I have been thinking about how thought leadership drives change and why it is so important to be exposed to thought leaders and their ideas. Here's a case in point.

The Association for Strategic Planning's World Strategy Week, a big event I helped create as ASP's president, is underway this week.  It features a series of webinars with panels of leading strategy thinkers and practitioners from around the world, accompanied by a variety of other events worldwide presented by ASP's chapers and partners.

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.