Nov 2025 - Strategic Plans… Inspect what you Expect

There’s an old saying: “You can’t expect what you don’t inspect.” In simple terms, you can’t rely on something, or someone, to deliver if you haven’t verified their ability to do so. In business, this applies equally to people, plans, and systems.

I see this often when reviewing companies’ strategic planning processes. Most strategic plans are very detailed documents with tasks, timelines, resources, points of contact, investments, deliverables, trend analyses and out-year projections. However, challenges almost always exist in one area, reporting and follow-up. Organizations often struggle with evaluating progress in order to determine whether the plan is working, and decide whether to stay the course or make deliberate adjustments.

Returning to that old saying, many strategic plans lack true “inspection.” The plan is created, expectations are set, and it’s often not until late in the year that it becomes clear those expectations won’t be met, by which time it’s often too late to affect change.

As noted in my April 2024 blog on Strategic Planning, evaluation is one of the six key fundamentals:

Evaluation: The plan must include clear measures—such as productivity ratios, cost reduction data, or sales generation—and a deliberate schedule for assessing progress over time to guide adjustments as needed.

Strategic plans succeed through design and disciplined follow-up. Discipline, by the way, is another one of the six key fundamentals for strategic planning. By inspecting what we expect, we stand a better chance of planning success.