In our work with and in organizations, we see it up close: Plans are made but are not implemented or are poorly implemented. The promise of the vision of great future success is not reached. It's business as usual. The organization does not change. Strategic planning gets a bad name.

We have been asked to lead a "deep dive" workshop, Beyond the Basics: How to assure your planning will take your organization to the next level, at the Association for Strategic Planning's 2015 Annual Conference. To jump-start our thinking, we have cataloged 16 causes of planning failure and suggested remedies. Here's our "watch out for it and what to do about it" list, designed to help leaders involved in strategic plan implementation assure that their efforts take the organization to the next level.

I find that way too often organizational leaders let "means" be the reason for not seizing a compelling vision and achieving something great for the organization and its stakeholders. That's a shame, because the self limitation of "we don't have the means to do it" can be a false barrier. That's because "available means" are not just what's in the bank, who's on staff, available time and what's known today. If these were always the constraints, little progress would be made and little innovation would occur. What I suggest is thinking in terms of leverage: What can we do with what we have now to gain more force, scale and advantage? Who can we learn from, partner with and bring on board? What do we do now or know now that we can adapt and build on? How can we organize and think differently to get greater results and impact?

Do businesses need to be held captive by short term thinking?  Rich evidence that long term thinking can yield greater benefit to organizations was offered in presentations last week at the Association for Strategic Planning's annual conference in Long Beach, California.

A lesson I learned from my immersion in the world of climbing is that often conditions are not what they seem to be and can change very quickly. A calm dawn may suddenly switch to a howling mid-morning snow storm. An alluring route up the mountain may turn out to be an icy avalanche chute. The line leading to the peak may cross an unseen cornice, a fold of snow ready to collapse under the climber's weight. Night can fall like a knife, the cold endangering life. An inviting snowfield tilting upward can be embedded with hidden deep crevasses, waiting to swallow the climber who unknowingly missteps. In my work with organizations and leaders, I find parallels with climbing. Organizations and expeditions are on a mission to achieve an audacious goal; leaders and climbers are challenged to get up and down the mountain quickly and safely. That brings me to the big crevasse I spotted this week. That crevasse is the trap of being "under-resourced," which produces leaders unable to focus sufficiently on what's most important. Being trapped in the "under-resourced" crevasse can lead to excessive multitasking, ignoring important activities, missed deadlines, poor execution and even failure.

As a business journalist in the 1980s, I wrote about the convergence of computers and communications. Predictions were for a world of smaller, faster and more enabled hardware, and for communications systems and technology that interconnected these devices and the people using them. Well, that has certainly happened in the last 25 years.  But the rate of transformation, the scale of the change and the impact on business and personal paradigms have far exceeded the vision that was offered back then.

A current strategic planning client executive said today that our draft plan and report for his organization is "by far the most useful" he had ever seen.  Of course I was thrilled to hear this, but then I had to ponder why that would be. After all, most plans offer a strategic vision for the organization and strategies to move toward the vision, as well as address implementation.  Ours did as well.

Do you believe in ghosts?  I do, because I have found them lurking in many organizations.  The ghosts I encounter are often unrecognized by most people in organizational leadership, which is a pity because these ghosts are moving the organization in unseen and unhealthy ways or blocking movement that would be beneficial.

As we have stressed repeatedly, the case for strategic planning is compelling: Organizations that plan and implement their plan are more profitable, much less likely to fail, make better use of resources, anticipate threats and capitalize on opportunities,etc., etc.

A long while ago this blog was created to drive our vision that every organization has a strategic plan and is acting on it.  Our quest was and remains remedying what we saw and still see as a major deficit in many organizations: The lack of strategic thinking, strategic planning and plan implementation.

What distinguishes humans and human organizations from other organisms and their groupings are intentionality and goal-seeking. Wolves hunt in packs and flocks of geese fly south for the winter, but their survival behavior is a result of evolution, not of thought that produces group behavior and direction. This understanding of the advantage that accrues to humans who think and act as leaders and functional group members is why I shudder as though I hear fingernails screeching on a blackboard when I encounter an organization without intentional direction. It's simple to keep doing the same thing; it's thoughtful, indeed, smart to change what you do to achieve a better result (or avoid losing out to smarter organizations).

Here's a list of a dozen statements about strategic planning.  Can you tell the myths about strategic planning from the truths (or at least what I know to be the truths as a certified strategist who has been involved in planning for decades)?

Value is at the heart of business success.  Learn what customers and other stakeholders will value, find ways to create value, grow value and maintain the value you provide in the face of others' frontal assaults and flanking innovation. Yet, we are in a world that on the face seems price driven. Whether it be Wal-Mart versus Target, automobile dealers, commodities suppliers or trade groups, price is where the action seems to be.

In World War II the allies learned early on that it was better to sail merchant ships in protected convoys across the Atlantic Ocean as opposed to letting each ship chart its own course at its own rate. The escorted convoy offered more protection from deadly submarines, mines and air attack. Sometimes the protection was ineffective, even illusory, but the method did save ships and deliver essential food, goods and war material. Yet going it alone sometimes seems better. That's the theory of Blue Ocean, described by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne in their book, Blue Ocean Strategy. Blue Ocean encourages not doing the same thing as market leaders and competition and instead finding an open market space or niche that is uncontested. The iPad, Salesforce.com, Southwest Airlines, the Tata Nano, Netflicks - these are all examples of products and services that are more or less "Blue Ocean." Bue Ocean certainly seems compelling - clear water, no competitors attacking, growth and great destinations ahead!   Yet, Blue Ocean is easier envisioned than achieved.

What's the latest episode of your business? You know, what drama or problem or issue or sudden event are you wrestling with? Between news media encapsulation of whatever is happening at the moment as "the big thing to pay attention to" (something I somewhat regrettably helped promote as a former reporter and editor), television sit-com enactment of life as a series of short vignettes and Wall Street analyst intense scrutiny of every company move and short-term performance, we are taught to look at life as what's happening NOW in front of our noses. From a strategy perspective, this myopia is a very bad thing.

There are times in my life when I need to take a trek, explore new territory, look at things from different angles, hear new voices, let ideas simmer and stew, start new endeavors and then push them along to see where they go. That's what I've been doing the past seven weeks rather than blogging on strategic thinking and strategic action. So what did I learn and stir up that others interested in strategic thinking and strategic action might find useful? First, I spent the best part of a week at the Association for Strategic Planning's annual conference and scored some great in-depth learning about important tools and approaches.  I will delve more into what I learned and implications in future posts, but here are several things worth sharing now in condensed form.