collaborate of course, but a single owner avoids ambiguity - Are reported on a bare minimum of monthly at a regular strategy session or board meeting A good way to 'test' the clarity of your objectives is to ask various people throughout the organization whether they remember and can clearly articulate them - as well as clearly describe how their own work and tasks relate back to a given objective.

Failure to Account for Business as Usual Pragmatism is a key part of any successful plan. There are two ways that you can deal with this: Include BAU activities as part of your strategic plan.

In theory, a well written plan with clear Focus Areas should encompass the vast majority of your BAU activities. Managing clients and such-like may not form part of the high level organizational goals - but I'm pretty sure that 'Client Satisfaction' would. This is probably simpler than a but it does have some pitfalls attached. If you're not careful, you can end up creating a divide in your organization, with some individuals focused on BAU and others on strategic change.

This is in stark contrast to point number 1 - where I strongly argue that total buy in is key to successful execution! Loss of Momentum We've alluded to this already, but so often with strategic plans, we see a great deal of enthusiasm at the start of the process, followed by a gradual tailing off and return to business as usual.

Delivering against all of the points above and below will help immensely in making sure this doesn't happen to you - but here are a few other tips you can employ to stop your plan falling into a black hole: Schedule regular 'Strategy Meetings' into the diary - ideally weekly. Use the word Strategy in the meeting title - that way whenever anyone looks at their schedule for the week, they'll be reminded about the importance of delivering against the plan. Allocate specific days or even half days to 'Strategy Work' - this can apply to marketers, sales people, developers, it really doesn't matter.

Create a block of time in everyone's diary say a Friday afternoon where they agree to not respond to emails or do any kind of admin, but instead will work solely on aspects of delivering the strategic plan. More importantly, don't let people start ignoring or cancelling this time! Find a third-party to act as a strategy mentor.

This doesn't have to be a paid-for consultant or anyone with formal training - it could just be a friend or family member.

Essentially the goal here is to have someone who is untouched by business as usual activities who will regularly ask you questions about where your plan is up to. It's key that this person is NOT inside your organization to allow them enough distance and space to be untainted by the day to day pressures of running the organization.

Unwillingness to Iterate Another vote for pragmatism here. Lack of Alignment Effectively communicating your strategic plan isn't the same thing as ensuring alignment. Failure to Celebrate Success Last but certainly not least, is one of the nicest and most rewarding but so often overlooked things that you can do to successfully deliver your plan.

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Agile Project Management. Resource Planning. This is part of a blog series with practical tips on how to be more productive, cultivate creativity and growth within your company, and nurture a vibrant culture among your teams.

This certainly holds true in the project management world, in our daily business endeavors, and in our personal lives. Of course, unexpected events such as delays due to road work or other reasons can, and most likely will, require you to deviate from any anticipated plan. It usually helps if you have some ideas about what will happen if roadblocks or other delays impede your course contingency plan.

The same analogy can be applied to strategic initiatives and project plans. With so many factors, it can certainly be difficult to estimate plans accurately. However, there are plans and there are plans. There are plenty of reasons why bona fide project plans can and do fail. The good news is that these can be addressed preemptively with project management tools that help you reduce the likelihood of a nuclear meltdown.

Ownership, on the other hand, takes time, and is about honoring the right process. It needs more work upfront, but is more efficient in the long run as it ensures that the foundation for the strategy to succeed is there right from the get-go. Lack of short-term concrete actions. In most cases, we plan way ahead, often in the three- to five-year range when making a strategic plan.

Identify concrete actions over the next three to six months and commit to them fully. If you are serious about making your strategic plan work, you will also identify a point person for each concrete action and set appropriate check-in dates for the important milestones.