Innovative Exercises for Strategic Planning with Drew McLellan

Hey everybody, Drew McLellan here with another podcast. Super excited to be with you today. It’s actually a Sunday afternoon and I’ve been been working on this. This is one of my solo casts. So this is just you and me, no guests this time. Just something that I’ve been thinking about that I want to chat with you about. And you know, we’re coming up on the time of year where everyone is thinking about, or I hope you’re thinking about sort of the strategic plan and the 2026 and so just feel like this is such a weird year between the economics and the explosion of AI in our space and all the other things that are going on, that sort of the traditional SWOT analysis kind of strategic planning is just not going to cut it. And so I’ve spent some time sort of baking out some exercises that I’d like you to consider weaving into your strategic plan. And now you could do all of this in a day and we’ll get into all the logistics of it in a minute, but it’s going to seem like a lot. It’s going to seem like a heavy lift. And honestly, I think this is the year that we need to invest that time and that energy into the heavy lift because it’s been a weird one. And I think 2026 is going to be ripe with opportunity and ripe with challenges.  

You know, I was on was being interviewed for another podcast recently and the guest asked me what I thought the biggest opportunities and challenges were for agencies in 2026. And what I said to him is that I think the very things that are the challenges are also the opportunities. It’s really a lot about how we view them, the lens in which we view them. We can see them as challenges that are going to make things harder or we can see the opportunity in those challenges and the fact that if we lean into them and if we pivot a little bit, there’s lots of new blue sky opportunity for all of us. And so that’s really where I want to focus today.  

But before we do that, a couple things. Number one, as you know, on all of our Solo casts. I always try and give away a free workshop. So the way this works, pretty simple. If you leave, you go wherever you download the podcast. So could be Apple podcasts, it could be iheart, could be wherever it is Spotify, and you leave a rating and review on Audible anywhere you go. If you go to wherever you download your podcast and you leave a rating and review for this podcast, you are going to get entered into the drawing for a free workshop. So our workshops are around $2,000, so it’s not a small prize. And if you win, all you have to do is get to Denver for the workshop of your choice. And you are welcome to join us for absolutely free for the two day workshop. So here’s how this works though. If you leave a rating and review, we do read all of them and we’re grateful for them, believe me. But a lot of times your username doesn’t tell me who you are, and it sure doesn’t tell me how to get a hold of you.  

So here’s what I need you to do. Need you to take a screenshot of the rating or review and then email it to [email protected] and then you’ll be put in the drawing. Your name will be left in the drawing until you win. And you know, the universe of people who listen to this podcast, it’s not, you know, like, we have millions of listeners, so odds are pretty good for you. Even though we have tens of thousands of listeners, odds are pretty good for you that you’re going to get picked. Because guess what, most of you aren’t going to do this. And so for those of you that will do this, odds are good that you’re going to win a workshop. And so why not take the five minutes, leave us a rating review, give us some good feedback, let us know what you love about the show and, and have a shot at winning a $2,000 workshop.  

And so Eddie Ulrich from Fuzzy Duck did this a year or two ago and guess what, Eddie, it is your lucky day. So I’ll be shooting you an email and letting you know that you won. But in case you’re listening to this in real time, you’ll probably hear it before I have a chance to email you. So congratulations. I will be reaching out to you and letting you choose a workshop of your choice to join us. And by the way, this workshop, this free workshop thing doesn’t expire. So if you’re like, well, I can’t really go to a workshop right now, so I’M not going to do it. It could be three years from now. We don’t care. You, you’ve got it. You’re on a list. We’re happy to honor that, that prize whenever it’s a good time for you to come to Denver and join us for a workshop. So don’t feel like you have to take advantage of it right away. But anyway, Eddie, I will reach out to you soon and I will welcome you to whichever workshop makes perfect sense for you. So, and thank you very much for the kind words, by the way.  

All right, before we get started, before we get into this strategic planning, I do want to give a shout out and a huge thank you to our friends at White Label iq. They are the presenting sponsor of the podcast. They have been the presenting sponsor for, gosh, at least five years. They also are the presenting sponsor of the Build a Better Agency Summit. So they are great partners to ami. And honestly, they’re great partners to agencies, too. They love working alongside agencies. And one of the ways that they love to be of support to agencies is, is they are subject matter experts. And they are subject matter experts that are happy to make themselves available for you to talk to.  

