Reasons why strategic plans fail

There are many reasons why strategic plans fail, especially:

• Failure to understand the customer
  • Why do they buy
  • Is there a real need for the product
  • inadequate or incorrect marketing research
• Inability to predict environmental reaction
  • What will competitors do
    • Fighting brands
    • Price wars
  • Will government intervene
• Over-estimation of resource competence
  • Can the staff, equipment, and processes handle the new strategy
  • Failure to develop new employee and management skills
• Failure to coordinate
  • Reporting and control relationships not adequate
  • Organizational structure not flexible enough
• Failure to obtain senior management commitment
  • Failure to get management involved right from the start
  • Failure to obtain sufficient company resources to accomplish task
• Failure to obtain employee commitment
  • New strategy not well explained to employees
  • No incentives given to workers to embrace the new strategy
• Under-estimation of time requirements
  • No critical path analysis done
• Failure to follow the plan
  • No follow through after initial planning
  • No tracking of progress against plan
  • No consequences for above
• Failure to manage change
  • Inadequate understanding of the internal resistance to change
  • Lack of vision on the relationships between processes, technology and organization
• Poor communications
  • Insufficient information sharing among stakeholders
  • Exclusion of stakeholders and delegates