Build Your 2026 Strategy

Hani W. Naguib
Nov 29
4 min read

At the end of each year, I recommend to founders to do the following exercise, with their co-founders and team members, in preparation for next year.

Step 1: Run the Reflection & Evolution Session

To start the conversation, start with your team on the following questions:

What did 2025 teach us about our market, value, and customers?
Which assumptions did we change or abandon?
What new evidence do we have that strengthens our 2026 direction?
Which capabilities did we build in 2025 that we must now leverage?
Which weaknesses became clear and must be addressed in 2026?
What decisions did we avoid in 2025 that we must confront now?
If we had to start 2025 again, what would we do differently and does that lesson influence 2026?

This first step is critical that you answer it with complete honesty and with a reflective mind.

Step 2: Start With Direction using the Actionable Vision Canvas

Start with the important question: "Where are we going in 2026?"

And this becomes the answer to the first step in this exercise: the vision for 2026 (the cloud section of the canvas). The cloud anchors the strategy in reality + ambition.

Ask yourself and the team:

How can we capitalize on everything we have learned from 2025 to better understand the changes in our business environment, stakeholders, and competition?

What do we need to learn in 2026 in order to better cope with the changes in business environment?

What progress must 2026 deliver?

Then comes the steps on the ladder.

These are not tasks. They are the major stepping stones required in 2026 to advance toward the cloud.

Examples:

Establish a validated value proposition
Build predictable distribution
Achieve contribution margin positivity
Build internal automation to increase speed
Expand to one new market

Now, Break Each Step into Objectives

Objectives answer: "How will we know this step is achieved?" For each step, define 2–4 measurable outcomes.

Examples:

Complete 40 customer interviews
Test 3 versions of the offer
Secure the first 30 paying customers
Reduce churn to <8%
Launch internal dashboard for real-time analytics

This prevents your 2026 plan from becoming empty aspirations.

List the Resources Required. This is where you will have to confront reality.

Ask:

What talent do we need?
What skills?
What capital?
What partners?
What market access?
What technology?

Without resource clarity, strategy becomes wishful thinking.

Identify the Risks

For every objective, list the risks that may stop you from achieving it.

Examples:

Customer acquisition costs may rise
We may not find the right distribution partners
Technology dependencies may slow delivery
Regulatory shifts may affect operations

This builds resilience into your 2026 plan.

finally, reorganize, Rank, and Recalibrate. Once all steps, objectives, resources, and risks are filled, reorder the steps by importance and logical priority, because not everything is equally important or equally urgent. Adjust the resources according to priority. High-priority steps get the highest resource allocation. Adjust risks based on real impact. Some risks are acceptable. Some require mitigation. Some require avoiding entire strategic directions. This transforms the canvas from a draft into a strategic blueprint.

Download the Actionable Vision Canvas Here: https://bit.ly/ActionableVisionCanvas

Step 3: Move to Implementation with The Mission Canvas

Once direction is clear, now you can consider implementation. Many founders focus too much on the implementation and usually forget the depth of the direction. They also take learnings lightly and don't take the time to consider them into their direction. Finally, many of them don't focus on what the employees will need to make that strategy materialized in the real world.

This is why their implementation becomes disconnected from reality.

Let us first start with the Orange Circle. It is basically everything we have learned and decided upon from step 1 and 2. Basically, the Outcome that needs to be accomplished. This Orange Circle becomes the anchor for all implementation discussions.

The team must ask:

“Given our 2026 outcome, what does its implementation demand from us?”

Well, there will be Challenges. This is where founders must be brutally honest. What challenges stand in the way of achieving the 2026 outcome from the orange circle?Examples:

Market volatility
Technology uncertainties
Funding shortages
Lack of internal capabilities
Weak product-market understanding
Slow iteration cycles

These challenges become the constraints your implementation must respect.

Now let us ask the question again: “Given our 2026 outcome, what does its implementation demand from us?”

It demands motivations and commitments. This is where the team reconnects with the why. What motivates you to achieve these 2026 outcomes? What commitments are you willing to make? What personal and team energy fuels the journey? Without this, the 2026 plan collapses in month three.

Accordingly, thoughts and emotions will spur in the minds of your team. As founders, you must appreciate the thoughts, emotions, and point of view of your team members about the whole conversation.

Questions to explore:

What kind of value do we truly want to create in the world?

Who do we want to become as a company?

Why is this work important beyond profit?

How does our mission influence how we execute the 2026 strategy?

These thoughts bring purpose back into execution.

Download The Mission Canvas here: https://bit.ly/TeamMissionCanvas

Step 4: Combine the Canvases into a 2026 Strategy System

Now the two canvases begin to talk to each other.

A. The Actionable Vision Canvas gives: