Organizations struggle to get timely results when they do strategic planning for several reasons.

-Lack of buy-in – In the process of constructing the plan, they are not buying in. They are saying that they are, but they are not really buying in. They do not believe that this is the right direction to go. We find that quite often, people will raise their hand to indicate that they are in support of going a particular way, when in fact, when we further explore, we find that about 70 percent of them do not believe that they are going to be able to achieve the goal. So, they are not buying in to begin with.

-Lack of actionable plans – With the exception of salespeople, who are able to track their progress, most organizations do not have plans that dictate who is going to do what by when. They do not take the goals and break them down into projects or take the projects and break them down into tasks over time, nor do they assign who is going to do what by when.

-Inadequate performance evaluations – Performance evaluations are a big obstacle to achieving timely results because they do not include what a person’s contributions are towards achieving the initiatives of the organization. They include other things, but they do not include contributions. Also, the frequency with which performance evaluations are conducted, by and large, is annually or bi-annually. We find that they need to be conducted once a quarter minimally, or even eight to ten times per year as brief conversations about where we are and what has to be done next.

-Lack of appreciation – The lubrication for our relationships is appreciation. Organizations do not celebrate enough. They focus on where they are not, where are they disappointed and where they need to really kick in, but they do not celebrate the progress. They do not build the momentum on the baby steps first, and they fail at getting people believing that they are making progress on their goals.
High performing organizations get timely results by going from thought to finish. How do they do that? They do that by having an equal emphasis on the strategic planning as well as the execution and monitoring process.