Before we get started… |
This week's newsletter is all about what to do when you're behind on your 2026 goals, and specifically, how to diagnose WHY you're behind so you know whether to double down on your plan or scrap it and start over. |
But if you want to see the operating system that keeps our portfolio companies from falling behind in the first place, you need to check out this video I just posted… |
…because that's the part that's NOT covered in today's issue. |
And if you like this newsletter and you want my help implementing any of these systems in your business (so your second half beats your first), you can get the details and apply to work with me here. |
Ok, back to this week's issue… |
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Welcome To Your 2026 Mid-Year Reset |
Well, 2026 is half-over, and you know what that means… |
It's time to hold your big, ambitious January goals up against 6 months of actual results and decide how you’re going to invest the second half of the year. |
If things are going great, the answer is easy: stick with the current plan and double-down on what’s working. |
But what if the plan isn’t working?
What if you’re behind?
What if you’re WAY behind? |
Do you? |
Stick with the current plan (and risk burning cash, morale, and six more months in the process.) Or… Throw out the plan entirely (and risk abandoning a perfectly good strategy when the fix was something simple.)
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The answer is rarely obvious. For example… |
Most of our companies are on track. That one's easy: stay with the plan. |
A few are ahead of plan, which is even more fun…figure out what's working better than expected and double down on it. |
But many are behind. In some cases, WAY behind. |
Which is why the #1 question I've been asked by clients and portfolio company CEOs over these past few weeks is: |
"Do we double down on the plan…or throw it out and start over?" |
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Since I couldn't reply to everyone individually, I'm responding to everyone all at once in this week’s issue (which means you’re getting the exact same advice my executive leaders are getting). |
Three Reasons “Good” Plans Fail |
All plans fail for exactly three (3) reasons: |
Failure of Effort Failure of Execution Failure of Assumption
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…and it’s critical that you diagnose your plan in that order: Effort first, then Execution, then (and only then) Assumption. |
That's because your team will point the finger at the plan ("Failure of Assumption"), because that pushes the blame upstream. |
You, on the other hand, will be tempted to point the finger at your team’s effort, because that means your plan survives. |
For this to work, we have to eliminate this bias… which is why sequence matters. |
To demonstrate, we're going to bake a cake. (Stick with me.) |
Failure #1: Failure of Effort |
You have the right plan and all the pieces are in place…you're just not pushing hard enough. You’re not applying enough “heat.” |
In cake terms: the recipe is good and you have all the ingredients you need, but you set the oven to 200 instead of 375. |
The question you need to ask is: "Did we actually work the plan?" |
Not "did we try hard." Did the specific activity the plan called for actually happen? A few follow-up questions to pressure-test your answer: |
Could the current team, with current resources, hit this goal if it were their only priority? (Because if the answer is yes, this is an Effort problem. Full stop.) How many other initiatives is this same team carrying? (Because heat spread across six pans bakes nothing.) When did leadership last review the scoreboard? (Because if nobody's looked at the number since January, the plan didn't fail…it was abandoned.)
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But here's the wrinkle: effort has two dials…intensity and duration. Sometimes the oven is plenty hot, you just need to let the cake bake a little longer. |
For example, one of our portfolio companies had a sales team that was supposed to be making 50 outbound calls a day to qualified prospects. When we finally pulled the CRM report, the average was 32. |
The team wasn’t slacking on purpose. The problem is that no one was watching or reporting on the inputs, so there was no accountability. |
The fix was simple: have the sales manager post everyone’s call counts where the whole team could see them. |
No new plan. No new hires. Just more heat… more intensity. |
For another one of our clients, the problem was duration. This client launched a content and SEO play back in January, but after 6 months, sales were still flat and he was ready to abandon the plan. |
Fortunately, when we looked more closely into his Company Scorecard, we could see that organic traffic and leads were up 15% month over month and rankings were climbing. |
The recipe wasn’t the problem (and the oven was set to the right temp)… the cake just needed to bake a little longer. |
If your leading indicators are improving month over month at a believable slope, don't reset the plan…reset the deadline. |
⚠️ One warning before you diagnose duration: "It just needs more time" is also the #1 rationalization of founders doubling down on doomed plans. If you gave it 60 more days and the toothpick would come out looking exactly the same, that's not a duration problem… that's denial. (And probably a Failure of Assumption you don't want to admit. More on that in a minute.) |
The verdict: Double down. Crank up the intensity with more accountability, visibility, resources, and/or time. DO NOT change the plan itself. |
Failure #2: Failure of Execution |
You have the right plan…you're just missing one or more critical ingredients such as a person, tool, technology, or budget. |
In cake terms: the recipe is good, but you forgot to add an egg so your batter is a sticky, sloppy mess. |
The question you need to ask is: "Would this plan be working if we had _____." |
If the blank is specific and procurable (a new team member, a software integration, $30K a month in ad budget), you've got an Execution problem because a missing ingredient can be acquired. If the blank is vague ("momentum," "better luck," "a stronger bench"), that's not an ingredient…that's a feeling. Keep digging until you find the missing “egg.”