So it’s not just people who show up when there’s a project, but people who are genuinely invested in helping agencies be better. And so if you want to have a conversation with them about an opportunity or a new web application or something else, cultivate a relationship with them, reach out to them and say, hey, I just want to pick your brain on something. I want to see what you’re seeing in terms of a web trend or something that’s happening online. And they will make sure that they put someone with you who has a depth of expertise so you can have a meaningful conversation.  

The way to do that would be to head over to whitelabeliq.com ami While you’re there, you’re going to find a contact button so you could reach out to them, sort of set up that conversation. But also you can see the deal that they have for podcast guests for your first project. So many thanks to them. While you’re talking to them, while they’re being helpful to you, please, by the way, whisper in their ear how grateful you are that they sponsor this podcast. I love when they get kudos from all of you about supporting this podcast. So thank you for doing that. Okay. All right. So thanks to White Label. Congratulations to Eddie.  

So now let’s talk a little bit about strategic planning. Just feel like this is a year where we have to really Think about what is the future of our agency. I’m not getting philosophical and saying the future of all agencies, but I want you to be thinking about what is the future of your agency. And so I’ve baked this episode to be very hands on. I don’t expect you to do the exercises while you’re listening to the podcast, but I want to walk you through the exercises and, and maybe this is something that you play for your leadership team. Before you go into your strategic planning. You can decide if these exercises are good for just you as the agency owner to do. If it’s something for the leadership team, should you involve everyone on the team? And some of these exercises are specifically going to ask you to involve people who aren’t sitting on your leadership team or maybe don’t have 20 years of experience in agency life.  

In fact, one of the exercises is specifically about getting some of the younger team members involved in a very, very specific way. So I’ve built these exercises to really push you past the SWOT analysis or just looking back and seeing what’s worked in the past and sort of projecting out how you want to modify it slightly for the future. I’ve really built this to be challenging and to ask you to spend time deeply thinking about, really ruminating on what’s going on inside your shop, what’s going on with your clients, what’s happening out in the world, and sort of how all of those intersect. And so I think you’re going to find these exercises really interesting and I think the outcome of them is going to be spectacular. So I’m going to give you step by step instructions with the show notes. We have worksheets that you can download to facilitate make doing this a little easier.  

My whole goal with this is really to force you to have some really honest, game changing conversations, Even if you’re feeling a little bit stuck or you’re sort of burnt out on some old planning methods, I want to give you some new tools because it feels like it’s a new day and we need something more than the standard. And by the way, a lot of these you could probably modify for your clients. So if you’re doing strategic planning for your clients, I suspect you’ll be able to modify a lot of these to benefit them as well.  

So before we start though, let’s talk about why this is not the year for just another round of sort of dust off the old SWOT analysis and go. Feels like agencies are facing disruption at every turn. So, you know, we’ve talked about a lot of this before, but AI is upending everything. Client expectations, the value of what we offer, how we do the work we do, the kind of work we do. On top of that, agencies are in this economic time, struggling with profit margins. Today’s employees are looking for a whole different work experience. And some of you have been doing this for a while, are frustrated with how that’s showing up. Some of you are feeling like your team isn’t as loyal as it used to be. And so you’re looking for ways to really create deeper relationships with your employees so that they stick around longer. And, and the truth of the matter is there’s competitors nipping at you from every angle.  

So in house competitors, agency as a service model. The consulting companies are buying and offering agency services. Some of the things that we’re doing are being automated or almost productized in every way. So there’s a lot of different challengers to the work that we do. Which means that honestly, our planning can’t be a check the box sort of thing. And we cannot stay on the surface, not this year. We really need to challenge our assumptions and I’m hoping get you and your team excited about 2026 and all that it can bring. I do believe there are huge opportunities around the corner for agencies that are willing to look at what they do, who they do it for, how they do it all through a new lens and really reinvent in some ways, re innovate and be open to the idea that this is not going to be a same old, same old era for your agency.  

Your agency is going to look different. And in fact, for most of you, your agency already looks different. Change is inevitable in our industry. We’re going to talk about that in my next solo cast. But change is inevitable in it and honestly, it’s just part of our DNA. But we have a lot of change happening to us right now. And so the strategic planning for this year seems more important than usual. So a couple of ways that you can do this.  

