Opportunity Lost

Today, I heard leaders at yet another school say that a recent (less than 5 years ago) master facility study is sitting on a shelf somewhere, gathering dust. We hear this so often! A school spends a lot of money and engages its community in a facility study, but the results never translate into a tangible effect. The context today was that the school is engaging another design consultant to create yet another facility plan. 

The paradox is that the leaders, board, and administration cannot identify a flaw in the previous study, yet they still plunge ahead into a new process to revisit the same topics and issues. How can it be that a school spends approximately US$100K on a facility study, only for it to ultimately lead nowhere? How did this opportunity get lost?

One common culprit is that leadership changes and memories are short. Nonetheless, this represents a lost opportunity, not to mention the unrecoverable money and time expended.