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For example, a founder I know had a plan to launch a new service line in Q1. Unfortunately, a critical hire fell through, which meant he had to handle all the fulfillment himself while working nights and weekends. |
This caused sales to stall (because he could no longer focus on lead generation activities), so he asked me if he should pivot his plan and bring on a new marketing agency to solve his "demand problem." |
“No, dummy,” I told him. “Your original plan was correct. You just need to re-hire for the role that fell through so you can get out of fulfillment and focus back on sales.” |
The missing “egg” wasn’t marketing… the missing “egg” was fulfillment. |
At one of my own companies, we nearly abandoned a plan to increase our average customer value all because our engineering team never shipped a critical upsell feature in our shopping cart. |
We all assumed we had an offer problem, when in reality we had a technology problem. |
The lesson? Identify the real missing egg (or eggs), and don’t stop digging until everyone agrees what it is |
The verdict: Keep the plan. Make procuring the missing ingredient the new priority, and reset the timeline as needed. Pause the clock…don't tear up the recipe. |
Failure #3: Failure of Assumption |
You have the wrong plan. You believed something that turned out not to be true, or you failed to factor in something you didn't know would be an issue. |
In cake terms: you baked a flawless cake…but everyone at the party is gluten-free. |
The question you need to ask is: "Knowing everything we know today, is this the plan we would have chosen?" |
If the honest answer is no, you're not defending a strategy…you're defending a sunk cost. |
Here are a few follow-up questions to help you confirm: |
What did we believe back in January that we now know isn't true? What did we not consider back in January that we now know is true? Would more resources and effort make this work, or would it just make us fail more expensively?
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Failures of Assumption come in two flavors (and it's worth telling them apart because the lessons are different): |
Flavor #1: It was never going to work…you just didn't have the data yet. |
One of our past portfolio companies manufactured industrial liquid filters, and the plan was to start selling to municipalities. Big market, real demand, solid product. |
One problem: selling to municipalities required an additional certification we didn't have…and didn't know we needed. We found that out AFTER months of work and nearly $100K in media and outreach. |
Could we have gotten certified? Sure…eventually. But that's a different plan with different math. The original plan was never going to work. We just couldn't see it in January. |
Same with a founder I know who launched a $99/month self-serve tier assuming customers would onboard themselves. They signed up just fine…then churned at 20% a month because the product needed hand-holding. |
Flawless execution of a flawed belief. |
The lesson here isn't "try harder next time." It's to pressure-test your critical assumptions BEFORE you spend $100K and 6 months on them. |
Flavor #2: It would have worked…but the world shifted. |
An ecommerce brand I know built their 2025 plan on the previous year’s average landed costs. Then tariffs jumped, COGS rose 30%, and the unit economics that made the plan work no longer existed. |
Another agency owner had a brilliant plan to roll out a productized software solution this year. Unfortunately, they lost their biggest client unexpectedly, and the cash earmarked for the rollout had to go to backfilling revenue instead. |
Neither plan was wrong when it was written. |
Mike Tyson had it right when he said… |
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” |
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| -Mike Tyson |
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And here's the interesting part: these plans might work again if conditions revert. But for now, you have to operate in the reality that exists…not the one you planned for. |
The verdict: Reset. New goal, new plan…and explain to your team exactly where your assumptions were off. Don't burn yourself or your people out on an impossible mission, and don't pretend the old target still counts. |
Missing a goal is never fun, but if you learn from your failure, you can live to fight another day…smarter than you were before. |
But if you fail and don't learn, you fail twice. |
The first step to learning from failure is understanding why it happened in the first place: Effort, Execution, or Assumption. |
So…which one is it for you? |
⚡️ Action Step: Pick the ONE 2026 goal you're furthest behind on, block 30 minutes this week, and run the three gates in order: |
Did we actually work the plan? If not, that's Effort…post the scoreboard and clear the calendar. If yes, can we name the specific missing ingredient? That's Execution…make getting the "egg" your new #1 priority and reset the timeline. If nothing's missing and the results still didn't come, that's Assumption…reset the goal, rewrite the plan, and tell your team exactly what you got wrong. |
Whatever you do, don't spend the second half of the year running a failing plan you haven’t diagnosed. |
Give it a shot and let me know how it works… |
-Ryan |
Ryan Deiss
Co-Founder and CEO, The Scalable Company |
P.S. One way to avoid the “Oh crap, we’re way behind on our annual plan…” issue is to switch from annual planning to a quarterly sprint planning cadence. Here’s how we do that... |
P.P.S. I'm looking for 5 business owners who want to work 1-on-1 with my team and me to install a custom "operating system" (so you can hit your goals without getting stuck in the day-to-day). Click here for the details. |
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