So number one, this is not hour long activity. This is not a let’s fit it in between calls kind of a task. You’re going to need to block time for this. I’m going to walk you through several exercises and you may decide to block off a full day or a couple days and do all of them at once. Some of you might do this on an all team retreat. Some of you might do this on a leadership retreat. You might also maybe do it over the course of a month. Maybe it’s the month of October and every week you’re going to do a couple of these exercises. Many of these exercises will benefit from people doing some homework in advance. So they come with data points or ideas or impressions to the exercise. So you can decide that do you want to. Do you want to explain the exercise to the team that’s going to do the exercise before you walk in the door, or do you want it to be fresh and just explain it to them and let them just tackle it in the moment?  

So those are your options. I want you to have a mix of people. So of course you, the agency owner, of course your leadership team. But also think about mixing up who participates. So a mix of tenured staff, fresh faces, people from different departments, people who are super strategic, people are super tactical.  

Remember that every perspective is valuable and adds a little bit of color to what you’re doing. And so don’t be shy about including a lot of different kind of people in this. And by the way, one of the exercises I’m going to suggest that you actually invite some outsiders in, but we’ll get to that when we get to that exercise. So again, we have created some worksheets for you that will help you sort of guide the team through these different strategy sessions or these different exercises. So feel free to download those.  

By the way, I’m giving you sort of a framework. You may want to change the framework a little bit. By all means. This is yours to do with as you please, so feel free to modify it in any way that makes sense for your agency. I tried to build something really deep and meaningful, but I know no two agencies are the same. And so there may be some nuances here that you want to change. And I’ll point out a few of those as we walk through the exercises.  

Okay, couple things. So again, this is, you know, strategic planning 101. You’re going to want to establish some ground rules. You don’t want people censoring each other. You know, the whole there are no bad ideas, or we have to get through the bad ideas to get to the good ideas. However you want to frame that up. You want to make sure that the quieter people have a way to participate. So you may invite people in a certain order to share, or as you’re breaking up into small teams, you’ll see. I have a couple exercises where I ask you to do that. Be thoughtful about how you put the teams together so that every voice has space and room to be heard. Oftentimes I find that the quietest team members or the most introverted team members have deep Deep ideas that often get sort of trampled over by the extroverted folks in the room or the more senior people. So make sure you leave lots of room and that you have conversations with those people and make sure they understand how valuable their input is and that you really want them to participate. And you may have to carve a path for them to have room to participate. So make sure you do that.  

And this is not the time to choose your words carefully. Candor and a confidence in that candor is really important. If we just say good things to each other, if we don’t point out the areas where we can get better, this is not useful time. This is a waste of time. So really encouraging your team to be honest with where the agency’s at, where the clients are at, where your competitors are at, and where you want to go is super important. Agencies are brilliant at going down sort of little paths, right? We, we can get diverted in a hurry. You may want to assign like a timekeeper or a facilitator to keep things moving. And then make sure you figured out a way.  

And I know this sounds basic, but make sure you figure out a way to capture all of the ideas. So with AI today, you might just record the meeting and transcribe it. You might have somebody on a whiteboard or with the big post it notes, taking notes, however it fits in your culture to do that. If you’re doing this on Zoom, you know, you can use or, you know, some sort of virtual meeting, you can use the meeting notes there, but make sure you capture not just where you end up, but also how you got there.  

A couple reasons for that. Number one, you may want to go back and revisit some of the decisions you make or some of the insights. And part of the value of how you got to that insight was the path that took you there. Also, you’re going to need to explain this. So let’s say you’re doing this with your leadership team, but eventually you’re going to want to bring your whole team into the mix. And so you’re going to want to be able to give them. You know, one of the mistakes we often make when we have a big aha is we just tell people our aha. And we took three hours to get to that aha, but we just unveil the aha as though it’s self evident. Oftentimes we need to take them on the same journey. So you may have to explain, here’s where we started with this exercise and then we got to this interesting place. And then we took this detour which led us over here and et cetera, et cetera. Well, it’ll be a lot easier to do that if you have the transcript script or really great notes from the meeting so that a month later you still remember the path that it took you to get to the big insight.  

All right, so that’s how I would set up the session again. Might decide to do it all at once. You might decide to break it up. You might do it when you do an off site with your whole team. How this feels right to you to do, completely up to you. Super important, though, that you do it.  

