When do you pull the plug on a strategy?

Every strategy deserves well-thought out exit criteria.

THINK ON IT: When do you pull the plug on a strategy?

Someone once said there are six phases in every project: enthusiasm, disillusionment, panic, search for the guilty, punishment of the innocent, and praise and honor for the non-participants. 

It would be funny if it weren’t so true. 

No strategy is ever implemented without periods of challenge and doubt. When a team embarks on a new strategy, they often do it with a lot of excitement and enthusiasm.

Until it gets hard.

Suddenly, the honeymoon is over and disillusionment and panic phases set in. The team, and even leadership, begins to doubt whether they are doing the right thing.

This is where true leadership is tested. 

When the panic sets in, do you return to the reason for the strategy and reaffirm your commitment to your mission? Or do you succumb to the anxiety of the organization and prematurely pull the plug? 

There are plenty of times that a strategy needs to be refined or even sidelined, when the great idea you once had really can’t come to fruition with the path you’ve chosen. A new path must be considered.

But far too often good strategies are abandoned out of the emotional fatigue that comes during the most challenging phases of implementation. These leaders experienced a failure of nerve and pulled the plug on what could have been a great strategy if they had only pushed through the panic and led with courage. 

No leader sets out planning to retreat on their strategy. And neither do you.

So, how will you steel your nerves when the going gets tough?

One of the best ways for a leader to shield themselves from a failure of nerve is to decide in advance what conditions warrant a change in course. Premium members, read on to learn about the three anxieties that can derail you and how to create healthy exit criteria for your business strategy. (Become a Premium Member. Paid subscribers get access to nearly 100 tools and how-tos on implementing strategic topics, including a 7-part series to help leaders build their own strategic capacity.)

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“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.”

— Henry Ford

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