Did Our Last Plan Actually Stick?

Most companies do not have a planning problem. They have a plan that stopped existing somewhere around week three, and nobody said so out loud.

This is the scorecard I use to find out which one you have. Twelve statements, four sections. Read each one and answer honestly about your last plan, not the one you intend to write this year. Count the statements you can answer yes to without arguing with yourself. The scoring is at the bottom.

You do not have to give anyone your email to use it. Nothing here is gated.

Section 1: The plan itself

1. Everyone on the leadership team can name this year’s top three priorities, unprompted, in the same words. Not the file location. The priorities.
2. The plan says what the company will not do this year. A plan with no sacrifices in it is a wish list with a budget attached.
3. Every priority has a number attached that tells you whether it is working, and that number gets looked at by someone other than the person responsible for it.

Section 2: Ownership

1. Every priority has exactly one named owner. Not a department, not two co-owners, not “the leadership team”.
2. Each owner can make the decisions their priority requires without asking you first. If the owner has the responsibility and you kept the authority, you own the priority and they own the reporting on it.
3. Somebody was told no this year, on the record, because of the plan. If nothing was refused by pointing at the plan, the plan is not being used to decide anything.

Section 3: The rhythm

1. There is a standing meeting where progress against the plan is the agenda, not a section at the end of the agenda.
2. When a priority goes red, something actually happens in the next two weeks. Turning a cell red and discussing it again next month is not a rhythm; it is a ritual.
3. The plan has been changed at least once since it was written, deliberately, with the change said out loud and a reason given. Plans that never change are usually plans nobody is using.

Section 4: What died

1. Something on last year’s list was formally killed rather than quietly abandoned.
2. You can name what got dropped to make room for this year’s priorities. If nothing was dropped, the priorities were added to a full plate and the plate decided what actually happened.
3. Nobody is still working on an initiative that is no longer in the plan. Zombie projects are the most reliable sign that the plan is decorative.

Your score

10 to 12: the plan stuck. Your constraint is not planning, and another offsite is not what you need. Spend the money on the hardest priority instead, or on the executive whose function is behind.

6 to 9: partial. This is where most companies land, and the pattern is nearly always the same: the plan is sound and the rhythm is weak. The document is not your problem. What happens on a Tuesday in March is your problem. Look at which section scored worst. If it was ownership, you have a decision-rights problem rather than a planning problem. If it was rhythm, the plan is fine and the operating cadence around it is missing.

0 to 5: it did not stick, and it will not next time either. Writing a better document will not change this, because the document was not the failure point. Something structural is stopping the plan from reaching Tuesday, and it needs to be found and named before the next planning cycle, or you will spend two days producing another artifact.

What the low scores usually mean

The three most common failure patterns, in the order I see them:

The plan never got translated. It exists as a strategy, not as a set of decisions someone can act on Monday. Everyone agrees with it and nobody knows what to do differently.

The owners do not have the authority. People were handed accountability for outcomes they cannot decide about. They escalate, the escalations queue behind the CEO, and by the time the answer comes back the quarter is gone.

Nothing was killed. The new priorities were added on top of a year of existing commitments, so the organization quietly resolved the overload by continuing what it was already doing. This is the most common, and the most invisible, because nothing about it looks like failure until the year ends.

All three of those are decided in the room, during planning, not afterwards. Which is why the fix is rarely a better facilitator of the same conversation.

If you scored under ten and planning season is coming, the two days are worth doing differently this year. Strategic Planning is $12,500 plus travel: two days onsite with your leadership team, with leader interviews and a financial review before I arrive, and a plan in your team’s own words with owners attached. The reason the outside facilitator matters is simple and has nothing to do with credentials: you cannot facilitate a fight you are in. If you want the longer diagnosis first, why strategic plans fail covers what actually kills them.

Questions About Planning That Sticks

Why do strategic plans fail?

Three patterns cover most of it. The plan never got translated into decisions somebody can act on Monday. The owners were given accountability without the authority to decide, so everything escalates. Or nothing was killed to make room, so the organization resolved the overload by continuing what it was already doing.

How do I know if our strategic plan is working?

Ask whether anyone has been told no this year by pointing at the plan, whether every priority has one named owner who can decide without asking the CEO, and whether something actually happens within two weeks when a priority goes red. If all three are no, the plan is a document rather than an operating tool.

What should a strategic plan actually contain?

At minimum: the top priorities in language everyone repeats the same way, an explicit list of what the company will not do this year, one named owner per priority, a number per priority that someone other than the owner looks at, and a standing meeting where progress against it is the agenda rather than the last item on it.

How often should a strategic plan change?

At least once a year on purpose, and in between whenever the facts change enough to warrant it. A plan that has never been altered since it was written is usually a plan nobody is using to decide anything. The requirement is that changes are deliberate and stated out loud, not that the plan holds still.

Do we need an outside facilitator for strategic planning?

You need one when the CEO needs to participate in the argument rather than run it. You cannot facilitate a fight you are in. If the session is mostly information sharing, run it yourself; if it is about real trade-offs between people who disagree, someone who is not in the fight has to hold the room.