Why Strategic Planning Fails - Or Perhaps the Better Question Is: Why Do We Begin Strategic Planning Too Soon?

Several years ago, I developed what I believed was one of the best strategic planning processes of my career.

It was comprehensive. It engaged stakeholders from across the organization and the community. It began by identifying strengths rather than simply cataloging problems. It included environmental scanning, community conversations, asset mapping, implementation planning, and a process I developed years ago called Action Analysis, designed to translate broad goals into specific actions, responsibilities, and measurable outcomes.

I was proud of it.

The client never adopted it.

For a long time, I assumed they had rejected good strategic planning.

Looking back, I think I was the one who misunderstood.

The organization was not looking for transformation.

It was looking for relief.

Its leaders faced staffing shortages, financial pressures, regulatory uncertainty, governance challenges, and the endless demands that confront so many nonprofit organizations today. They wanted a plan that would help solve those problems. What I offered instead was a year-long process that required changing how the organization thought, made decisions, engaged stakeholders, and measured success.

I had confused strategic planning with organizational transformation.

That experience taught me one of the most important lessons of my consulting career.

Perhaps strategic planning does not usually fail because organizations develop poor plans.

Perhaps it fails because organizations begin planning before they are ready.

That conclusion is supported by much of today's thinking about organizational strategy. More than thirty years ago, Henry Mintzberg argued that strategy is not something organizations simply write. It develops through learning, adaptation, and informed decision making. John P. Kotter demonstrated that successful organizational change depends less on producing a plan than on creating commitment, building coalitions, and sustaining implementation. More recently, the Bridgespan Group has emphasized that nonprofit strategy requires making disciplined choices about where limited resources can produce the greatest impact.

Those ideas suggest that many organizations do not have a strategic planning problem.

They have a strategic readiness problem.

Readiness has very little to do with intelligence, dedication, or mission.

It has everything to do with whether leaders are genuinely prepared to make difficult choices.

Are we willing to stop doing programs that no longer advance our mission?

Can we redirect resources from familiar activities to new priorities?

Will we change long-standing practices if the evidence suggests we should?

Are we prepared to hear uncomfortable truths from staff, volunteers, donors, residents, clients, or community partners?

Can our board distinguish governance from management?

Will we measure progress honestly and hold ourselves accountable?

If the answer to most of those questions is "not yet," another strategic planning retreat is unlikely to change very much.

Planning, in that circumstance, becomes an exercise in producing a document rather than building an organization.

“This is where advocates of Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), myself included, should practice humility.”

ABCD is a powerful framework because it reminds us to begin with strengths rather than deficits. Every organization possesses assets, experienced staff, committed volunteers, trusted relationships, institutional knowledge, community credibility, and opportunities that often go unnoticed when conversations focus exclusively on problems.

But assets alone do not produce change.

Organizations must still make difficult choices.

They must still establish priorities.

They must still strengthen governance, improve financial sustainability, build leadership, evaluate programs honestly, and execute consistently.

An asset-based perspective is not an alternative to disciplined management.

It is a way of making disciplined management more effective.

At Consultants for Community Resources (CCR), that realization has reshaped how we think about strategic planning. Asset Mapping remains an essential part of our work. Action Analysis continues to provide a practical framework for turning goals into implementation. But I have come to believe that there is another question that should be asked before either of those processes begin.

Is the organization ready?

Over the coming weeks, CCR will introduce a new assessment tool called the Strategic Readiness Index.

Rather than evaluating the quality of an organization's existing strategic plan, the Strategic Readiness Index will help nonprofit organizations, foundations, healthcare providers, aging services organizations, and community coalitions assess whether they have the leadership, governance, organizational capacity, decision-making discipline, and commitment necessary for strategic planning to succeed.

Because perhaps the most important lesson I have learned is this:

The success of a strategic plan depends less on the quality of the document than on the readiness of the organization to embrace meaningful change.

The best strategic plans are not simply well written.

They are written by organizations that are ready to act.

Selected References

Bridgespan Group. (2023). Strategic Planning for Nonprofits and NGOs.

Kotter, J. P. (1996). Leading Change.

Kaplan, R. S., & Norton, D. P. (1996). The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action.

McKinsey & Company. (2023). The State of Organizations 2023.

Mintzberg, H. (1994). The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning.