Every year nations, organizations, companies, faith groups spend huge amounts of money and resources making plans, but the sad reality is that few of those plans are implemented. This suggests to me that the world has prepared many people in making plans but less has been done in teaching them how to implement those plans. Many people blame economy as the contributing factor to their failure in implementing their plans. While the excuse may be partially true, the truth of the matter is that we have entities that are financially stable but fail to achieve their goals. I believe the world has enough good plans that if implemented, the world will be much better than how it is now.
Based on the facts presented, one may ask, “What’s the way forward to solve this problem?” The answer is simple. We should should stop spending our resources on planning, but we adopt good plans that were already made and invest our resources in implementation. A vivid example is that we only have two months before the year 2017 ends, but many of us have not implemented what we planned for this year. It is the high time we move our strategic plans from the documents that are sitting on the shelf to actions that can bring development. In my experience while serving as a church pastor, I have seen church departments coming up with good plans at the beginning of the year, but at the end of the year what we get are excuses instead of successes. Plans must be specific, measurable, achievable, reviewable and trustworthy (SMART). Stop impressing others by making complicated plans that cannot be achieved. It is better to have one goal for the entire year that can be achieved than having many plans that you cannot implement.
Let me finish by sharing with you the biblical counsel on planning and implementation. “Good planning and hard work lead to prosperity, but hasty shortcuts lead to poverty” (Proverbs 21:5 NLT). Let us choose prosperity instead of poverty by not only making good plans, but working hard to implement them.
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