It’s time to take your strategic plan off the shelf
How long has it been since your last strategic planning event? Six months? Four months? Several weeks? Perhaps a better question would be, what strategic discussions have you had with your team since that planning session? Have you completed any tasks that get you closer to achieving your goals in 2019?
Recently, I decided to do a little research on what keeps organizations from achieving success as defined in their strategic plan. Needless to say, the results were not surprising. Care to guess the number one reason strategic plans fail and status quo persists? That’s right, lack of follow through. The failure to clearly define what success looks like came in a close second.
Accountability: The Key to Strategic Success
These findings confirm what my clients have been telling me over the past few years: having a plan and working a plan are two very different things. And while many leaders understand the importance of action, many fail to put that knowledge into practice. In fact, a recent survey by AchieveIt suggests as many as 90 percent of strategic plans are never implemented, which leads to rather predictable underperformance. These results raise the question: When it comes to working your credit union’s strategic plan, who’s holding your board, leadership, and internal team accountable?
