The Failure of Strategy

Craig is based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and has worked with ProjectManagement.com for the last six years developing the various HEADWAY processes (Project, Change and Portfolio). He has hosted a series of webinars and is a business intelligence subject matter expert.

  Governance   Strategy  

Recall a time when an executive stood up and pontificated about your organization's latest strategic endeavor? When they were finished with their pronouncements, what were your initial thoughts?

Was it something along the lines of…

• "How do they expect to achieve that?"
• "Here we go again!"
• "What?"

I will let you qualify the degree of cynicism and sarcasm you wish to place on each of the above responses. For many of you, the strategic vision was implemented and the organization was better off. For many others, the results were probably the direct opposite, with the strategic vision being no more than a vision that withered on the vine.

This article is not about good strategy versus bad strategy; that is for another discussion on another day. The discussion is about the fundamental mistakes that organizations make in implementing their strategic vision. Let's look at some.

Where's the Plan?
First, in many cases, the strategy that is developed does not actually include any sort of implementation plan. How will strategy become real? In some organizations, there is an implementation plan that accompanies the strategy that defines clearly how the overall strategy will be achieved. It lists the initiatives (projects or otherwise) that the organization will undertake and then breaks them down to a level that is …

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