Here’s a dirty little secret: Strategic planning doesn’t work – at least most of the time.

For most organizations and leadership teams, the time and money put into their planning retreats is a lost investment.

Most new clients tell me, if they’ve even done planning in the past, they can’t remember their strategic priorities. Or, they can’t remember where their strategic plan is. And they definitely can’t describe whether, or how, they’ve completed their plan.

This is sad. These organizations are missing out on a fantastic opportunity to grow as a team, to rally around common goals, and to build leadership.

Here is what prevents successful implementation of a strategic plan:

Front-loading is devalued: Time must be set aside in advance of a planning retreat (or whatever process is used) to explore the right questions and take the time to get good answers. For a planning process to be successful, everyone in the room needs to have sufficient information to make good decisions.

Solution: Take time to prepare to plan.

Planning is done for the wrong reason: I receive a call on Wednesday and the caller says, “We have a grant due on Friday and we need a strategic plan. Can you come by for a couple hours tomorrow and help us write one?” Donors and lenders do the right thing when they ask to see a strategic plan. However, they’d likely do better to ask for proof of a history of planning and successful implementation. Leaders who are reactive and unintentional in planning cannot be counted on to implement complex or longer-range plans.

Solution: Plan regularly for the purpose of accomplishing goals and building team cohesion.

Leaders don’t include their teams:  Leaders often view planning as a ‘leaders only’ task. Or worse, the executive creates a plan, solo, and mandates it to the uninspired masses. Even when the leader is particularly charismatic, they usually only generate enthusiasm for the vision; but fail to inspire the commitment to follow through.

Solution: Make sure to include key people who will need to implement the plan and those who will be impacted by the plan. Some of the most useful ideas come from administrative assistants.

Unresolved conflict and/or culture of distrust: I’m very reluctant to facilitate long-range planning for organizations that have major team health issues. People who don’t work together well cannot think or decide together well.

Solution: Focus on addressing the patterns, dynamics, systems or the organizational habits that are not serving the organization well.

Too many goals: If everything is a priority – then nothing is prioritized. An organization should identify the top 5 goals from a list. These are your priorities. Of the top 5, determine the absolute, do-or-die top 1 goal that is relevant to the overall success of the organization. Make this the focus and the rallying point of the organization.

Solution: Accomplish more by focusing on less.

Indicators of success are vague: Define what success looks like. How will you know success when you see it? If this is hard to define, then it’s likely you aren’t yet clear on what you’re trying to accomplish. Vague goals lead to poor implementation. Ambiguity also supports the development of inter-departmental politics or silos. Last of all, lack of clarity reinforces the tendency to retroactively define success based on survival.

Solution: Develop goals that can be measured with a yes, a no, or a number.

Next steps and mid-range goals are not defined: Planning processes should always end with a clear answer to the question: “What do I need to do on Monday?” If we develop fantastic and inspiring long range plans – but no one knows what to do next, or what the next few months of work should add up to – nothing will happen. The plan will work its way to the back of a filing cabinet and be forgotten.

Solution: Build time into the planning process to define the mid and short-range goals. Identify who is responsible for those goals and corresponding time frame.

Goals are not regularly reviewed: It is the norm for many organizations to conduct a planning retreat, insist on receiving the plan wrapped up in a fancy report, find a way to leverage a few quotes from the report into a couple months of team rallying and marketing, and then forget the whole thing. As a general rule, leaders should review and re-read their priorities daily. Again, if you focus on 5, this review shouldn’t take more than 60 seconds. Isn’t it worth 60 seconds to save a year’s worth of organizational wandering?  

Solution: Review priorities regularly and frequently.