And by the way, this is not a wait till January to do it. I really am hoping you will do it in the fourth quarter so that you have time to lay the groundwork. January is such a great month to gear up. And so often, you know, you’ve heard me talk about sort of that holiday hibernation between American Thanksgiving, so the end of November and the first of the year. So often agencies go pretty dormant during then. We’re scrambling to get some projects done, but everybody’s taking extra time off. People are thinking about the holidays. And so after the first of the year, it takes us a month to get back going because we’ve been kind of on coast it mode for six weeks. And so if you cannot go into coast it mode, but you can be teeing up, whatever it is, your strategic plan suggests that you should come out of the gate in 2026 doing, if you can have all of that teed up, or you can use those first couple weeks in January when clients are still slow and everybody’s still kind of coming out of the holidays.  

And gosh, if you’re in some parts of the world, like Australia, it’s really February before you are back in the saddle. But if you can use those sort of dormant weeks in the beginning of the year to actually already have things going and to start peppering the work that you’ve been teeing up, you’re going to be so far ahead of everybody else because everybody else is sort of slumbering through the last half of December and the first part of January. And if you come out of the G roaring, you’re ahead of the game. So let’s, let’s think about that. All right, so let’s talk a little bit about the exercises.  

All right, this first exercise is what I’m calling scenario stress testing. And what I want you to do is I want you to think of some what if scenarios. And I’M going to give you some examples. Some of these may be perfectly aligned with your agency. You might have to come up with your own. But I want you to think about each scenario and then what I want you to do is I want you to answer for each scenario. So we’re going to talk about the scenario. You’re going to break up into small groups and each small group is going to answer the same questions about the same scenario. And then you’ll come back and you’ll report back to each other and then talk about some aha. Moments from that. So each group is going to answer for each scenario. What would we stop, start or change to survive and thrive this scenario? Another question. What resources, skills or mindsets would we need most to survive and thrive this scenario? Another one. What early warning signs would tell us if this was actually happening for each scenario? So you’re going to ask answer those questions. So let me give you an example of some of the scenarios. So here’s, here’s the first one. What if AI automated 70% of the tasks that our agencies do and clients expect only high level strategy and insight? So again, you might say that. All right, so if we were faced with this scenario, AI automates 70% of our tasks and clients only want to buy high level strategy and insight. Then the small groups would answer the question, what would we stop, start or change to survive or thrive in that scenario? What resources, skills or mindsets would we need the most for that scenario? And what early warning signs might tell us that this is actually happening? Okay, so that’s scenario one. Scenario two is what if our top clients market is cut in half overnight? Again, same questions.  

Here’s another scenario. What if a competitor of ours offered the same services we offer at half our price globally? Again, what would we stop, start and change to survive and thrive? What resources, skills or mindsets would we need the most if that happened to us? And are there any early warning signs that we could watch for that would tell us if this is actually happening? Another couple scenarios to consider. You lose 40% of your most experienced staff all within six months and they all go to your biggest competitor. Again, what would you start, stop, change, etc. Etc.  

Another scenario that you could consider exploring with your team is a major client announces that they will be moving your compensation to a month by month performance based compensation. And if you don’t hit the mark, they will either suspend services with you or terminate services with you. And there is no more long term retainer. So you are literally going month by month. With a major client and it’s going to be based on performance. And if you don’t hit the mark, they’re either going to pause or they’re going to fire you. So what would you start? Stop, change, etc. Etc. Go through those same questions. Another scenario for you to consider exploring with your team overnight. The digital platform where most of your clients campaigns run, either announces prohibitive new rules or costs or is restricted by regulations, which means they are no longer an option.  

Again, you may have different scenarios, you may be worried about different things that you could create a scenario, but you these examples give you a model, right? So if something big happened to us, and obviously it happens with very little notice, and then answer those questions. So again, no matter which scenarios you pick, and I would do two or three of these at least, what would we stop, start or change to survive and thrive? What resources, skills or mindsets would we need the most? What early warning signs would tell us this is actually happening? So you’d break up into small groups.  

Remember those small groups should be a mix of young and old, experienced and inexperienced, extroverted and introverted. And you should set some rules around how they are going to discuss that, to make sure that everybody’s voice gets heard, everybody breaks off, has their discussions and then comes back and everybody reports in what they decided. And then you would sort of highlight what insights came from this, what surprises came from that. Are there some positive pivots that perhaps would help you manage that scenario and maybe you can even proactively anticipate we should do some of these things now because some of these things may actually happen. So that’s exercise number one.  

Exercise number two is an exercise in mapping sort of where your client’s at. So we called it client empathy mapping.  

