At this time of year, leaders everywhere are setting goals, establishing targets, and aligning priorities. It's exciting, no doubt. However, it's also where many well-intentioned strategies quietly fall apart.
Why?
Because most planning conversations are filled with the same assumption: that you can keep everything going. That this is the year your team will prospect more, expand accounts, revamp onboarding, launch enablement, improve forecasting accuracy, clean up the CRM, crush customer retention, post more on LinkedIn, and throw in a podcast while you're at it.
Here's the truth: If everything matters, then nothing truly does.
The highest-performing leaders I know don't just decide what to go after. They decide what to let go of. They decide to stop it! They understand that focus requires sacrifice.
A few years ago, I was in a coaching session with a fairly successful sales professional. We were discussing his prospecting plan and all the networking events and organizations he was involved in. He attended 3-5 networking events a week, and it was starting to take a toll on his family and personal life. He had spent the time developing his network, but he wasn't using it. For the next 90 days, we decided his only prospecting activity would be asking for referrals. As you might imagine, within 60 days, he was exceeding his goals because he was focused on one activity. Now, I'm not recommending this as a cure-all, but for him it was the right change.
That's why the real question heading into a new year is this: What are you willing to be bad at, on purpose?
Tradeoffs Are Not Weaknesses
When you make a strategic plan, you're not just choosing what to pursue. You're choosing what to ignore. You're making a tradeoff. That doesn't mean you're failing in one area. It means you're thinking clearly.
If you're doubling down on building a pipeline, you may need to allocate less energy to refining your quarterly internal decks. If you're committed to developing new leadership on your team, you might not be the one in every deal review. If you're narrowing your target verticals, you might miss some inbound noise. That's not a failure in judgment. That's strategy in action.
Most leaders don't lack vision. They lack permission to focus.
So consider this your permission to stop doing something. You don't need to be everything to everyone. You need to be excellent in the areas that actually drive your results.
Clarity Before Commitment
At Sandler, we emphasize the importance of clarity before commitment. It's a core idea we apply to the sales process, but it's just as applicable in leadership and goal setting.
Before your team commits to a goal, be absolutely clear about what is required to hit it. Do you have the capacity? The skill? The leadership coverage? The behavioral plan? If the answer is 'yes,' great. Lock it in.
If the answer is 'maybe,' then clarify what else needs to shift to support that goal. And if the answer is 'no,' that doesn't make you less ambitious. It makes you more honest.
There's no point in creating a goal that only makes sense on paper but can't survive real-world constraints.
What This Looks Like in Practice
So, how do you start "stopping it?" Here are a few examples I've seen in strategic teams:
- Choosing not to focus on a particular segment of the market this year because the sales cycle is too long, or conversion is too low
- Putting a pause on specific "nice-to-have" initiatives to invest more heavily in coaching and sales skills
- Letting go of a platform that generates visibility but doesn't move any real deals
- Trimming meeting hours so your sales managers can do actual pipeline reviews rather than talk about doing them
- Deciding not to launch something new at all, and instead finally fixing the thing that's been broken since Q2 of last year
None of these moves is about being lazy. They're about being clear.
And that kind of clarity builds trust. Your team sees it. They know when you're stretched thin and when the goals are just noise. When you give them focus, you give them a fighting chance to win.
What Happens When You Don't Choose
If you don't make these choices early, the year will make them for you. You'll start dropping balls anyway, but without alignment or intention. Instead of guiding your team's focus, you'll be reacting to what's burning hottest. And the most strategic work often doesn't burn; it simmers.
So before January gets too far, step back and ask:
- What are we chasing this year?
- What are we not chasing?
- What are we okay being average at for now?
- Where are we willing to stop doing on purpose, because the upside elsewhere is greater?
Leadership is not about doing more. It's about doing the right things with more consistency and conviction than everyone else. And that means letting go of the illusion that you can do it all.
So if you're getting ready for your big annual kickoff, don't just ask what success looks like. Ask what you're intentionally saying 'no' to. Ask where you're choosing to underperform and focus on overperforming where it counts.
That's not about setting lower standards. It's about setting real ones.
If you want help getting your team laser-focused on what matters most—so you can create behavior plans that are actually followed and goals that are actually achieved—reach out. We'd love to discuss how we can assist you.
