As executives immerse themselves the 2025 strategic planning season, the process can feel like a balancing act. Developing a strategic plan that both drives meaningful change and satisfies stakeholders is a complex task, made even more challenging by the fast-evolving landscape of marketplace needs, industry trends, and technological advancements.
However, many leaders unknowingly fall into common pitfalls that can derail their planning efforts. To avoid these, it’s crucial to approach strategic planning with intentionality, foresight, and a willingness to embrace change. Based on insights drawn from value proposition redesign practices and real-world business challenges, here are some of the most common strategic planning pitfalls to avoid.
Starting with products and services, not marketplace needs. One of the most frequent missteps in strategic planning is jumping straight into product and service enhancements without first taking the time to understand the modern market’s evolving needs and challenges. Business leaders must resist the temptation to tweak current offerings in response to customer or client feedback that might be incomplete or outdated. Instead, focus on uncovering the deeper, underlying needs of your target market by conducting thorough research, listening to stakeholder pain points, and analyzing trends in your industry.
A valuable framework to use here is the Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) approach, which focuses on understanding the motivations and desired outcomes that drive customers to engage with your company. By first identifying what your audience is truly seeking to accomplish, you can tailor your offerings to meet those specific needs and deliver greater value.
Incrementalism: The trap of small tweaks. Incremental improvements—small, conservative changes to existing programs or services—are tempting because they feel safer and easier to implement. However, this approach often keeps businesses stuck in the status quo, unable to generate the breakthrough innovations that the marketplace craves. A common sign of incrementalism is allocating resources primarily toward existing programs, while overlooking opportunities to invest in new and innovative initiatives. While there may be pressure to avoid risk, executives need to think big and bold to stay relevant and provide distinctive value in a competitive landscape.
One way to avoid this trap is to ask yourself whether your current strategic plan is simply aimed at maintaining the status quo or driving transformative change. Big, bold ideas are uncomfortable because they challenge the way things have always been done. But if your business isn’t willing to explore uncomfortable ideas, it risks losing relevancy and, ultimately, revenue.
Focusing on the rear-view mirror instead of the windshield. While celebrating past accomplishments can be beneficial for morale, it can also blind you to the changes and challenges on the horizon. Your strategic plan must be forward thinking. Instead of concentrating solely on what has worked before, actively look for new trends, disruptions, and future opportunities within your industry. Be willing to question current assumptions and take a proactive stance in identifying where your Association could be heading.
A key way to do this is by conducting regular environmental scans—assessments of external factors such as economic conditions, technology trends, and regulatory changes—that could affect your business in the future. The goal is not just to adapt to these changes but also to position your organization to lead them.
Overemphasis on risk avoidance. A conservative approach to strategic planning, driven by a fear of failure or desire to avoid risk, can lead to stagnation. Many business leaders, especially in times of uncertainty, focus heavily on maintaining stability rather than pursuing opportunities for growth. Organizations that prioritize short-term stability over long-term innovation tend to struggle with customer retention and engagement. Bold moves are necessary to stay ahead of the curve, even if they involve some level of risk. To break free from the risk-avoidance mindset, it’s essential to build a culture where calculated risk-taking is encouraged, and failure is seen as part of the learning process.
One way to manage risk without stifling innovation is to adopt a dynamic feedback loop. By continually testing and refining new initiatives based on marketplace feedback, you can make adjustments early, minimizing risk while still pursuing meaningful change.
Benchmarking only against similar organizations. Benchmarking—comparing your organization’s performance to that of similar organizations—can be helpful, but it should not be the sole basis for your strategic planning. When business leaders rely too heavily on what their peers are doing, they risk blending in with the crowd rather than standing out.
The more valuable approach is to look for inspiration outside your immediate sector. Explore what leading organizations in other industries are doing to innovate and create value for their customers or stakeholders. By bringing fresh ideas and perspectives into your strategic planning process, your organization can differentiate itself and offer unique value propositions not found elsewhere in the marketplace.
Failing to allocate resources toward innovation. A common pitfall in strategic planning is the disproportionate allocation of resources toward maintaining existing programs, leaving little room for investment in innovation. While it’s important to sustain core functions and services, innovation must be an explicit priority to ensure future relevance. That requires rethinking traditional resource allocation models.
Consider setting aside a percentage of your budget specifically for new initiatives, even if it means trimming less impactful programs. The key is to strike a balance between sustaining what works today and building the capacity for what’s needed tomorrow.
Prioritizing short-term gains over long-term vision. In the race to show immediate results, many organizations fall into the trap of prioritizing short-term wins at the expense of long-term strategic goals. While quick wins can boost morale and offer evidence of progress, they can also distract from the bigger picture and lead to unsustainable growth or missed opportunities for lasting impact.
As you build your strategic plan, it’s essential to maintain a clear focus on your organization’s long-term vision and objectives. This requires the discipline to make decisions that may not show immediate results but will set the foundation for future success.
Relying on feedback loops focused only on current services. Another common pitfall is over-reliance on feedback loops that center solely on evaluating current services rather than exploring potential new offerings. Feedback is essential for assessing the effectiveness of your current initiatives, but it should not limit your organization’s ability to innovate.
To avoid this trap, ensure that your feedback loops include mechanisms for identifying unmet customer needs and exploring new value creation opportunities. Encourage your existing customers to think beyond what they currently receive from the company and consider what they might need in the future. By shifting the focus of your feedback mechanisms, you can uncover valuable insights that will guide innovation and help you stay ahead of the curve.
Focusing on ‘strategic priorities.’ One of the most dangerous things a business leader can possess is an extensive list of “strategic priorities.” Traditional strategic planning tends to overemphasize long lists of these while underemphasizing concrete plans for executing on those priorities. As a result, a shocking 60 percent to 90 percent of strategic plans fail to fully materialize. The problem lies not with planning itself—identifying strategic priorities is vital—but rather with the lack of clear execution protocols to activate those priorities. Without adequate focus, it becomes challenging to achieve critical mass on any specific initiative, causing frustration and initiative fatigue across teams.
Moreover, priorities trick leaders into complacency, fostering the false belief that merely identifying something as “important” will somehow guarantee execution. Like overly ambitious New Year’s resolutions, priorities rarely catalyze change without concerted plans for accountability and follow-through. Despite good intentions, only 8 percent of people fully achieve their resolutions each year.
Endeavor to transform priorities into quantifiable, actionable objectives centered on specific execution plans. For instance, rather than just identifying “improved customer retention” as a priority, drill down to concrete goals like “reducing customer churn by 2 percent within 6 months.” This clarity of purpose fuels strategic discipline. In today’s disruptive business landscape, both planning and execution are indispensable. However, leaders must resist conflating priorities with outcomes. A paradigm shift focused on execution-based strategic management is crucial for channeling priorities into real-world impact and results.
Strategic planning is more than just an annual exercise. It’s an opportunity to take stock of where your organization is today and where it needs to go in the future. By avoiding these common pitfalls, you can ensure that your 2025 plan not only positions your organization for success but also delivers meaningful, lasting value to your customer base.
Drew Yancy, PhD, is founder & CEO at Teleios Strategy, a strategic planning, leadership development, executive coaching and succession planning advisory firm.