So now what I want you to do with this exercise is really step into your client’s shoes, perhaps like you have not done before, or maybe you do this all the time, but I want you to do it in a structured way. So on a whiteboard or worksheet or in a chat, however you’re going to do this map out for identify some your client type. So you might have retainer clients, you might have project clients, you might have clients in a certain industry. So sort of think about how do you sort of naturally put your clients into buckets and then have three or so buckets of clients. And then ask yourself these questions, what kind of jobs are they hiring us for? And really what’s beyond the invoice? What is underneath the request? What would they tell you their biggest headaches are today and what are they anticipating their headaches are going to be in 2026? What would real success look like for them, both personally and professionally? Identify areas where the client’s needs or fears are changing the fastest? What is one bold innovation or change that could fix their pain or deliver a dream result for them? How are their internal metrics for success evolving? And in what invisible ways might our current services be mismatched to how their performance is really being judged by their bosses, their board, or even AI driven analytics? You know so often what clients ask us to do for them, they don’t know. I mean, the old age, old example is a client says they need a brochure, they don’t need a brochure, they need something completely different. But if we don’t ask enough questions, we don’t know that.  

So are we taking the order and maybe not delivering what they really need? Another question to ask yourself about these different buckets is if our agency disappeared tomorrow, what would our client truly miss? And what would they immediately replace with freelancers? An internal team or automation? And then last but not least, which current or emerging pressures? And these pressures could be cultural, technological, regulatory, personal? Which current or emerging pressures are causing our clients to act against their own long term interests? And how could we become the partner that helps them push back or choose a better path? So again, I want you to ask yourself these questions about each of sort of these buckets or categories of clients you have and see what you find is true. And are these the topics that you’re talking to clients about? Are you having these meaningful conversations? What of these questions could, couldn’t you answer? Or do you only answer at the service at the surface level? And what kind of conversations should you be having with clients about these kinds of topics?  

I love this exercise because here’s what I think is going to happen. Number one, you’re going to find some people in your shop who have more insight about what’s going on with your client perhaps than you knew or thought. Two, I think you’re going to find some blind spots where you really cannot, if you’re really honest with yourself, you cannot answer these questions, which is going to suggest some really important conversations you need to have with clients. And three, having this insight, having these thoughts, and then being able to say to a client, you know what? We were doing some strategic planning and we were thinking about you. And one of the things that we were asking ourselves is fill in the blank. Whatever it is, I want to run it by you. And I want to tell you what we think and I would love to get your input on and did we get it right or what are we missing? What aren’t we seeing? If you had that kind of a conversation with a client and you said, look, you know, this is just part of our process in thinking about your business and how we can be even more helpful and a better partner,  

I’m telling you, your client is going to eat that up for lunch and they’re going to feel very seen and valued and it’s going to elevate the relationship you have with that client. So this is a really great exercise for lots of reasons.  

All right, this is maybe one of my favorite exercises of all of these that we’ve put together. So this is a reverse mentoring roundtable. So here’s what I want you to do. I want you to invite your youngest staff or your most recently hired team members to run this exercise. And the more senior people, the leadership team are only allowed to ask questions. You cannot argue, you cannot defend the status quo. But in advance, your youngest team members, your least experienced team members, your newest team members, you’re going to ask them these questions in advance and they’re going to present their answers to you. And all you can do is be curious and ask questions. So here are the questions that I want them to come to you prepared to answer. And you could allow them to do this individually, you could allow them to come together as a team. That’s up to you. You might suggest that they do it individually and then come together as a team and kind collaborate on their answers. But here are the questions you want them to ask or sorry, answer. What would you change about this agency if you were in charge? What tech or work culture trends are we missing at the agency? And what would you do to make us the agency of the future?  

So again, you’re going to ask them those questions, they’re going to prepare in advance, they’re going to come to you with some answers, and all you can do is ask questions and then I think you have a conversation with them about which ideas really challenged you and are there some ideas there that you should start exploring and trying? All right. Love that exercise.  

Okay, I’m going to take a quick break and then I’ll come back and we will walk you through the rest of the exercises. All right, I’ll be right back.  

