Many business people love blaming the bad economy for why their business may be tanking, but Rich Horwath thinks there may be another culprit for languishing revenues – lack of a strategic plan. According to a survey in the Harvard Business Review, nearly 50% of U.S. business failures result from flawed strategies – not poor execution, which is where most people place the blame.

Part of this phenomenon is that companies create strategies, write plans, and then let them languish in a desk drawer, according to Horwath, strategy consultant and author of “Deep Dive: The Proven Method for Building Strategy.”

“Many companies suffer from an organizational lobotomy: mindlessly doing the same things in the same ways as their competition year after year and expecting miraculous new growth,” Horwath says. “They act like zombie bumper cars, constantly spinning in different directions because they’re always being reactive, instead of proactive. The irony is that most of them wouldn’t dream of going a year or two without preventive maintenance on their cars, like changing the oil, checking the filters and rotating the tires. Yet those same people will go a year or more without a similar type of diagnostic or tune-up on their business.”

Horwath believes a simple, five-step process can unlock the potential of the strategic plan:

“New growth comes from new thinking,” Horwath says. “Expecting new growth for your business without new ways of thinking about it is like a farmer expecting new crops to grow without first planting the seeds.”
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