Every year, lead­er­ship teams in­vest sig­nif­i­cant time and ef­fort in craft­ing am­bi­tious busi­ness plans. Many of these plans fail to meet their ex­pect­ed re­sults. The fail­ure is rarely due to poor strat­e­gy. More of­ten, the re­al threat lies be­neath the sur­face. Hid­den with­in the cul­ture, lead­er­ship be­hav­iours and op­er­a­tional habits of the busi­ness, are silent sabo­teurs that qui­et­ly un­der­mine ex­e­cu­tion, long be­fore mar­ket forces have a chance to in­ter­vene.

What the plans fail to de­fine, are the be­hav­iour­al im­per­a­tives re­quired to bring stat­ed goals to life. They over­look the vary­ing lev­els of ex­e­cu­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ty that ex­ist around the lead­er­ship ta­ble and the need for sup­port sys­tems that help lead­ers over­come per­son­al and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al weak­ness­es. The re­al­i­ty is sim­ple. Busi­ness plans do not ex­e­cute them­selves. Peo­ple do.

If the ten­sions and con­straints that come with ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship are not re­solved, they do not dis­ap­pear. They linger be­neath the sur­face, sab­o­tag­ing suc­cess, silent­ly. When this pat­tern is left unchecked for years, it con­verts in­to pre-ex­ist­ing con­di­tions for fail­ure.

In my ar­ti­cle last week, I spoke about the haz­ards of not at­tach­ing a lead­er­ship strat­e­gy to the busi­ness plan. This week, I’m shin­ing a spot­light on the fact that some of the most dan­ger­ous threats to busi­ness plans are not the ob­vi­ous ones. They are the in­vis­i­ble, yet de­struc­tive pat­terns, that have be­come the norm.

Busi­ness­es with a high tol­er­ance for medi­oc­rity are es­pe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble. Take for ex­am­ple, a busi­ness that has a dys­func­tion­al re­la­tion­ship with time. Dead­lines are missed rou­tine­ly and laps­es in ur­gency at­tract no con­se­quences. These pat­terns be­come the norm, be­gin to shape cul­ture and busi­ness­es be­come blind to the di­rect re­la­tion­ship be­tween their time dis­ci­pline and their abil­i­ty to ex­e­cute.

Ex­e­cu­tion dis­ci­pline is one of the most re­li­able pre­dic­tors of busi­ness plan suc­cess. Busi­ness­es with a note­wor­thy track record of meet­ing com­mit­ments with min­i­mal mis­fires, pos­sess en­vi­ron­ments where busi­ness plans can thrive. An en­vi­ron­ment where chron­ic un­der­per­for­mance is the norm, may spell im­pend­ing doom for busi­ness plan suc­cess.

The dis­tance trav­elled mat­ters. In many busi­ness­es, busi­ness plans are con­ceived, de­signed and de­fined by lead­ers who spend lit­tle time on the shopfloor. These lead­ers are re­moved from the dai­ly re­al­i­ties of em­ploy­ees and dis­con­nect­ed from the lived ex­pe­ri­ences of cus­tomers. This gap leads to as­sump­tions and de­ci­sions be­ing tak­en at the top of the busi­ness, that are not aligned to the re­al sources of truth.

Even more con­cern­ing, is the fact that plans have to be de­ployed by em­ploy­ees who had no role in their shap­ing. Em­ploy­ees be­come fa­tigued by the frus­tra­tion of dri­ving plans that are at odds with re­al­i­ty. Peo­ple sup­port what they help to cre­ate. If the peo­ple who are en­trust­ed with con­vert­ing plans in­to ac­tion are not in­vest­ed in the process, planned and de­sired out­comes will di­gress. Many lead­ers fall in­to the trap of track­ing ac­tiv­i­ty, in­stead of progress. What mat­ters, is mea­sur­able ad­vance­ment against the goals that tru­ly move the nee­dle. High per­form­ing busi­ness­es un­der­stand the dif­fer­ence. They cel­e­brate mile­stones the that cre­ate im­pact, rather than ef­fort that mere­ly cre­ates mo­tion.

Con­stant­ly chang­ing pri­or­i­ties, is one of the most dam­ag­ing im­pacts to ex­e­cut­ing busi­ness plans. It’s tax­ing on em­ploy­ee morale and robs them of en­thu­si­asm. Es­pe­cial­ly when plans change con­stant­ly, with­out ac­com­pa­ny­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion up­dates. To em­ploy­ees, this sig­nals dis­re­spect and lack of con­sid­er­a­tion for their sense of di­rec­tion. Their nat­ur­al in­cli­na­tion there­fore, would be to re­treat, pro­tect their en­er­gy and with­hold their dis­cre­tionary ef­fort.

Busi­ness plan suc­cess is dri­ven by a del­i­cate bal­ance of hard tar­gets and in­spired hu­man ef­fort. The en­vi­ron­ment in which a busi­ness plan op­er­ates, of­ten is a key de­ter­mi­nant of whether the plan suc­ceeds or fails. Tol­er­at­ed be­hav­iour ei­ther sup­ports suc­cess, or ac­cel­er­ates fail­ure. Cul­tur­al norms ei­ther ad­vance the plan, or stand in its way.

Sea­soned lead­ers, who op­er­ate at high emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence lev­els, un­der­stand this re­al­i­ty. They do not miss dis­tress sig­nals as­so­ci­at­ed with the mov­ing parts of the plan and rec­og­nize ear­ly warn­ing signs. They are sen­si­tive to cul­tur­al cur­rents that in­flu­ence ex­e­cu­tion and most of all, they un­der­stand that busi­ness plans ei­ther rise, or fall, on their ac­tions.