What are the challenges of strategic planning?
Common challenges of strategic planning
There are four main challenges when it comes to strategic planning: lack of ownership, poor communication, lack of alignment, and slow adoption. It's important to understand what's at the core of these challenges before we dive into solutions.
What is the hardest part of strategic planning? The answer to that is clearly its implementation. But making the process a 'whole of organisation' experience can ensure buy-in and leadership across the business. Bringing in other stakeholders including both suppliers and customers can further enrich the process.
- It's impossible to get everyone together.
- I'm too busy working in my company to work on my company.
- There are too many stakeholders.
- An unclear or inaccessible strategy.
- Poor communication channels for the strategy.
Strategic Challenges. The term “strategic challenges” refers to those pressures that exert a decisive influence on an organization's likelihood of future success. These challenges frequently are driven by an organization's future competitive position relative to other providers of similar products.
- Unrealistic goals or lack of focus and resources. ...
- Plans are overly complex. ...
- Financial estimates are significantly inaccurate. ...
- Plans are based on insufficient data. ...
- Inflexible/undefined team roles and responsibilities.
Planning is hard because predicting is hard. Of course, predicting is a lot easier when you have more information, but usually we have far less than we'd like, so planning is hard because of limited information. Planning is a prediction problem and an information problem.
The implementation stage is often the most difficult stage of strategic management simply because the implementation process is often poorly defined. A poorly defined implementation process causes confusion and uncertainty and makes it difficult, and often impossible, to successfully implement the strategy.
Difficulty of Planning the Sequence of Tactics
Implementation is a complex process because some strategies require a lengthy series of steps. A business strategy may also require a degree of timing to be successful, such as deciding the best time of year to launch a new ad campaign.
The most difficult strategy is the implementation strategy. Implementation Strategy involves executing a strategy with proper discipline, either in one's own life or in someone else's life. This type of strategy is difficult because there are chances of poor management of the implementation of the strategy.
Lack of leadership and poor communication were most frequently ranked as primary reasons for implementation failure. When leaders fail to lead, measure performance and communicate effectively, culture erodes and implementation suffers. All leaders must communicate, communicate and communicate.
How do you overcome challenges in planning?
- Emphasize the importance of planning. ...
- Schedule time for planning. ...
- Establish a budget. ...
- Engage those involved. ...
- Assign roles and responsibilities. ...
- Identify training requirements. ...
- Test your contingency plans. ...
- Use risk management tools.
Strategy is about choices
We tend to spend much more time on making strategic choices without the necessary time to assess resource and business process choices. Compounding this, there is often a tendency to carry out too many activities at the most economical price.
- Inability to plan or inadequate planning. ...
- Lack of commitment to the planning process. ...
- Inferior information. ...
- Focusing on the present at the expense of the future. ...
- Too much reliance on the organization's planning department.