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Hey everybody. Just want to remind you before we get back to the show that we have a very engaged Facebook group. It’s a private group just for podcast listeners and agency owners that are in the AMI community. And to find it, if you’re not a member, head over to facebook.com groups B, a bapodcast. So again, facebook.com groups Bab podcast. All you have to do is answer a few questions to make sure that you are an actual agency owner or leader and we will let you right in. And you can join over 1700 other agency owners and leaders. And I’m telling you, there’s probably 10 or 15 conversations that are started every day that are going to be of value to you. So come join us.  

All right, we are back and we are talking about strategic planning with a twist. 

I’m hoping you’re finding these exercises intriguing. I’m kind of hoping they make you a little uncomfortable and a little nervous because that means I hit the mark and I’m asking you to do something more or deeper than perhaps you’ve done in the past. And I’m hoping it also gets you a little excited about the answers that this is going to unveil for you.  

All right, so the next exercise, I want you to become your competitor. So you’re going to break people up into teams again. You’re going to identify when you go up against another agency who normally eats your lunch, who are you like most competitive with? Who do you admire the most? Who does really great work that you admire and that you know is a worthy competitor to you?  

So this is all about sort of smashing the echo chamber of sort of what we say to ourselves. So you’re going to assign teams and each team is going to become your biggest competitor or a hypothetical disruptor. And so what you’re going to do is you’re going to give them an hour and their job is to prepare a presentation, a pitch, and the title of this pitch is How We Will Beat and then your agency’s name. That’s it. How we’re Going to beat you. Right?  

So then they’re going to present as the competition and you need to give everybody permission to be really ruthless. So this is a place where candor and brutal honesty is critical. So you’re going to say, you know what? And we’ve got a worksheet to ask them some questions about how they would beat your agency if they were, they were running the competitive agency, what they would do in a pitch to beat your agency, or what they would do when they talk about themselves to, to look better than your agency. And so as a real team, after everybody presents, have a really honest conversation about which of those threats felt the most urgent, most accurate. What strengths could we borrow from them? How would we be more like that sort of proverbial competitor that just ate our lunch in this presentation? What did they say about us that would be hard for us to defend and what do we need to do to shore that up or to change that?  

So really great exercise, but it does require everyone having permission to be brutally honest. So think about your culture a little bit. Are you capable of having that kind of brutal honesty with each other? You may have to set the tone for this, but again, you’re going to want to mix the teams up carefully.  

So you’ve got a good mix of experienced and inexperienced people and people from all disciplines that see your competitor, that might see the creative of your competitor differently, or the strategy or the social media presence, whatever it may be. So you’re going to want to bake those teams really carefully.  

I, I love this exercise if you’re brave enough to do it.  

All right, so the next strategic planning exercise I want you to do is a lightning round around trend spotting. So this is going to be, this is going to be about everybody sort of being on their toes and being really thoughtful about the trends that we should all be tracking. So what you’re going to do is you’re first going to eliminate. You’re going to say, hey, all right, everyone’s going to get, every team member is individually going to get 10 minutes to find a trend that they think is shaking up agencies like ours or shaking up our clients industry. You can obviously get online, you can use blogs or LinkedIn or whatever it may be, but first you’re going to eliminate. You’re going to say, okay, but no one can talk about AI. No one can talk about. You’re going to eliminate the obvious ones so that everybody has to really dig deeper. And then when everybody comes back to report, you’re going to say, tell us your trend. And if this trend comes true, what are the positive or negative results for us?  

So everyone’s going to come back after their 10 minutes of scrambling around online, everyone’s going to identify a trend. This is another one that if you want to assign in advance, might make sense to do that. So everyone’s can be more thoughtful, but they’re going to present their trend and then they’re going to talk about if this really comes to fruition, what’s the positive or negative result for us. And then you’re going to take all of the trends and you’re going to rank them in terms of the risk to you, the opportunity for you, which ones you want to track, Are there things you want to pilot? Are there things you need to prepare for?  

So great discussion should come out of that exercise.  

