How procurement decisions made upstream determine whether strategy is adopted downstream
Strategic planning engagements frequently open with a version of the same sentiment: we do not want a plan that sits on a shelf. Executives say it, boards repeat it, and it is woven into the goals of the work itself. And yet, plans continue landing on shelves, not fully realized. The outlook is sincere and nearly universal, which is exactly why the result is worth examining. When a widely shared objective continues to prove elusive, the cause is unlikely a lapse of effort or a shortage of talent. It is more likely to be structural.
We advise nonprofit executives, and the boards that steward them, through strategy, organizational design, and transformation work. We see the shelf problem firsthand in our work, and our experience suggests it begins earlier than many assume. The failure is often assigned to delivery, but the conditions for it are set earlier, in what the organization chose to procure.
A challenge in strategy work is the most common type of approach can also be the one least equipped for adoption. This is the pattern we call outputs without disciplines, and it is the subject of this insight series, where we will examine why strategic plans often fail to move from document to action and outline the disciplines, governance, and implementation practices that help organizations turn strategy into sustained operating reality.
The shelf issue is a procurement problem, not an effort problem
A strategic plan is an output. So is a roadmap, a goal framework, a dashboard. Outputs are visible. They are what a board adopts and a funder can point to, and they are what most scopes ask for. Making those outputs stick is a separate body of work entirely: change management, risk, governance, performance management, communications and training, and reinforcement. These are the mechanisms that move a plan from a document people agreed to into a framework that continues to guide decisions over time. Adoption is not a launch event. It is reflected over time in whether budgets, board discussions, and leadership decisions continue to align with the plan. We will explore these disciplines in greater detail later in this series. The point here is narrower. When a scope focuses solely on the output in the procurement process and omits the disciplines, the plan arrives complete but adopted by no one, because no one was resourced to drive its adoption.
Said plainly, this is a procurement problem before it is a delivery problem. The disciplines that operationalize a plan are missing from the result because they were missing from the requested service. To see how reliably that happens, it helps to look at what organizations ask for when they set out to buy strategy.
The adoption gap often starts in the scope
In our pipeline, the Strategic Plan is the single most common engagement type, ahead of every other category by a wide margin. It is also where the gap is sharpest.
Consider what these scopes ask for: an implementation roadmap appears in nearly all requests. Interviews, roadmaps, goal frameworks, and executive briefings are specified as a matter of course. The disciplines that make outputs land are named far less often, and the gap between the most-requested deliverable and the least is wide.
In many strategic planning scopes, change management is not named as a deliverable. Nearly every plan of late asks for a roadmap to follow; far fewer ask for the discipline that helps determine whether the roadmap is followed. Nearly every plan asks for a roadmap to follow; none asks for the discipline that determines whether the roadmap is followed. That is the structural finding in a single line. The most common way organizations procure strategy is the way most certain to produce a document and least likely to resource its adoption.
The gap is designed in before the work begins
A scope is a statement of what an organization is willing to pay for, and most strategy scopes ask for the artifact rather than the adoption. A request for a five-year plan and an implementation roadmap is a request for a document and a list. It is not a request for the people, cadences, and governance that would carry the document into operation, and what is not asked for is rarely resourced.
A few habits hold the pattern in place. Funder and board expectations tend to reward the visible plan, what can be presented and filed, over the quieter disciplines that have no artifact to show on the day a plan is adopted. Organizational design is a telling example. It is often understood as essential to a sound plan, but it is not always named explicitly in the scope. It is assumed rather than requested, and assumed work does not become realized.
It is important to distinguish between who influences the work and who ultimately defines the scope. Boards do not generally procure strategic plans. The executive, most often the executive director or chief executive, commissions the work and writes the scope; the board approves and stewards it. The expectations that produce shelfware are shared across executives, boards, and funders, but the scope itself is an executive instrument. That is where the gap is opened, and where it can be closed.
Downstream, phasing and milestones finish what scope started
Scope development is only the first move. The sequence of the engagement shapes adoption just as much. Implementation is routinely deferred to a later phase. Milestones are tied to delivering the document rather than to adopting it. The change apparatus, the network of people who would carry the work into the organization, is by design not yet active in the window when momentum is highest. By the time implementation arrives, the energy that would have carried it has usually dissipated, and the people who felt ownership in the planning room have moved on to other work. A plan can be sound, well-facilitated, and genuinely supported in the room, and still be sequenced into a drawer.
That window, the gap between an early decision and the apparatus that would make it stick, is the challenge we will dive into in our next installment in this insight series.
Making a plan stick is a discipline problem, not a matter of effort
None of this is an argument against capable teams or nimble methods. A strong firm and a flexible approach are necessary. They are simply not sufficient, because what determines whether a plan still governs decisions a year later is not how hard anyone worked. It is whether the plan was bought with the disciplines needed to operationalize it.
That is the throughline of this insight series. In the subsequent articles, we will:
- Examine why early wins so often fail to stick, and the operating discipline that lets them
- Define the disciplines that determine adoption and the consequences of overlooking each
- Provide executives with a practical guide to commissioning strategy that is purpose-built to be adopted
- Distinguish a strategic plan from a management system, describe different plan types, and explain how they require different adoption disciplines
- Conclude the series with a practical diagnostic leadership teams can use to assess the plans they already have in place
The shelf is not where strategy goes to fail. It is where strategy goes when the work of adoption was never bought. Our aim, across this series and in the engagements behind it, is to help organizations procure facilitators of a strategy built to govern decisions, not the authors of a plan merely adopted and admired.
From Strategy to Execution
A strategic plan is only one component of a successful transformation. Organizations also need the governance, accountability structures, and operational disciplines that support long-term adoption. BDO works with nonprofit organizations to align strategy, organizational design, and implementation efforts so that plans can better translate into sustained action. To discuss your organization's priorities, contact us to speak to a member of our nonprofit strategy professionals.