What are the major problems in doing strategic planning?
John Johnson
Updated on February 23, 2026
The five most common challenges in executing a strategic plan are:
- Poor goal setting.
- Lack of alignment.
- Inability to track progress.
- People not connected to the strategy.
- No measurements or leading indicators.
What are the strategic problems?
Some areas that typically produce Strategic Issues are:
- Strategic Focus.
- Strategic Competencies.
- Culture modification/Organizational change.
- Resource limitations.
- Strategic alliances/acquisitions/mergers/joint ventures.
- E-commerce products.
What makes a bad strategic plan?
Bad strategy, Rumelt says, arises from emphasizing planning over execution, fuzzy goals over policies and action, and high-sounding words and phrases over concrete directions and tasks.
What is the most difficult part of strategic planning?
The implementation stage is often the most difficult stage of strategic management simply because the implementation process is often poorly defined. A poorly defined implementation process causes confusion and uncertainty and makes it difficult, and often impossible, to successfully implement the strategy.
What are strategic issues in strategic planning?
A strategic issue is essentially an issue – an unresolved question (i.e., a fundamental policy question) or critical challenge needing a decision or waiting for some clarifying future event. It is strategic in that it affects or has a major impact on successfully achieving the organization’s mission.
What are examples of strategic challenges?
External strategic challenges may relate to customer or market needs or expectations; product or technological changes; or financial, societal, and other risks or needs. Internal strategic challenges may relate to an organization’s capabilities or its human and other resources.
Why strategic plan is the hardest to prepare?
First, strategy is about making the right choices. We tend to spend much more time on making strategic choices without the necessary time to assess resource and business process choices. Compounding this, there is often a tendency to carry out too many activities at the most economical price.
What are the pitfalls of a strategic planning process?
Strategic planning is rarely strategic and most frequently results in pages and pages of plans that sit unused in senior leaders’ desk drawers. Almost every HR practitioner has been a part of an unsuccessful strategic planning process or has been asked to participate too late to have any impact on the success of the process.
Which is a key result area in strategic planning?
In the context of strategic planning, ‘Key Result Areas’ are areas of business operations where it is profoundly important to achieve results. For non-profit Sport organisations, typical Key Result Areas would include:
What does external issues mean in strategic planning?
“External” issues refer to all factors with roots outside the entity; they do not necessarily relate to issues that come from outside the UN. It is also important to gather information about the target clients (i.e. those who are the recipients and beneficiaries of the services delivered).
What happens if you don’t have a strategic plan?
For whatever reason, they make great strategic plans and then, fail to create the specific framework necessary for strategic planning follow-up. Without a follow-up framework and accountability system, action items and follow-up plans and actions that make the execution of the strategic plan a success, don’t happen.
