Part II: Designing for Growth and Trust
2026 will test how adaptable and imaginative you and your leadership team really are.
Between AI disruption, economic uncertainty, and geopolitical tension, the winners won’t be those who predict the future perfectly, but those who prepare for multiple versions of it.
In Part 1 of our guide to annual planning for 2026, we discussed the importance of building resilience and gathering intelligence so that your company can keep pace in a rapidly changing world and make BIG pivots when necessary.
The second half of your planning session must focus on design. Once you’ve identified what kinds of challenges you could face and what kinds of pivots you might need to make, your company will need to be intentional and exacting about how you allocate resources, structure your team, and balance AI optimization with high-touch, person-to-person service.
Consider this your blueprint for redesigning the resilient new business you’ve envisioned to keep Making BIG Happen in 2026.
1. Strategic Capital Allocation
Why It Matters: The era of “growth at all costs” funded by cheap debt is over. In 2026, every dollar, every hour of R&D, and every minute of your leadership team’s time must be deployed with surgical precision. Winning companies will pinpoint initiatives that have the highest probabilities of success and execute them flawlessly. Losers will spread their resources too thin chasing shiny objects and hoping that some “maybes” pan out.
Key Questions to Discuss:
- How should we balance our investment between innovation (long-term bets) and stability (protecting the core)? Are we funding the future or relying on the past?
- Which projects, divisions, or product lines truly deserve more capital, and which should we strategically sunset? Don’t let emotional attachment or nostalgia override strategic thinking.
- Do we have a clear Return on Energy (ROE) metric that tracks how much attention leadership is giving to key initiatives and what we’re earning from those investments?
Action Steps:
- Rank current and proposed initiatives by strategic importance and financial impact. If necessary, have project owners submit a one-page strategic case for every major initiative before your annual planning sessions. You could also have a member of your leadership team complete a 9-Box analysis of each project’s current performance and potential future impact.
- Reinvest efficiency gains from AI implementation and supply chain improvements to fund innovation, strengthen your brand awareness, or upgrade talent.
- Define your M&A thesis from the perspective of both a buyer and a seller. Market volatility could create an opportunity to purchase competitors or promising start-ups. And even if you’re not thinking about selling, your company should always be operating at a high level that makes it an attractive acquisition target.
2. Leadership and Organizational Design for Agility
Why It Matters: In a volatile world, speed is a massive competitive advantage. But speed isn’t just about getting things done faster, it’s also about reducing friction. If your current org chart is rigid and siloed, then you’ve saddled your team with speed limits. And if your best people aren’t empowered to make key decisions and manage their teams without the CEO’s approval, you’ve demoted yourself to bottleneck. Remove any institutional barriers that are preventing your people from learning quickly, making critical decisions, and exploring new avenues of cross-collaboration.
Key Questions to Discuss:
- Does our current organizational structure support speed and accountability, or does it create bottlenecks and bureaucracy?
- Do team members understand who decides what—and how quickly those decisions can and must be made? Or is a need for “consensus” creating paralysis?
- Are we rewarding adaptability, learning from failure, and collaboration? Or are we still too focused on not making mistakes?
Action Steps:
- Simplify reporting structures and clarify decision rights. No matter how BIG your business is, your core processes can be simplified. Clarify who’s making decisions about your most important workflows. If it takes six meetings to make a decision, your structure is broken. And if the CEO has to sign off on everything, then the CEO’s time is being allocated poorly.
- Create “tiger teams” to test ideas rapidly. Give small, cross-functional teams a clear mission (“In the next 60 days, identify a potential new customer niche and design a targeted marketing campaign.”), a leader who will seize the opportunity to shine, and the resources they need to succeed.
- Foster a culture of feedback and psychological safety. Employees who are afraid to fail will never test their limits, or your company’s. Encourage everyone to experiment, challenge conventional thinking, and explore better ways of doing things than “we’ve always done it that way.” And any employee who’s brave enough to flag a major risk to your operations or your culture should be celebrated publicly, no matter what kind of fallout you have to manage as a result.
3. Brand Trust and the Human-Centric Customer Experience
Why It Matters: Your customers don’t want to be “optimized,” whether they’re weighing their next purchase of trying to reach customer service. In 2026, trusting a company to treat people like people will be a BIG part of building brand trust and loyalty. Keep your customer at the center of the experience your company delivers, including the parts that you’re enhancing with AI.
Key Questions to Discuss:
- How are we using data to personalize without violating privacy? And are we staying on the right side of the fine line between “helpful” and “creepy”?
- What emotional experience do customers associate with our brand? How can we tweak that experience for 2026? Think “reassuring,” “understanding,” “dependable,” “consistent,” and “affordable.”
- Are we balancing digital efficiency with human connection? Are we using AI to do what’s easy so that our people can give customers more valuable facetime?
Action Steps:
- Conduct a “trust audit” across marketing, service, and data handling. Map out every touchpoint that customers have with your company. Do these interactions enhance trust or erode it? And what are the technical or human deficiencies that your company should shore up? (Tip: Hiring a Chief AI Officer could help with both.)
- Elevate customer service from a cost center to a strategic differentiator. Customers in both lanes of the two-speed economy value premium customer service. Give your service team the training, tools, and empowerment they need to deliver.
- Reinforce values through consistent storytelling and authentic leadership communication. Customers need to know what your company stands for. The more trust you build, the less vulnerable you are to deepfakes, misinformation, and negative PR. Use your internal and external communications to constantly, authentically, and transparently reinforce your core values and you’ll build brand trust at scale.
Plan for BIG and You’ll Be Prepared for Anything
Your 2026 annual planning meeting shouldn’t be a budgeting exercise—it should be a leadership moment.
The world is reordering itself, and your company’s future depends on how intentionally you design for intelligence, agility, and trust.
Don’t plan just for what’s likely. Plan for what’s possible so that you can hit the ground running in 2026 and Make BIG Happen.
If you don’t have a coach and want one to help you prepare your business during this quickly evolving landscape, fill out the form below to take us up on a complimentary 1:1 coaching call.
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