In January, I set our 2026 goals the way I’ve set goals for twenty years. I put them in writing. I thought carefully about what the company could do, what the market would support, and what I could ask the team to deliver. I believed in those numbers.
In November, I told my leadership team we weren’t going to hit them. I also told them I was retiring them.
Those are two separate decisions. The first is an acknowledgment of how the year went. The second requires me to explain why the original goals should stop guiding the work.
When a goal still measures something your business needs to improve, own the miss. When the assumptions behind it have changed, explain what changed and give your team a measure they can use to make decisions now.
What changed between January and November?
We’re becoming a software company while continuing to run an agency. That means serving clients today while building the software that changes how we serve them. I rebuilt the company from 320 people to 38, and AI agents now handle some of the work our goals used to count in human hours.
That change affects how I read the numbers. If an agent takes over a task, the hours my team spends on it may go down. The drop tells me something about how the work gets done. It tells me very little about whether the work is good, whether the client got what they needed, or where the team should spend the time it got back.
Those are the questions I need my goals to help us answer. Some of the numbers I chose in January made sense for the way we worked then. By November, using them to judge the team’s decisions would have meant asking people to optimize for work we were already changing.
How do you know when a goal should be retired?
I start by asking myself what I would want the team to do differently if we were behind on the goal. If I still want them to make that change, the goal probably belongs in the plan. We may need a different approach, more time, or a candid conversation about execution.
Sometimes the honest answer is that I’d ask them to do something different today, even if it took us further from the original target. That’s when I go back to the assumption I made when I set it. What did I believe about the business, the work, or the market? What can I point to that shows it has changed?
I’ve held on to plans because I liked what they said about the year I thought I was going to have. I’ve also felt the temptation to let go of a goal because it was getting harder to reach. Both are good reasons to sit with the document a little longer before I ask anyone else to change course.
What does the team need to hear?
There was a silence in the meeting after I said we were retiring the goals. I’d spent time thinking about why the old numbers had stopped being useful. My leaders had a more immediate question to answer for themselves. What does she expect of me now?
That question is why I’d prepare the entire conversation before announcing a reset.
- Start with where you’re going. I can still tell the team what we’re building, who we serve, and what kind of company we’re working to become. The team needs to hear that before we get into which goals are coming out of the plan.
- Name each goal you’re retiring and explain what changed. Be specific about the assumption you made and what you’ve learned since. If a goal is still valid and you’re going to miss it, say so plainly. Your team needs to hear you make that distinction.
- Give people a clear expectation for the next stretch of work. Pick a period short enough to review while the team can still act on what it learns. Give each measure an owner, a target, and a review date. If people leave the meeting unsure which decisions should change on Monday, the reset needs more work.
What should you do with your own goal sheet?
Set aside an hour and mark each goal still valid, at risk, or built on an assumption that changed. The first two can both belong in the plan. For the third, write one sentence explaining what you assumed when you set the goal and what you know now. If your only evidence is that you’re behind, start by looking at why.
Then write down what you need to see over the next several weeks to know the team is making progress. Work out who owns each measure and when you’ll review it before you bring people into the room.
The hardest part for me was saying out loud that the year I planned in January was already over. Once I said it, we could spend the rest of the conversation on a question I could actually answer. What do I need this team to do next, given the company we’re running today?
Keep reading: From 320 People to 38 and Letting Go of What Was.