Business Strategy/Failure of Strategy
Reasons why strategic plans fail
editThere 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