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