All right, so the next one. This is one of my favorites too. I know I keep saying that, but this is really about looking at the values of your agency. So if you don’t have values that you’ve articulated to the team, if you don’t live by your core values, then don’t do this. Obviously, most of you will have values. They might just be on a wall somewhere. If you have a physical space, they might just be in your employee handbook. You may or may not have them woven into the culture of your agency, which is a whole different discussion. But what I want you to do is I want you to, for each stated company value, ask these questions. And again, you’re going to do this in small groups and then you’re going to report back, when did this particular value. So for each value, you’re going to answer this question, when did this particular value actually shape a business decision this past year? Question number one. Question number two, where do we talk the talk but not walk the walk for this value? So again, you’re going to do this for each value. Third question, if we double down on this value, what risky move might we make? Okay, then come back, everybody shares. And then as you’re debriefing, start asking yourself, how can we more deeply embed our values into the decisions we make, into our behaviors and choices, into the way we go to market, into the way we interact with our team members, with our clients, and really what value driven actions could define us in a marketplace where everybody is struggling to be differentiated? And in a market that’s shifting, what are our anchors, that no matter what shifts, this is true. This is truly who we are and what we’re all about. And how do we bring that to bigger, deeper fruition in 2026.  

All right, so my next exercise is going to be hard and it’s going to take some courage. But what I want to do, so I’m, I call this exercise pre mortem. So we are going to presuppose that is December 31, 2026, and we are looking back on 2026 and we are going to ask ourselves, why did we fail in 2026? 

 So I want you to imagine that we failed. So you’re going to face those fears, we’re going to talk about it, we’re going to identify those weak spots that might cause us to fail. And then we’re going to build resilience into the strategic plan. So have everyone individually write this answer to an honest answer to this question. The most likely reason our agency failed in 2026, again, we’re projecting this out is they’re going to fill it in. So the most likely reason our agency failed in 2026 was this. And again, this is not a one word answer. This is not a because we didn’t get any new clients. It would have to be because we didn’t get any new clients, because here’s what we did or didn’t do that kept us from getting new clients. Right? They’re going to have to expand on that answer. So you can do this real time and not give them time to think about it. You can prep them in advance and they can come with answers. But then I want you to collect everybody’s and I want you on a wall, literal or figuratively, to kind of gather them up and sort of see in what categories do you start to group these risks and these bad choices and these things that cause the agency to fail in 2026. And once you identify sort of these big groupings for every risk, brainstorm a policy, a safeguard, a test project, a change you need to make, a hire. You need to make whatever it may be to reduce the odds of that problem actually happening in the year ahead.  

So again, you’re going to project out why you failed and then you’re going to try and build in fail safes to avoid that failure in 2026. Really love this exercise. Again, a lot of these, if there’s a theme to this, this does require everybody being really honest with each other. So look at yourself, look at your culture, think about what you would have to say to your team to get this level of honesty. What are you going to have to do to be vulnerable and be honest? First, probably you and the leadership team, you know, your rank and file employees are not going to wrap their arms around this with great enthusiasm if they think they’re going to get censored or in trouble. So you’re going to have to sort of set the tone, but really critical that you do that if these are going to work.  

Okay, so next one. This is, remember I told you I was going to have one exercise in the strategic planning where you’re going to bring an outsider in. I think of this as the Dragon’s Den strategy pitch. So you’re going to kind of test your plan. So you’re going to do all these exercises. You’re going to put together a strategic plan for 2026. And then what I want you to do is I want you to test it. Okay, here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to have so you’re going to do all these exercises, you’re going to have a plan. Then I want you to reach out to some agency friends. So if you’re an ami, it might be somebody in your peer group or it might be somebody you’ve met at a workshop. But I want you to assemble three to five trusted colleagues and ask them if they are willing to stress test your strategic plan.  

So they’re going to play the role of your toughest critic, maybe a tough client, a skeptical employee, digital procurement bots, something like that. But they’re going to pressure test your strategic plan. So I want you, your leadership team or the group, however you want to do this, or pitch the strategic plan to this panel of critics and invite them to ask really hard questions. In fact, make a rule, no softball questions allowed. This is really hard questions. You want them to drill you hard about the strategic plan. Then based on the questions they ask and how you answer those questions, or the holes in the plan that they identify with their questions, or the things that, the perspective that they brought that you hadn’t thought about then I want you then to take that input and revamp your plan based on this challenge now focused on now, you’ve got some great clarity, you’ve got some great conviction. You’ve pressure tested and it survived the pressure test. But this outside perspective is going to be super helpful for you as you go into 2026.  

All right, those are the exercises. So obviously part of what you’re going to do is you’re going to go through these exercises and all of those exercises are going to hopefully give you some great insights so that you and some tough truths probably that you can put together the game plan for 2026, what are the critical things you need to do? And I would think about the critical things in five or six key areas. You know, we’ve got that agency one page business plan. We’ll also put that in the show notes, but it focuses on what do we need to do for our systems and processes, what do we need to do financially, what do we need to do as leaders, what do we need to do for the team, what are we doing for marketing and sales? What are we doing for product or service development? What are all of those things?  

