Strategic Plan Templates Not Actually Working? Do This Instead

Before you open a new template or sketch another strategic plan, there’s one exercise I recommend completing first. This is an exercise simple enough to do in half an hour, but powerful enough to reshape the way you pursue every major objective in the year ahead. This is a real-life analysis of your Strategic Planning strengths... and weaknesses, not just a theoretical version of success. When leaders do this honestly, they often discover something they’ve never noticed. Something that explains why certain goals come together smoothly while others seem to grind to a halt better than any Strategic Plan Template ever reveals.

And you guessed it: it's birthed out of a Giftedness Discovery™ tactic.

Step 1: Pen. Paper. 30 Minutes.

Sit down with a pen, a couple pieces of paper, and thirty uninterrupted minutes. Make a list of every significant goal you’ve attempted in your adult life. Include wins, failures, partial victories, every goal you ever attempted to do. Place these in a left-hand column on the paper (or digital doc).

For example,

1. College / grad school goals

2. Moving goals

3. Career goals

4. Financial goals

5. Community goals

6. Personal (emotional/relational/spiritual) goals

Step 2: Assess each goal, one-by-one

For every goal on your list, answer any and/or all the following:

• How did I plan it?

• How did I strategize it?

• Did I follow the plan I created?

• Who were the key people who helped me create or execute the plan?

Write your answers in columns next to each story.

Step 3: Be Real: Did you succeed or fail?

In a right column, notate whether that plan succeeded, failed, or landed somewhere in the middle. Take notes however you feel appropriate. The goal here is to extract patterns of success & struggle so you can succeed more later.

Step 4: Identify the Patterns

Now comes the part that makes this exercise so valuable. Step back and analyze:

• Across all your successes, what patterns show up in how you planned, strategized, or executed?

• Across your failures, what patterns are consistently present?

These recurring threads often reveal truths about your working style that you’ve never articulated, but have been directing your outcomes all this time. When I completed this exercise for myself, the results were staggering. I uncovered patterns that had been sitting in plain view, yet I had never connected them until I laid everything out this way. Once I saw the truth of Strategic Planning that actually works/fails for me, I saw what conditions quietly support my best work. And this radically changed how I planned for goals in the future, leading to greater success, greater peace along the way, and hyper-specificed focus on my actual goals without distraction of others ideas.

Before you build out your goals for 2026, take the time to understand the way you naturally plan and execute. Toss aside the default strategic plan template (at least for now) and let your lived patterns guide your approach, keeping you motivated and on path.

Let us help you achieve your goals. Not only do we help you stay on the path toward your goals, we also show you which path is even the right one for you. Set up a 1-2 hour consultation or complimentary 20-minute power session here.