🏃 Sprint to Close 2026
⭐ Grow With Talent
🎯 Start 2027 Planning
🏃 Sprint to Close 2026
It’s back to school and back to work. September 1 has the energy of New Year’s. It’s the start of the end. The next four months will make or break your year.
2026 has been tumultuous, with one disruption after another. Lake America is the perfect symbol of this chaos. It’s unnecessary and stupid.
I’ve written it many times in this newsletter: Every time the rules change, you’re stuck with the bill.
With all the uncertainty, the best path is to double down on your business and customers. Focus on what’s in your control and outwork everyone.
There may be four months left in the year, but you have roughly three months to close it on a high note: now through to the end of November.
Kick September off with a situational review with your team:
- How are we tracking on budget and quota?
- What is our forecast to end of year?
- What is the gap we need to close to hit our 2026 objectives?
- How do we quantify the gap?
- What actions can we take immediately to close it?
You can achieve a lot in 90 days. If you commit all your resources to ending 2026 strong, you will.
⭐ Grow With Talent
Having the “wrong people” is like driving on bald tires. It doesn’t matter how hard you step on the gas, you don’t get traction.
Having the “right people” can be the difference between achieving your business objectives and missing them.
The ease or difficulty of managing people is a signal: Is managing a person or a function more time consuming and complex than it should be? Are you building processes, guardrails, and KPIs to get someone “to do their job”?
Chances are you’re overbuilding a function because you have the wrong person in the role.
Topgrading is one of the most effective ways to drive growth. When you identify an underperforming function, ask what skills, capabilities, and experiences are required to achieve its objectives.
Leveling up positions with the right people unlocks growth. Often, this means hiring externally. You are working to acquire new skills and capabilities that change the system and deliver results. It’s not just optimizing the function. It’s about bringing in fresh expertise to build it better.
Talent drives growth. It’s strategic. Acquire the people you need to grow your business so you’re not over-engineering your business to do the basics.
📊 One Stat to Watch
71%
of parents complete their back-to-school shopping two to eight weeks before the first bell, according to a 2026 PwC Consumer Survey. Even parents plan early!
🎯 Start 2027 Planning
If your fiscal starts January 1, aim to have your strategic plan finalized before November 30.
There’s no reason to wait until the end of November or early December to start planning for next year. The year-end is simply too busy: wrapping up annual projects, hitting targets, and all the pressures of the holiday season.
Start strategic planning four months before your fiscal year end. If that’s December 31, schedule your leadership meetings for late September to early October. This gives you time to prepare, analyze, and make decisions with the best information available.
The ideal is to have your annual plan fully documented a month before year end. That gives you the last 30 days of the year to focus on the business and hit the ground running in your next fiscal.
The true value of strategic planning is in the process. President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously said, “In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.”
It’s in the work of planning that you gain insights into your business and industry, leading to better decisions with more tangible, actionable plans.
If you wait until the last minute, strategic planning turns into going through the motions. You have to write a budget and plan, but end up redoing last year’s or sticking with the status quo.
This year, commit to planning early. Block out six to eight weeks in September and October to build the plan, and have it fully costed and finalized by November 30.
🤔 Thoughts on Today’s Issue?
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