Strategic planning is a core activity for any business leadership team. I’ve written about this process before and defined it in terms of establishing long- and short-term goals. Strategic planning is a critical way of setting a vision, building a consensus, allocating resources, and establishing benchmarks and expectations.
It’s important to be realistic about the fact that even a really thoughtful, deliberate strategic plan can come up short. Leaders need to be nimble enough to pivot away from failed plans and develop new ways forward.
But today, I want to focus on a simple question: Why does strategic planning fail? What are some of the roadblocks you might encounter as you attempt to execute that strategic plan?
Here are a few possibilities.
Reasons Why Strategic Planning Falls Short
You develop a plan just for the sake of having a plan.
I see this more often than you might think. Business leaders and managers know that they’re supposed to have a plan, so they go through the motions of putting one together… but they don’t necessarily think ahead to the practical realities, or to what will happen when the rubber meets the road.
If you’re not serious about executing your plan, then there’s really no point in…
