Right now, leadership teams across the globe are deep in planning mode for the new year.
Whiteboards covered in sticky notes. Strategy decks getting their annual refresh. OKRs drafted with the optimism of someone who’s never got hit by February.
I get it. New year energy is intoxicating. The illusion of a clean slate feels invigorating and productive. But here’s the question only very few are asking in those sessions: Why didn’t last year’s goals stick? Why did we not truly achieve what we set out to do?
Don’t ask: “what went wrong” — that’s easy.
Markets shifted.
Resources were tight.
Priorities changed.
You got ‘run over’ by day2day stuff.
The usual suspects.
I mean the harder question: What about how your leadership team operates, made execution fail?
The Pattern I See Every December
After years of working with scale-up leadership teams, I’ve noticed a predictable rhythm.
December: Big plans. Bold ambitions. Genuine excitement and commitment.
March: First cracks. Priorities competing. “We’ll get back to that next quarter.”
June: Strategy review reveals half the initiatives are stalled or forgotten. Heroic efforts keep a few alive.
September: Quiet acknowledgment that this year looks a lot like last year. And, well, we had so many priorities again.
December: Rinse. Repeat. New sticky notes.
The strategies weren’t at all bad. The frameworks weren’t wrong. But something else keeps failing.
The Real Problem Nobody Wants to Truly Call out
Here’s what the data shows: 67% of well-formulated strategies fail due to poor execution according to Harvard Business Revue. And “poor execution” is almost always the code for something that sits much deeper. When I dig into why execution stalls, I find the same culprits:
Artificial harmony at C-Suite level. The leadership team agrees in meetings and diverges in hallways. Decisions get finally made that nobody actually feels committed to. Accountability allergies — Everyone owns the strategy. Nobody really owns the outcome. When things slip, it’s always “we” failed, never “I” dropped this. Priority amnesia — By February, teams can’t remember what was supposed to be most important for the organisation. The urgency of the daily grind drowns the strategy.
Again.
These aren’t process problems. Or strategy problems. Or the lack of smart people on your teams. These are the vices of organisational health problems. And no amount of new goal-setting frameworks, or AI powered processes will fix them.
The Year-End Audit Worth Doing
Before you finalize those 2026 plans, try this instead. Get your leadership team in a room.
Ask these set of questions:
1. What strategic initiative from 2025 actually moved the needle? — and why did that one work? Not the heroic saves of individuals. The ones that worked because the system actually worked. What was different about how you operated?
2. Where did we choose comfortable over clear? Which conversations, that should have – didn’t happen? Which decisions got delayed because conflict felt worse than stagnation? Be specific.
3. If we operate exactly as we did in 2025, what’s the probability our 2026 strategy succeeds?
Honest percentage. If it’s below 70%, you don’t have a planning problem. You have a “how we work together” problem.
The Gift of Honesty
Look, I know this isn’t the festive content you expected. But the best gift you can give your organisation heading into 2026 isn’t a sharper, rebranded strategy deck. It’s the courage to look at why your execution keeps stalling — and actually do something about it.
The organisations that will win next year in your industry, aren’t the ones with the best strategy or OKR process. They’re the ones with leadership teams healthy enough to tell each other the truth, fight productively and respectfully about priorities, and actually truly commit to what they decide. That’s the foundation everything else depends on. Sounds simple enough – but it’s most difficult to collectively achieve.
One Thing to Try This Week
Before the holidays scatter everyone: Schedule 90 minutes with your leadership team. No agenda except those three questions above. Record the answers. Not to judge — but to establish an honest baseline. In January, when the new objectives inevitably start slipping, you’ll have something valuable: clarity on whether the pattern is repeating.
That’s when real change becomes possible.
Here’s to a December with fewer sticky notes and more honest conversations.
