From Lingering Problems to Repeatable Wins: How Strategy Mapping Keeps Your 2026 Plan Alive All Year

Every leader has “that” list.

The list of problems that never seems to disappear:

• The handoff that always breaks

• The client segment you never quite crack

• The team that lives in permanent firefight mode

You talk about them in QBRs, town halls, and leadership meetings. You launch projects. You assign owners. You promise, “This time, we’ll fix it.
And yet… there they are. Again. Next quarter.

If that sounds familiar, you don’t just have a performance problem.
You have a strategy mapping problem

Why Lingering Problems Survive Great Strategy

Most organizations are not short on Ideas or Effort.

Where things fall apart is translation:

• Big goals don’t translate into focused plays

• Plays don’t translate into clear ownership

• Ownership doesn’t translate into daily behavior

Research has shown that a huge percentage of strategies fail at execution — often 60–90% never deliver what was intended.(Harvard Business Review) The reasons range from misaligned initiatives and unclear priorities to weak feedback loops and poor communication.(Forbes)

In other words:
Your lingering problems are a systems issue, not a “try harder” issue.

That’s where Strategy Mapping comes in.

Strategy Mapping: Your Blueprint from Problem to Repeatable Win

A strategy map creates a visual line of sight from your long-term goals to the activities that actually move the needle. It clarifies objectives, shows how they interrelate, and highlights which levers truly drive results.(CMOE)

But a Strategy Mapping engagement goes further. It:

1. Names the real friction points

2. Decides where to intervene first

3. Builds repeatable wins into your year, not one-time pushes

At The Art of Strategy, we use our Strategy Flywheel™ to guide that process. Strategy Mapping is how we apply it directly to your world for a full year of traction.

Step 1: Turn Vague Frustrations into Precise Friction

We start by translating your “we’re stuck” into clear friction points:

• Where is value leaking?

• Where are customers feeling the impact?

• Which internal processes are consistently slowing you down?

• What people or capability gaps are keeping you from executing?

This isn’t about blame.
It’s about creating a shared, honest picture of why the same problems keep coming back.

Leaders are often surprised by what shows up:

• A small policy that creates massive bottlenecks downstream

• A misaligned KPI that drives the wrong behavior

• An initiative that no one believes in, but everyone is still executing

Once friction is visible, we can map how it connects to your 2026 goals.

Step 2: Build a Strategy Map that Focuses Your Firepower

Next, we build your strategy map — a one-page picture that shows:

• Your 2026 outcomes (revenue, margin, market, impact)

• The customer results required to reach those outcomes

• The internal processes and capabilities that must shift

• The people, culture, and systems you need to support it

Instead of a long list of disconnected projects, you see:

• Cause and effect

• Dependencies

• Where to say “not now”

A well-built strategy map becomes your decision filter:

Does this initiative move a core objective on the map?
If not, why are we doing it?

This alone starts to kill off lingering problems that were being fed by scattered efforts and fuzzy priorities.

Step 3: Design a 12-Month Quick-Win Path (Not a “Someday” Plan)

Here’s where Strategy Mapping becomes a year-long performance system, not a one-and-done exercise.

We take your map and translate it into a 12-month execution path built around quick wins:

• Quarter 1: Stabilize – clean up the worst friction that’s slowing everything down

• Quarter 2: Strengthen – build the systems, skills, and rhythms you’ve been missing

• Quarter 3: Scale – expand what’s working into more teams, regions, or lines of business

• Quarter 4: Sharpen – refine based on data, market changes, and what your people have learned
  

Each quarter, we identify:

• 3–5 high-impact quick wins tied directly to your map

• A clear owner for each

• The metrics that define success

• The guardrails that keep it grounded in reality (capacity, timelines, risk)

Instead of chasing 30 initiatives poorly, you deliver a smaller number exceptionally well — and you free your teams from the constant drag of “half-finished fixes.”

Step 4: Keep the Plan Alive with Check-Ins and Feedback Loops

Many strategies fail not because they’re wrong, but because no one revisits or tests the assumptions behind them.(McKinsey & Company)

In our Strategy Mapping work, we build in:

• Monthly or quarterly review conversations

• Simple visual dashboards linked directly to the strategy map

• Honest questions: What moved? What stalled? What surprised us? What do we stop, start, or change?

This is how lingering problems finally die:

• They are either owned and fixed, or

• They are intentionally deprioritized and removed from the noise

Either way, you’re no longer dragging them from year to year.

What This Looks Like in Practice

When organizations commit to Strategy Mapping over a full year, they often see:

• Faster resolution of long-standing issues (because the right people are finally working on the right problem)

• Better use of resources (time, money, talent focused where it matters most)

• More consistent performance (less “hero mode,” more repeatable systems)

• A culture that feels less chaotic and more confident

Instead of hoping 2026 will be different, you build a structure that makes “different” inevitable.

For Leaders Looking at 2026 and Thinking, “We Need More Than a Plan.”

If you’re looking at 2026 and thinking:

• “We can’t afford another year of dragging the same problems forward.”

• “We need clarity, quick wins, and a way to keep this alive.”

• “We want a partner who can walk this with us, not just hand us a document.”

You’re exactly who we built our Strategy Mapping engagements for.

At The Art of Strategy, we:

• Facilitate the hard conversations

• Translate the mess into a clear map

• Build your year-long quick-win path

• Walk alongside you to guard and evolve the plan

You don’t need more willpower.
You need a better system.

If you’re ready to turn lingering problems into repeatable wins — and keep your 2026 plan alive all year:

👉 Book a Strategy Mapping & Strategic Planning Discovery Call
👉 Visit The Art of Strategy and ask about our Strategy Mapping engagements.

Your future results don’t have to look like your past patterns.
You can map something better — and then build it, one quick win at a time.