So build the strategic plan, the things that are most important. And by the way, be realistic about what you can accomplish. This is not about changing 97 things. It’s identifying the most important things, things for you to evolve or add or stop or change or whatever it is. But the most important things don’t bite off so much that you know you can’t accomplish it. So be really judicious about how you do this. Then you’re going to have the plan, you’re going to test it with that last exercise I just gave you and you’re going to finalize the plan.  

Now I want you to document your vision for what December 2026 will look like if you execute on this plan. What’s it going to look like for the team, what’s it going to look like for clients, what’s it going to look like for your, the financials, the KPIs, whatever that matters for you, Set some really bold objectives and key results that you’re going to shoot for and build quarterly scorecards to track against it, right? So number one, you’re going to do that. Number two, you’re going to schedule quarterly check ins where you’re reviewing the scorecards, you’re pivoting as you need to, you’re celebrating your wins. For those of you that do agency advantage with us, or you do traction or you do something else, this aligns perfectly with your quarterly meetings. You’re also going to assign somebody to track those trends that you identified. And how are you going to weave that through the organization so that everybody continues to get educated and stays current with all the changes that are happening. And I want you to sit around and ask yourself this question. So you’ve got the plan finalized, you’ve identified some objectives and some KPIs that you’re going to measure. You have a vision for what December 2026 is going to look like. You have trend tracking happening.  

And then I want you to say to yourself, after you’ve done all of that. All right, how do we keep this plan alive? It’s not a document, but how do we start to build habits around this plan every day, every week, every month, every quarter? How do we bring this to life and make it a focus for everybody in the agency? So it’s not just some retreat activity, but it really is something we’re talking about regularly and we are committed to. And we are showing that commitment by the actions we take, the choices we make, the conversations we have. How do we make sure that this strategic plan is real and alive?  

All right, I think if you do all of that, there are some amazing opportunities that are coming up for you in 2026, and you can take full advantage of them. Strategic planning isn’t about guessing the future. It’s not looking into a crystal ball. It’s really about preparing and thinking about what you know, what you still need to know so that you can adapt. It may be about listening in places you haven’t been listening to before, but once you do all of that and you have a plan, then it’s about acting with courage and clarity. Both courage and clarity. You know exactly what you’re going to do, and you know when you’re going to do it and how you’re going to do it. Will it play out exactly how you think it’s going to? Absolutely not. We have never had a year that played out exactly as we expected. But with this strategic plan, if you drill down deeply enough, these are foundational decisions. These are foundational directional shifts. These are around foundational growth areas that no matter what happens on the surface, is important to continue, and you’re going to stay committed to getting it done. You do that, And I think 2026 is going to be a killer year for you if you use these exercises.  

I would love to hear how it goes. I love hearing stories from all of you about how you’re breaking old habits and you’re building a new future for your agents. So I hope this was helpful. I hope it was super practical. Again, I’ve given you these exercises, but feel free to modify them in a way that fits your agency better. If I didn’t quite hit the mark for your shop, or you think a slight tweak would make it even better, by all means, these are yours to do with as you please. So modify them, change them, throw them away, and do something different that it makes you think of. Use them just as they are. I don’t really care. But what I do care is that you don’t go into this new year unprepared and that you don’t go in with just the surface SWOT analysis, that you really spend the time talking about everything that’s going on in your shop, with your clients, in the industries you serve, with the technology surrounding all around us so that you are really ready to not only survive 2026, but to thrive in it, to take it hostage and own it. That’s what I want for you. I want it to be your best year ever. And there’s no reason why it can’t be with the proper planning and the proper discipline to actually executing the plan.  

Okay, that wraps up this episode. I hope it was helpful. Thank you so much for listening. I promise I’ll be back next week with a guest to get you thinking a little differently. I’m excited to hear how you apply these and what they tell you and what you learn from it and what you decide to do with it. So go forth and plan and be strategic and put together a vision for your agency that you’re excited about, that your team is excited about, that you can tell your clients and they’re going to get excited about. I think there’s huge opportunity for us, so let’s take full advantage of them. All right? All right. Thanks for listening. I’ll talk to you soon. Come back next week for another episode designed to help you build a stronger, more stable and sustainable agency. Check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages and other professional development [email protected] Sam.