Developing a strategic plan is in many ways the easiest part of the planning process. Implementation of the strategies identified in the plan can be far more difficult. Barriers to implementation include preoccupation with the day to day details, lack of teamwork and conflicting priorities. The focus of this article is on the tools that can help overcome barriers and ensuring that key strategies are accomplished.
Barriers to Strategic Plan Implementation
Once leadership has identified the key strategies that must be accomplished by their organization, why aren't they more easily achieved? Often management and staff encounter the following barriers:
- Over attention to the day to day duties – It is easier and some times more comfortable to attend to the daily requirements of the job rather than tackle the projects that have been identified as key to organizational sustainability and success. The usual tasks as well as the unforeseen fires that have arisen tend to be more familiar and because they must be dealt with, they are top of mind. Important strategies may be perceived as overwhelming and too difficult to tackle so they are subject to more procrastination.
- Lack of teamwork – Leaders must collaborate and negotiate with others to achieve key strategies that require cooperation across organization divisions. This type of teamwork may be difficult for senior leaders who are accustomed to issuing a directive to their subordinates and having it executed. According to Michael Beer and Russell Eisenstat in their article, "The Six Silent Killers of Strategy Implementation and Learning," top leaders tend to operate within their silos. This makes cross organization cooperation difficult.
- Conflicting priorities – Even though the top three strategies of the organization may be agreed upon, how to achieve them may expose conflicting priorities and agendas among leaders. For example, two executives may need the time and attention of a third executive, who has priorities of their own. Consequently, the third executive may choose to pursue his or her agenda rather than those of the other two, even if they are the priorities of the organization. These conflicting issues have to be resolved.
Tactics for Overcoming Barriers
The following tools can help overcome the impediments to strategic plan implementation:
- Focus – Too many priorities means no action and not everything can be or is a priority. It is too easy to get distracted by multiple “must dos.” Leadership must limit the focus of the organization on two to three significant actions and agree on what those top two to three goals are.
- Clear communication – Each level of leadership has to clearly articulate the goals of the organization to their subordinates and what their role in achieving that aim is. Each rung of the leadership must identify the tasks that must be done and then focus the efforts of their employees on those two or three big actions.
- Teamwork – The senior leadership team has to identify the potential conflicts inherent in achieving the top goals and resolve them. This requires trade-offs and negotiation and can require difficult conversations about resource allocation and expectations concerning the work of each executive or staff.
- Regular check-ins – If the deadline for a particular project is looming it provides a powerful incentive for getting the work done. Regular check-ins provide a framework for ensuring that staff accomplishes their designated tasks.
- Accountability - Holding staff accountable for not achieving those tasks that they said they would is another means of ensuring that the plan's main goals get implemented. Staff must understand what they are responsible for and what the ramifications are for not carrying out those actions.
Implementation of the strategic plan is the most important aspect of planning. Identifying the barriers to implementation and overcoming them is a key success factor for any organization. Teamwork, resolution of conflicting priorities or hidden agendas and accountability will help ensure the implementation of the organization's two to three top goals.
Michele Dane - I have more than 25 years in strategic planning for healthcare, social service and not-for-profit organizations. In this capacity, I ...
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