Phil Hardwick

Last week TARP Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky issued a report that “blasted” the Tresury Department’s handling of the $700 billion bailout program. An article in USA TODAY provides a good summary. There is a lot to read in the report, but a comment made by the IG relates to something that this writer believes is at the root of where the United States is today. He said (emphasis added) that, Treasury’s failure to provide more details about the use of TARP funds has helped damage “the credibility of the program and of the government itself, and the anger, cynicism, and distrust created must be chalked up as one of the substantial, albeit unnecessary, costs of TARP.” By the way, did you know that the Special IG has a Web site where you can sign up for reports, press releases , etc. from his office?

I've seen research reports that put the failure rate of strategic plans as high as 80 percent and as low as 30 percent. How can there be such a wide difference? Well, the discrepancy in those rates is easily understandable when one looks behind the numbers. It's not that the researchers looked at the same data and came up with different conclusions. It's more about who was was surveyed and how the survey was conducted. One recent survey "of 163 executives" reported that the respondents said that 82 percent of strategic plan failure was preventable and offered the following reasons for why strategic plans fail: 1. Failure of unforseen external circumstance (24%); 2. lack of understanding among those in developing the strategy and what they need to do to make it successful (19%); 3. the strategy itself is flawed (18%); 4. poor match between the strategy and core competencies of the organization (16%); and 5. lack of accountability or holding the team