Strategic Plan Failure:

What are the key contributors to Strategic Plan Failure?  How do organizations can avert such failures?  By taking care of the possible pitfalls, organizations could proactively prevent strategic failure.  Addressing these issues should help companies to more successfully implement the plans. Let us discuss a few of these points:-

Communication: - One leading cause for failure of strategic plan could be 'poor communication'.  It takes many a form.  Groups within develop many plans, but do not communicate to other inter-connected people or departments.  Vision and strategy are not communicated to stakeholders to understand what are they supposed to do it.  Similarly new initiatives are taken, but not communicated to groups concerned properly.  Expectations and opinions are not shared openly or thoroughly.  Naturally implementation of plans suffers at the cost of the company.

Leadership: - Weak leadership.  Lack of motivating leadership.  Poor allocation or improper resource allocation, poor follow-up, inadequate checks and balances, misaligned goals, strategies and actions, inefficient rewards and punishments, cover-up, etc. all these reflect on leadership qualities and organization failure in strategies.

Also, despite leadership, lack of initiative, willingness from other personnel who are expected to implement strategies can hurt the implementation of strategies.  Everyone is expected to lead wherever or whatever position one is holding.

Powers without authority to act; no delegation of authority could spell failure to plans.

No Plan behind the Idea:-  Big ideas. But no proper plans.  Undeveloped intentions.

No specific action plan for employees to scale-up or assess their actions.  Concepts should be workable and implementable even at the lowest level of hierarchy.  Project concepts and plan must specify into doable action plan.

Passive Management:-   Assumption by leaders that everything is fine, or that plans are working as set forth could  be a death-knell unless constant monitoring and follow-up are carried out constantly and continuously.  Poor and inexperienced managers and management to execute the planned strategies only prove passive management can cause nothing but failure.

Motivation & Personal Ownership:-  Every employee wants to know what is in it  for me?  Not necessarily fat pay packet, or rewards or incentives.  People want to do something, make a 'difference' to their job to get motivated for job satisfaction.  People must realize they must achieve company's goals to support their personal goals.  Lack of motivation leads to lack of employees' support to company's strategic plans and goals.

If the company takes care of communication to be transparent, motivations, plans behind the company’s goals and objectives, passive to pro-active management and leadership, failure to strategic plans could be averted.