According to an article by Methods Framework most strategic planning efforts fail to deliver the intended results.
- The Harvard Business Review estimates the ROI from traditional planning approaches to be 34% or less.
- The Economist Intelligence Unit estimates that organizations realize just 60% of the potential value of their strategies.
- Even more startling are statistics from analysts like Kaplan and Norton that suggested that 90% of organizations fail to successfully implement their strategies.
Why does this happen? The reasons vary, but the most common are:
- Poor prioritization
- Lack of detail planning to support plan goal achievement
- Poor communication and coordination
- Strategy and culture misalignment
- Accountability missing from plan goals
- Poor planning governance
- Ill-defined strategic goals
- More art than science in the planning approach
- Failure to define the “real” outcomes in a concise set of statements
- Variability in the plan caused by language
- Failure to define and execute initiatives successfully based on the plan
I’m proud that all of the clients whom I have done strategic planning with, and continued to be involved in implementation have shown an ROI of many times the investment in our work.