Business Strategy/Failure of Strategy

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
  • customer looking for more advanced technology,user safety, aesthetic appearance
• Inability to predict competitive|environmental reaction
  • What will competitors do
  • Does your product fulfill the aspirational needs of customer
  • company structure and style not lending to find out the possible reactions; its style has always been 'knee-jerk' reactions.
    • Fighting brand management|brands
  • product has crossed its half-life period; no further research done to revamp/add more attributes
  • Company has not taken a full view of the market demand ;supplies reaching only a few pockets.
    • Price wars
  • an attitude of complacence or a fear of market expecting a permanent crash in prices due to price war
  • Will government intervene
  • Whether any USP is envisaged vis-a-vis the existing models
• Over-estimation of resource competence
  • Can the staff, equipment, and processes handle the new strategy
  • Failure to develop new employee and management skills
  • Does the organization know how to fit in new resources with old team
• Failure to coordinate
  • Reporting and control relationships not adequate;company is bogged down by silos, internal politics
  • Organizational structure not flexible enough
  • Keeping the teams in darkness about their roles in the overall progress of the project
  • Teams not given the big picture
• 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 give adequate briefing to senior management
  • Failure to be transparent with senior management team
• Failure to obtain employee commitment
  • New strategy not well explained to employees
  • No incentives given to workers to embrace the new strategy
  • Failure to train the junior level operatives for the new project
  • Failure to involve employees before the start of project
  • Failure of senior planners to understand the nitty gritties at the operational level
• Under-estimation of time requirements
  • No critical path analysis done
  • Senior and middle level managers not adequately exposed or trained to handle nitty gritties in execution
• Failure to follow the plan
  • No follow through after initial planning
  • No tracking of progress against plan
  • No consequences for above
  • No proper training to give feed back at the critical junctures
• 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