Avoiding major strategic planning risks

- Strategic planning takes a lot of time … and a lot of energy. … It is a high resource type of exercise. … Unfortunately, many times that process … can be a worthless pain, and the worst thing that can happen … with a strategic plan is everybody puts in all this effort, … and then it gets archived, put on a shelf, … and never looked at again. … Now there are some warning signs that you can look for … to determine if your strategic planning process is flawed. … First, initiative proliferation. … Do you have to use multiple pages just to add up all … the different initiatives you're thinking about pursuing? … The second risk is thinking too small. … All the initiatives that are on your list are really small, … incremental improvements to your business … and don't really advance you to your strategic goals. … A third is thinking too big. … All the initiatives are huge, and everything has to line up … perfectly, and it's a really large bet that you're taking … with the organization. … Sometimes you can do what I call starving the kids. …