This executive strategy can help you keep your New Year's resolution. The mistake that most of us make is we think solely in terms of goals and targets, whereas what we really need to be doing is shifting our mind to thinking in narrative. And thinking like this can answer one brutal question, which is why didn't we get there?
The exercise is called the pre-mortem and it was popularized by Greg McCown, the author of Essentialism. Basically what you do is you fast forward to December and you imagine that your project, your goal, whatever your New Year's resolution is, spectacularly failed. You didn't make it at all. And instead of blaming anyone, you think about what are the chain of events that led to that failure. Because that narrative is going to reveal the challenges that you probably will face at some point. And what you're doing is you're testing your assumptions before reality really does.
And that's what executives are obsessed with doing, constantly saying, are they on the right path? Are they solving the right problem? Because if your strategy for 2026 is just about success, that is aspiration. The people who are going to succeed are the ones who understand what the journey is to get there.
What are your New Year's resolutions though? Let me know in the comments.