How to plan your 2026 Strategy - a 10 step guide
As we move towards 2026, you may be feeling the effects of a year marked by uncertainty, economic challenges, complexity and relentless change. Global uncertainty reached exceptionally high levels in 2025, driven by geopolitical conflicts and trade tensions (World Uncertainty Index 2025). This makes planning for 2026 even more important.
Annual planning is often seen as a task or a deadline; in fact, it’s a vital moment to step back, think more broadly and bring focus to the year ahead.
This guide offers a practical approach to strategic planning, helping you to reflect on 2025, set clear priorities, and create a plan for the year ahead.
1. Pause, step back, and gain perspective
When we’re so wrapped up in the day-to-day busyness and firefighting, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. It’s essential to pause and look what’s happening around you, both externally and within your organisation. When you create time to pause, you notice patterns, challenges and opportunities, and you create space to make decisions based on where the business needs to go, rather than simply reacting to what’s happening today.
To plan well, leaders need space to step back. You can do this in several ways:
Individually:
Block out time for uninterrupted thinking
Step away from your laptop and use a notebook or a blank piece of paper
Review the year’s key information: performance data, customer feedback, team feedback, financials, risks, and opportunities.
Ask yourself: “What am I noticing now that I couldn’t see when I was in the middle of it?”
With colleagues
Start with reflection before moving into ideas.
Share some of the prompts and questions below before the meeting to give people time to think and prepare
Give people time individually, in pairs, and then in a group to make sure everyone’s voices are heard.
2. Reflect on 2025’s successes and challenges
Good planning begins with understanding the year you’ve just had to help learn from experience and make more informed decisions about the future.
Questions that are useful to explore include:
What went well this year and why?
What was challenging and why?
What did our customers value most?
What took more time or energy than expected?
What did we learn and what should we do differently next year?
How to do this well
Ask different parts of the business to share their own reflections, and notice the themes often emerge across teams.
Look at real data: customer results, employee feedback, financials, project reviews.
Spend time understanding what the year is actually telling you.
3. Think big, be innovative
Many organisations plan by tweaking what they’ve always done. But with the world moving quickly, incremental improvements alone won’t help you stay ahead. So think big and long-term by asking:
Where do we want to be in three to five years?
What future are we working towards?
If we had a magic wand, a blank piece, and no limit on resources, what would we do?
4. Use an outside-in and future-back approach
These two ways of thinking strengthen planning conversations by creating a wider lens.
Outside-in
Thinking from the outside in encourages you to connect your strategy to what the world need from you next. It’s different to the usual approach of starting with your internal strengths or targets. Start with your customers, your market and the wider environment rather than. You can use customer feedback, market data, competitor insight, and trend analysis. Useful questions include:
What problems are our customers trying to solve right now?
How has their world changed over the past year, and how have their needs shifted?
How is our market changing
What do they consistently tell us we do well?
Where do they expect more from us?
What’s happening in the wider market or environment that we need to pay attention to?
Future-back
Future-back thinking starts with a longer-term view - three, five or even ten years ahead and asks you to picture what kind of organisation you want to be by then, and work out what you need to do to get there. It encourages fresh and innovative thinking and aligns your team around a shared vision.
What would success look like for us in the future?
What impact would we be having?
What decisions do we need to make?
What do we need to put in place to get there - capabilities, behaviours or roles?
What should be our priorities, and what should we stop doing?
5. Prioritise
One of the most valuable parts of planning is deciding what you will focus on and what you won’t. A long list of priorities rarely leads to meaningful progress. Three to five focus areas are usually enough and much more effective. These should be important, clearly defined and understood by everyone. Start by putting everything on the table, then narrow it down, prioritise the things that will shift the dial, and note the things you need to come back to in the future.Consider:
Which priorities will genuinely move us forward?
What are we prepared to stop or pause to make space for them?
Are we choosing focus, or trying to please everyone?
6. Create a strategic plan
Once you’ve agreed on your priorities, the next step is turning them into a plan that will guide your decisions. This doesn’t need to be lengthy; a simple, clear outline often works best, covering:
priorities
outcomes you want to achieve
assumptions or risks
behaviours and ways of working
key decisions or milestones
7. Set milestones
Annual goals can feel overwhelming. Breaking them into 90-day milestones helps keep plans practical and maintain momentum. A quarterly rhythm encourages steady, sustainable progress. Define what progress looks like and schedule quarterly check-ins to maintain momentum, review progress, adjust and tweak and celebrate progress.
8. Secure the resources you need
Plans only work if you have the right resources in place. As part of your planning process, consider:
The skills and capacity you’ll need and where capacity is tight
What the budget needs to support
Are current tools, technology, or systems fit for purpose
What people will need to deliver well (training, clarity, time, support)
9. Turn plans into action
Turning strategy into action is less about the document itself and more about how leaders communicate, involve people and keep the work moving throughout the year.
Create ownership - be clear about who is responsible for what. Each priority needs a named owner who understands the outcomes expected and has the support and authority to deliver.
Communicate simply and consistently - people need to hear priorities more than once before they feel confident about them. Explain the “why”, link the plan to everyday work, and give people a chance to ask questions and clarify what’s expected.
Make progress visible - break priorities into manageable steps and share milestones as they happen. Visible progress keeps people motivated and helps maintain momentum. It also makes it easier to spot when something needs attention or support.
Create a regular rhythm - use monthly check-ins and quarterly reviews to keep the plan alive.
Lead by example - when leaders stay focused, follow through and talk about the plan regularly, others will do the same.
10. Planning as a Core Part of Leadership
Planning for 2026 isn’t about trying to remove uncertainty. It’s about helping your organisation feel steady, focused and prepared for whatever may come next. You might reflect on:
What do I want my team to feel clear about at the start of the year?
What do I want people to feel clear about at the start of the year?
Where do I personally need to create more space to think?
What will I prioritise and what am I prepared to let go of?
How will I support my team to stay focused?
If you’d like support with planning for 2026
We can help you whether you’re shaping strategy, bringing your leadership team together or turning priorities into practical steps to:
design and facilitate a planning or strategy day
align your senior team around shared goals
turn plans into clear actions, behaviours and rhythms
build clarity and momentum for the year ahead
To find out how we can help, get in touch with Polly Robinson - polly@growth-space.co.uk or 07966 475195.
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