The Situation
After a layoff, the team needed to go into 2026 strong, aligned, and refocused on the vision.
A Series B healthtech company entered its 2026 planning cycle carrying real weight. Coming off a recent layoff. Revenue had to grow 30% year over year — a roughly $10M lift on a sub-$50M base. Operating income was deeply negative. Investors were watching for a credible path to profitability. The leadership team needed to walk into the new year strong, aligned, and refocused — not battle-weary and split across competing priorities.
They had instincts, energy, and inputs. What they didn't have was a process to translate it into a plan that would stick: a sharp Mission, a 5-year Vision the whole team actually shared, 2026 Outcomes specific enough to organize work around, and an operating model that would connect annual goals to weekly execution.
The Intervention
I facilitated the 2026 planning process — from mission down to operating cadence.
Over two leadership working sessions (and weeks of pre-work in between), I designed and led a process that started with the highest-altitude question — what is this company's purpose? — and worked down to the operating mechanics that would deliver on it.
- Built a "connecting the dots" framework for the planning process: Mission → Vision → 2026 Outcomes → The Work → Functions, so the leadership team could see how each layer enabled the next
- Defined guiding principles for the planning itself (unarguable clarity, simplify, focus, plan based on real capacity) so the team wasn't just creating goals — they were creating credible ones
- Facilitated leadership debates on the Mission and 5-year Vision, distilling weeks of pre-work into a tight, shared articulation
- Designed criteria for what makes a "good" 2026 Outcome (significant, concrete, action-oriented, inspirational) and drove the team toward 3 finalized Outcomes instead of 7 competing priorities
- Recommended and architected the operating model: a clear accountability concept that assigns one directly responsible owner per Outcome and an outcome-focused cross-functional team to deliver it
- Designed the operating rhythm (annual → quarterly → weekly) connecting strategy to execution, with built-in mechanisms for capacity recalibration when SOW demand spikes
The Result
From competing priorities to three Outcomes the whole company can rally behind.
By mid-December, the company had a finalized Vision/Traction Organizer: a refined Mission ("Better access for patients. Better jobs for people."), a 5-year Vision describing a "quiet revolution" in healthcare access, and 3 clear 2026 Outcomes — prove product-market fit and delivery, grow leaders and culture, and build standards that free teams to use judgment. Comms prep was already underway to roll the plan to the full organization in January.
The more durable output was structural: an operating model where every 2026 Outcome has one named owner, every owner has a dedicated cross-functional team, and the strategy has a weekly heartbeat instead of a quarterly checkbox. The team left planning not just with a plan — but with the operating discipline to deliver it.