No matter how well you plan, your strategy still has the potential to fail.

Understanding the twelve common reasons why strategies fall short – and more importantly, how you can avoid them in your own planning process – can ensure that you’re aware of these potential pitfalls, setting up your business for success.

The success rate of strategy execution is incredibly low. The fail percentages found in scientific studies range from as low as 7% to as high as 90%, with an average of about 50% (as reported in a 2015 review article by Candido and Santos in the Journal of Management & Organization).

Improving strategy execution – and ensuring that yours is as successful as it can be – comes down to understanding and avoiding the many reasons strategy fails. Here are the twelve most common ones:

1. Lack of clear strategy
2. Poor communication
3. Lack of commitment
4. Insufficient or inadequate resources
5. Ambiguous or conflicting goals
6. No clear priorities
7. Ambiguous responsibilities
8. Lack of performance information
9. Silo behavior and sub-optimization
10. Strategy not adapted to changes
11. Poor leadership
12. Over-complexity

By avoiding these common pitfalls, you can set your strategy up for success. But even the best-laid plans can sometimes go awry, so be prepared to adapt and adjust as needed.

Stay tuned as we explore how to avoid each of these strategy killers in more detail.