Yet, Another Reason Strategies Fail No doubt, your organization needs a strategic plan. How else will a diverse gathering of talented team members coordinate their efforts to deliver on their promises, on time and at a quality standard they except of themselves? Often mystified as complex, hyper-analytical all-powerful guarantees of future success, many boards and executive team believe if they can just have a weekend retreat, get through a SWOT analysis, mark up lots of post-it notes and leave with a refreshed vision and each tasked with new work plans, this will result in a new strategic posture or guarantee future success. This approach may very well get the job done. However, the research on strategic planning over the years still suggests, most strategies fail. When they fail, or fail to get implemented, they do so for a few predictable reasons, mostly a disconnect between good intentions and underdeveloped capacities.
A great strategic intent, left in the hands of a weak execution system is a recipe for pain at work. Your strategy, basically the how that undergirds the fulfillment of any promise you make to your stakeholders, relies on a chain of handoffs set in motion when a customer signals they want what you have offered. If a weak link is found anywhere along that chain, your promise falters. Strategic planning, untethered from the capacity to fulfill the strategy, is designed to fail. Its a case of working harder, not smarter.
Strategic plans are fundamentally communication devices, offering teams a unified framework for agreements, now and into the planned future. When a strategy is clear, everyone in the fulfillment system knows:
Where the effort is going, the destination or outcomes.
Why they are doing things they way they are doing them.
What their part is in the plan.
How the jobs are going to get done -- by whom, by when and at what standard.
What stuff they have to work with to get the jobs done.
Sounds simple. And it can be when a team has taken the time to get clear on each of these critical capacities. When even one of these elements is murky or underdeveloped, the entire fulfillment chain is threatened. Leadership, and I mean all of the leadership within your fulfillment system, is the secret sauce to working smarter and not harder. Clear alignment between members of yourStrategy Core -- Board, C-Suite team, Program Chiefs -- makes all the difference int he world, literally, in whether your strategic intent will result in intended outcomes. Strategy development must simultaneously be accountable leadership development. If strategic planning fails to include capacity building equal to those plans, then your organization will do nothing to change the impression that strategic planning can be a waste of expensive resources, time and staff goodwill, as many corporate scholars suggest.
Build the people, invest in the infrastructure, shape the culture as you build the three-to-five year strategic plan, and not only are you likely to progress toward your ideal future, you'll do so with the force multiplier of a team convinced their efforts can succeed, and that they matter in that plan. Your stakeholders, especially your customers, will benefit most from from the investment. Strategy and capacity are not either/ors, but both/ands.
