Why do strategies fail?

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“A vision without a strategy remains an illusion” - Lee Bolman

This quote by Lee Bolman is self-explanatory: To break away from an illusion and achieve goals, it's important to focus on strategies. Here the execution of the program is a fine balance between activities and timelines in a logically thought out strategy.

An organisation formulates and puts forth strategies when it is the need of the hour for the business or a need for radical change to “shake things up”. In the normal mix of things, there could be either a bad or a good strategy, as all decisions are made keeping in mind the current business goals, financials, economics and competition.

There is, however, another side to it that is to find out why strategies fail. And irrespective of being good or bad, it is very difficult to pinpoint a specific reason.

Execution is largely dependent on the cultural nuances, emotions and experience that are carried by people who eventually make those decisions. This is the primal reason of execution failing. Here are the reasons as to why there is a need to create a fine balance:

An organisation needs to understand its environment and identify its focus points based on the meaningful priorities it needs to set. Understanding the impact of strategies on its people and the organisation, would make for a more conducive office environment that helps the business grow.

An unexpected external risk may come up. Maybe the manager didn't include a particular team, or didn't assign the right people to lead the project, and so on, the list could be endless.

So, before initiating strategies, it's important to make sure that everyone is onboard and is committed to make the new strategy work.

The author is the Managing Director at O.C. Tanner.