The Top Five Strategic Planning Mistakes
By Kathleen Quill, CAE, CBA
There are lots of reasons strategic plans fail, but after years of facilitating organizations and departments in strategic planning, here are my top five reasons strategic plans fail: 5. Failure To Obtain Buy-in
It may be the best plan since the invention of the light bulb, but if you did it all by yourself (or worse! – with the participation of only top management), the plan will fail. In the end, the very people who will be responsible for implementing the elements (objectives and tasks to accomplishment) have to understand and buy-in to the objectives and reasoning behind them. Ever hear “It wasn’t MY idea?” Yep, you’ll hear lots of that. 4. Biting Off More Than You Can Chew
Five. That would be the maximum number of big, hairy, audacious goals you can effectively tackle in a planning period. It is tempting to have 8, 10 or more, but you will spread your focus and energy too thin to accomplish much of anything and end the year disappointed. 3. Setting Goals Too High or Too Low
Closely allied to #4, goals should be achievable but a good, hard stretch. Saying “have zero write-offs” is a great goal, but a setup for failure if you have a sales manager who has the ability to override your decisions about open account sales (and you can’t change him)! We also tend to set goals low, hoping we can WOW management by exceeding them. News flash! We in management know when you are sandbagging. Really, we do. And what you learn in the process of failing to meet all your goals is often as important as the goals themseves…hiccups in your processes, staff issues, etc. 2. Setting “What” Goals Rather Than “Why” Goals
If a suggested goal is “Decrease DSO by 5 days by the end of the year,” you should be asking “Why do we want to do that?” The answer is the REAL goal! It might end up being “Increase available cash by 5 percent” or “Speed up the order-to-cash process to maximize available cash to the company.” 1. Failure to Monitor Progress (Or Lack of It)
Most plans fail not because they were poor, because even a poor plan is better than none! They fail because all the work goes into the front end: You work hard on a great document, everyone signs off on the great piece of work you did, and your staff even embraces it. And then it goes on the shelf, where it gathers a good head of dust until next year.
 The hardest part of strategic planning is not the planning and holding the retreat, going through the planning process, thinking up great goals or following a nice blueprint of how to prioritize goals or the creation of a pretty, top-shelf document you can be proud of. The hardest part of strategic planning is being successful at implementing and keeping the plan alive after the retreat is over and everyone signs off on the results! 
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Regular monitoring and reporting is a key to success. Don’t get too fancy, either. I like an “odometer” approach: List the goal, the starting point and the current status. If a major objective to meeting your goal of “Increase cash available to the company” is to decrease DSO by 5 days, show DSO at start, DSO this month and the goal DSO. Make it simple and easy to understand, and track progress. Put a white board up outside your office with the info, so everyone knows where you stand. The hardest part of strategic planning is not the planning and holding the retreat, going through the planning process, thinking up great goals or following a nice blueprint of how to prioritize goals or the creation of a pretty, top-shelf document you can be proud of. The hardest part of strategic planning is being successful at implementing and keeping the plan alive after the retreat is over and everyone signs off on the results! These five tips can help you be successful. Kathleen E. Quill, CAE is president of NACM South Texas, Houston, TX. She can be reached at 281-228-6100 or kqhouston@aol.com.
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