Are you frustrated because your well thought-out strategic plan went nowhere? It is a common frustration for many owners and executives of private and public companies of all sizes and industries. Great plans often get wasted, sit on the shelf, don't get executed at all, or get executed very poorly. This blog is based entirely on my personal experiences with strategic plan and growth plan implementation across various entities and industries over my career as an executive, a member of a board of directors, an advisory board member, a consultant and an advisor. To bridge from a phrase trademarked by Farmers Insurance, “I know a thing or two because I have seen a thing or two.” I wish I could believe that I won’t have anything further to add to the commentary below regarding future failures, but unfortunately many other sources will also agree that more strategic plans fail than succeed. I am always very thankful for the successes.
Before you bash your laptop on your desk, scream at your employees or pull out all your remaining hair, I think it is usually helpful to take a breath, find a quiet place perhaps and try seriously to understand what went wrong. No one wants to make the same mistakes twice and you certainly don't want to pay for the effort twice. So… what went wrong?
Was it a bad plan or strategy?
Was there no implementation plan, project plan or action plan developed to guide the implementation process and make people accountable?
Did you assign a project manager or a champion within the organization to lead the implementation?
Did you allocate responsibility of key tasks to the wrong people for implementation?
Was monitoring and reporting of progress towards achievement of milestones, goals and objectives completed?
Did new crises in the business arise that distracted everyone from implementation?
Were the target dates too aggressive?
Were there too many strategies in the plan to maintain any degree of focus?
Did you have employee or project manager turnover that negatively impacted the implementation?
Was the plan not socialized or communicated well within your organization?
Were the strategic plan and related action / implementation plan not documented well?
Was your vision and leadership weak or perceived to be absent?
Did you as the owner or your leadership team take your eyes off the ball?
Did you find that some implementation team members had a litany of excuses (such as… too many other things to do, someone else didn’t get their task done, the dog ate my homework, etc.)?
After determining to the best of your ability what went wrong, there are usually good and better ways to fix or restart the strategic plan implementation. There are always alternatives. One alternative may be to toss the plan in the garbage and start over with a new planning process. Another option may be to restart the existing plan after tweaking it to correct for issues such as timing and assignment of personnel. Other common fixes might include:
Setting better and clear expectations
Prioritizing the strategies and action plans better
Better inclusion of key management and staff to get buy-in across the organization
Reallocation of responsibilities
Reset of target deadlines
Better monitoring and reporting on progress of implementation of the plan
Be more specific with strategies, action plans and milestones
Consider linking of employee’s pay to their performance related to key strategies to pay to help ensure a better focus on results
Reconsider priorities of the organization
It is easy and normal to be frustrated at the lack of progress particularly if the game plan was one of the first attempts in the organization to develop a formal strategic plan or a growth plan. I find often that owners and entrepreneurs will fall on their sword and take the blame themselves. It is genuinely helpful sometimes to admit your failure, get over it and just move on…particularly if that is true. One still has to figure out what to do next.
When you encounter issues with your business like this (especially if the emotional intensity of your frustration is high), sometimes the best thing to do in response to such a call for action ironically is to do nothing for a “moment”. Take a breath. Find a quiet place. Get up to a balcony on your business to give you a better overall perspective. Let everything settle in. Do some strategic thinking. Let the earth spin a little bit more. An ideal “moment” in this context might be an hour, a day, a week, a month or longer. Sometimes knee-jerking or obsessing over issues like this can be counterproductive. When your key people and relationships are at play, then sometimes extra care is warranted. Business by definition is dynamic, circumstances change and you may have an opportunity to choreograph a better and more elegant result than you might achieve if you simply jump up and down in a “tantrum” dance.
Even in the circumstances of a failed plan or failed implementation, all is not lost. Generally speaking a significant part of the value of the strategic planning process is found in the journey and not so much the destination or the output. The learning in the process of developing the strategic plan usually stays with you. As a result you usually acquire a deeper understanding of your business, your potential opportunities and challenges, and how you are positioned in your industry and the market.
Companies and organizations need some type of plan to guide the organization's development, growth and strategic direction. Flying by the seat of the pants is not usually an effective strategy. Explicit documentation of your company’s game plan is usually helpful and necessary as a communication tool. This is particularly true for larger organizations where many people need to understand and be part of the implementation of some strategies, but it simply isn’t possible or practical to directly involve everyone in the strategic planning process.
If you are frustrated from failed or even mediocre attempts at strategic planning or implementation in your organization, I would encourage you to evaluate your past experience as a learning opportunity. You might then be in a better position to either fix identified issues or salvage your most recent plan… or replace it with a better process and plan on your next attempt. You can’t replace the hairs that you pulled out of your head in your frustrated grasping, but you can allow new hair to grow in.
A feature article by Dwayne Coben of Coben Advisory Inc. (www.coben.ca). Coben Advisory is a specialized corporate & executive advisory firm that offers services to help our clients plan, improve, grow and/or exit their businesses.