We love to focus on the beginning and the end. We like to develop our strategic plans, and we like to have our celebrations or evaluation meetings.

But we don't often like what happens in the middle. That's where it isn't working, or it's not done, or it isn't like we planned, or there are new problems to deal with. Rosabeth Moss Kanter has seen this so many times, she coined a "law" about change related to it:

"Everything can look like a failure in the middle." I've observed this so often that I call it Kanter's Law. There are numerous roadblocks, obstacles, and surprises on the journey to change, and each one tempts us to give up. Give up prematurely, and the change effort is automatically a failure. Find a way around the obstacles, perhaps by making some tweaks in the plan, and keep going. Persistence and perseverance are essential to successful innovation and change.

I would add a word to her last sentence. It is not only about persistence, perseverance, and tweaks–it is also about learning. One of the key tasks in the middle is learning, and I don't think our organizations take this seriously enough. We don't give ourselves the time or resources to learn as we are implementing, yet we are continuously surprised that we don't achieve the results we set out to achieve. 

Go back to your staff, your Board, your Committee, or whoever and have a conversation about where you need to elevate learning as a priority and then do it. Give them time. Demand that they share what they've learned. Don't give up on it until the learning is clear.