Answers to Management Failures

Multimedia Information Strategic Planning (MISP)

ANSWERS TO ASSIGNMENT NO. 2

Under what circumstances do strategic plans fail?

There are many reasons why strategic plans fail, especially:

1. Failure to understand the customer (why do they buy, is there a real need for

the product, inadequate or incorrect marketing research)

2. Inability to predict environmental reaction (what will competitors do, fighting

Brands, price wars, will government intervene)

3. Over-estimation of resource competence (can the staff, equipment, and

processes handle the new strategy, failure to develop new employee and

Management skills)

4. Failure to coordinate (reporting and control relationships not adequate,

Organizational structure not flexible enough)

5. Failure to obtain senior management commitment (failure to get management

Involved right from the start, failure to obtain sufficient company resources to

Accomplish task)

6. Failure to obtain employee commitment (new strategy not well explained to

Employees, no incentives given to workers to embrace the new strategy)

7. Under-estimation of time requirements (no critical path analysis done)

8. Failure to follow the plan (no follow through after initial planning, no tracking

of progress against plan, no consequences for above)

9. Failure to manage change (Inadequate understanding of the internal

resistance to change, Lack of vision on the relationships between processes,

technology and organization)

10. Poor communications (Insufficient information sharing among stakeholders,

Exclusion of stakeholders and delegates)

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Multimedia Information Strategic Planning (MISP), Multimedia University Cyberjaya , “ANSWERS TO ASSIGNMENT NO. 2”, 2 Dec 2005 <http://pesona.mmu.edu.my/~wruslan/MISP1/Assignments/detail/Answer-Assignment-2.pdf > (12 February 2009)