Building Agility, Resilience, and Habit
In this last step of annual review and planning, we are making sure all of our goals, plans and actions survive when in contact with real life. Goals and plans are fragile; systems, habits, and pre‑decisions are what keep them alive when the year gets busy, weird, or both.
Think of exercise as installing the “operating system” for how you’ll run the business this year—not just what you want it to achieve.
Step 1: Stress‑test your plan
Start by revisiting your one‑page Goal Sheet and Executive Snapshot. Ask three blunt questions:
What could realistically derail this plan in the next 12 months (market shifts, capacity crunch, key person risk, cash flow wobble)?
Where are we currently fragile—places where one disruption quickly cascades into bigger problems?
What did last year teach us about the kinds of surprises we’re actually likely to face?
Capture your answers under three headings:
Market shocks
Operational shocks
People shocks
You’re not trying to predict everything. You’re naming the most probable bumps in the road so you can design around them instead of being blindsided.
Step 2: Create simple contingency moves
For each type of shock, define 1–2 “if X, then we do Y” moves. These are lightweight contingency plans you can trigger quickly without rewriting your entire strategy.
Examples:
Market shock – demand softens or slows.
Move: Activate a focused outreach sprint to past clients and warm leads.
Move: Pause low‑ROI experiments and protect the few activities that reliably generate revenue.
Operational shock – capacity or delivery issues.
Move: Defer non‑critical internal projects and protect delivery for top‑value clients.
Move: Use a streamlined, “lite” version of services when workload spikes to avoid burning the team.
People shock – a key person becomes unavailable.
Move: Maintain simple “how we do this” checklists for critical processes.
Move: Ensure at least one backup owner is named for each high‑risk responsibility.
Put these onto a single page and keep it with your planning documents. Agility comes from making decisions in advance, when you’re calm, not in the middle of a crisis.
Step 3: Design your review rhythms
Resilience isn’t just about bouncing back; it’s about noticing drift early and correcting before it becomes a problem. Decide how often you’ll step back and look at the whole picture.
Consider three core rhythms:
Weekly check‑in (30–45 minutes)
Review: key numbers, pipeline, capacity hotspots for the week ahead.
Ask: “What needs a decision this week to keep us on track?”
Outcome: 1–3 clear commitments, not a long wish list.
Monthly strategy pulse (60 minutes)
Review: progress on your 90‑day plays, early success signals, wins and blockers.
Ask: “What do we double down on, pause, or adjust next month?”
Outcome: small course corrections, not constant reinvention.
Quarterly reset (2–3 hours)
Revisit: goals, non‑negotiables, and your Executive Snapshot.
Ask: “Given what we know now, does our strategy still hold—and where do we need to shift?”
Outcome: refined priorities for the next 90 days.
Write down who is involved, what gets reviewed, and what a “good” session produces so these rhythms become routines, not vague good intentions.
Step 4: Turn strategy into personal habits
A strategy only lives if it shows up in calendars and behaviours. Take your 90‑day priorities and ask, for each one:
What do I personally need to do every week or month to move this forward?
What do I need to stop doing to create space for that work?
Translate those answers into concrete habits, such as:
A weekly block of “CEO time” reserved for high‑impact work, not operations.
A standing slot for relationship building with key clients and partners.
A short Friday review where you look at your key metrics and confirm next week’s focus.
Treat these blocks like client work: they don’t move unless there’s a genuinely better decision. That’s how new habits stick under pressure.
Step 5: Make it easier for the team to win
If you have a team, this activity is also about making the strategy easy to understand and act on. Complexity kills momentum; clarity creates resilience.
Practical moves:
Share a condensed version of your goals and strategic plays: “Here’s what we’re aiming for, here’s how we plan to get there, and here’s how your role connects to it.”
Agree on a small set of shared metrics everyone can see and influence—client experience, on‑time delivery, sales pipeline health, or whatever truly matters in your business.
Clarify decision rights: who can say “yes,” who can say “no,” and when something needs to be escalated.
When people know what matters and where they have authority, they can make faster, better decisions without waiting for you, which is the essence of agility.
Step 6: Commit to a “Year of Operating Well”
To close the programme, write one short commitment that describes how you intend to run the business this year, not just what numbers you want to hit.
For example:
“This will be the year we protect focus time as fiercely as client time.”
“This will be the year we say ‘no’ faster to work that doesn’t fit our strategy.”
“This will be the year we review and adjust monthly, not just when something breaks.”
Keep this commitment next to your Goal Sheet. It becomes a quiet filter for decisions when the inbox fills up, the calendar gets crowded, and you’re tempted to slide back into old habits.
This last activity of your annual planning is your insurance policy: the systems, habits, and pre‑decisions that keep the work of the past four days alive all year long.
