Instead of scrapping plan, guys follow through anyway so they won't look bad. But how would such a strategy work?
Won't they still look bad once it is realized that plan sucks? At that point, there will be damage and so supporters will get blamed for the damage as well as the poor strategy.
If they pull out now, there won't be any damage other than wasting their time and focus on a bad idea. But if you wait, there will be performance damage as well.
If you go to the executives and say "we were wrong" , you will lose face and respect.
But won't you lose an equal or greater amount of face and respect when it is discovered later that the plan was flawed?
Isn't that like ordering a sucky printer, and then telling your boss "oops, I ordered a sucky printer, please cancel." -vs- "this printer I ordered last year sucks and led to a poor performance."
How can the latter result in losing less respect from the boss? Is it just an attempt to postpone it, rather than an attempt to reduce it?
Is there a value for postponing it? Will the executives no longer have a feel for the value of their time and focus that was wasted on it?
If you tell them now, they will be upset because the loss of focus they spent on it is fresh in their minds. But if you tell them next year, maybe it will just be something in the past and won't feel as much as a loss, and so it won't seem like or count as much of a loss. By postponing informing them and then doing it gradually, you water down the loss. Like boiling a frog.
So, to recap, executives care most about their momentum throughout the day and throughout the week. Maybe you could announce it as an improvement over the original plan. The expanded version is so forward-thinking, it doesn't even need a lot of the aspects of the original plan.
All they need is the illusion of moving forward.