The High Cost of Missing Buy-in
March 5, 2026 | By David M. Wagner
“Let me ask your opinion…”
My new acquaintance leaned over the table so I could hear her over the buzz of the coffee shop. She was eager to pick my brain – without being overheard.
She then described the situation at her employer, a mid-sized nonprofit.
Sometime before her tenure there, the board and leadership team had developed a strategic plan for the organization. They were about halfway through the period covered by the plan.
To their credit, the leadership team had implemented a high degree of accountability. Staff reported movement on strategic metrics every quarter. The board reviewed progress at every other meeting.
And that was where the good news stopped.
The Disconnect
My colleague shared a few more details that demonstrated some concerning disconnects between board and staff expectations:
The “strategic plan” included goals and high-level descriptions of success indicators, but not specific metrics or initiatives. Those were left to the staff to identify – after the fact and without dialog with the board or leadership.
The staff, having been left out of the planning process, had to guess at the meaning of the board’s goals and success indicators, absent meaningful context or opportunities to engage.
Staff were pressured to show measurable progress against goals every quarter. That pressure created an incentive for staff to design metrics they could easily improve over time – regardless of whether those “improvements” marked meaningful progress or not.
In short, staff were handed vague mandates “from on high,” told to make measurable progress every quarter, and then charged with deciding what “progress” meant and how to measure it.
Whatever the “metrics” show, I suspect this plan will do little to elevate the organization’s mission and impact.
Opportunities Missed & What Could Have Been
As I told my companion over coffee, this sounds like a classic case of missed opportunities to create buy-in where it matters most: among the people charged with implementing the strategy.
As I see it, the board missed three critical opportunities:
1. Develop a measurable, actionable plan.
“Grow our geographic impact” is not a strategy, and it certainly is not a plan. Wrestle with the details in the planning phase so there’s no ambiguity later.
Get explicit about how you’ll measure success (“expand reach of programs to benefit individuals from 70% to 90% of the zip codes in our county”) and develop a clear plan of action (“introduce x, y, and z new programs” or “select existing programs to replicate at the Johnson Community Center”).
2. Make tradeoffs.
Expanding or adding new programs requires investing in the time and materials to implement those initiatives. That money and staff time has to come from somewhere – whether redirected from existing expenses or raised as new revenues.
Those are precisely the tradeoffs that boards and leadership teams need to wrestle with when setting strategy. Doing one thing often means not doing another. Don’t force that choice onto the doers.
3. Engage the staff throughout.
Hoping for a miracle to realize your goals – and putting the onus on your staff to pull it off – is a recipe for your team to pay lip service to your strategy at best, or to ignore (or even undermine) it at worst.
Get the implementers involved during the planning process. They’ll know the real metrics that matter, realistic action steps, and what tradeoffs to expect. Boards committees for major strategic initiatives that include the staff doing the work can improve oversight. Those teams will have a fuller understanding of what’s working, what isn’t, and what needs to change.
Without staff support for your strategic plan, you’ll miss opportunities to make meaningful progress – and possibly even fall backwards. Get your team involved early and wrestle together with meaningful metrics, actionable plans, and key trade-offs. Their buy-in will take you to even greater outcomes than you hoped.
If you’re considering a strategic change in direction and want to ensure you’ve got your team’s buy-in from the start, set a time to talk with me about the approaches I use to involve them throughout the planning process.