Three Things to Stop Doing in 2026

Last week, we started our Strategy For What’s Next series with a call to take stock of 2025 by reviewing what worked, what didn’t, and what drained energy without creating results.

When you look back on the year, you’ll probably identify a few things that aren’t working for you anymore: 

• Programs that lost momentum.
• Partnerships that require more than they return.
• Reports no one reads.
• Marketing initiatives that take a lot of time to deliver mediocre results. 
• Initiatives that sounded good in the meeting but never quite took off.

Now comes the hard part: actually stopping.

Most organizations don’t stagnate because they lack good ideas. They stay stuck in place because they keep investing in things that don’t deliver impact. They add new priorities without removing old ones, or say yes to everything and wonder why nothing moves forward.

You can’t add what matters until you remove what doesn’t.

So here’s a simple framework to help you figure out what to stop doing in 2026.

The Investment-Impact Matrix

Think about everything your organization does—every program, partnership, report, meeting, initiative, committee—and plot it on a simple grid:

• Investment (time, money, attention) on one axis.
• Impact (results, progress, mission advancement) on the other.

Click the image to download a PDF version.

You end up with four quadrants:

• High Impact, Low Investment → Quick Wins. Your Quick Wins deliver results without consuming massive resources. Many of your Quick Wins will always be “small wins,” but sometimes sizeable long-term victories are hiding here if you find the right way to scale them. What’s delivering impact without taking too much of your time? How can you invest further?
• High Impact, High Investment → Strategic Initiatives. Your Strategic Initiatives require significant resources and often require multiple years of focus and attention, but they’re worth it because they move you forward in a transformative way. The challenge here is staying committed. While there is such a thing as waiting too long, most strategies benefit from disciplined patience. 
• Low Impact, Low Investment → Distractions. These don’t cost much, but they don’t deliver much either. This is the long newsletter that no one opens, let alone reads; the social media posts that get 14 likes; the pleasant but pointless partnership. So much time is wasted in this quadrant because these activities are easy to keep doing. They don’t hurt—but they don’t help either. What is running only because you haven’t bothered to ramp it down?
• Low Impact, High Investment → Money Pits. These are the killers, because they consume substantial resources that could go to your real priorities. These are programs that get funding out of habit; legacy products that seem too entrenched to shut down; departments designed to solve a problem from ten years ago. Interestingly, I’ve found that most organizations have a clear sense of their high-cost, low-return activities. In other words, awareness usually isn’t the problem – coming up with the leadership will to change direction is. 

Now I know, there’s nothing new or groundbreaking about a two-by-two matrix. There’s a common joke among consultants that we’ve never met a matrix we didn’t love. Guilty!

But the thing is, we love them because they’re really helpful. First, putting everything into a two-by-two grid forces you to make a choice. Does it work or not? Second, it gives you a way to look at the work instead of just spending time in the work. Sometimes you need to step back to see clearly.

Your job in 2026 is to get out of the left two quadrants.

The Three Things to Stop

I can’t tell you your specific three things—every organization is different. But I can tell you where to look.

Stop the thing that used to work but doesn’t anymore.

Every good decision has a shelf life. What worked in 2019 might not work in 2026. Markets shift. Segments change. Donors age. Technology changes. Teams evolve.

Look for the initiative that made perfect sense when you started it, but hasn’t delivered in years. It’s still on your strategic plan because no one wants to admit it’s not working. It consumes budget and staff time out of momentum rather than strategy.

Ask yourself: If we were starting from scratch today, would we launch this? If the answer is no, it’s time to stop.

Stop the thing you’re doing because someone else thinks you should.

This is the program your board chair loves that doesn’t fit your mission; the partnership your funder suggested that never gained traction; the service you offer because “everyone expects it,” even though it diverts resources from what you do best.

These initiatives survive because saying no feels risky. What if the board gets upset? What if the funder walks away? What if we lose credibility?

But here’s the truth: you lose more credibility by doing mediocre work in areas outside your focus than by saying, “That’s not what we do.”

Strategic organizations know what they will focus on and what they won’t. 

Stop the thing that sounds impressive but doesn’t create impact.

There is a fundamental difference between vanity metrics and valuable metrics. For example, for most organizations, monthly website visits are a vanity metric. Monthly donations (or sales) are a valuable metric. Website visits are useful insofar as they lead to something else – revenue, increased awareness, behavior change, or education. But the visits themselves aren’t the important outcome.

In many organizations, I see metrics that initially were leading metrics (valuable because they lead to something else) take on a life of their own. When that happens, there’s a risk of tilting the organization the wrong way. Producing a beautiful report is important – but if no one reads it, did the report matter? Completing a comprehensive dashboard project is laudable – but if no one uses the data to make decisions, was it important?

When you’re honest about investment versus impact, many projects that take a lot of time really don’t matter. 

What would we lose if we stopped doing this? If the answer is “not much,” stop doing it.

How to Actually Stop

Identifying what to stop is the easy part. Stopping is harder.

You’ll face resistance. Someone will say, “But we’ve always done that.” Someone else will worry about optics. Your most loyal supporters might be attached to the very things that aren’t working.

Here’s what helps:

Be honest about the opportunity cost. Every dollar and hour you spend on low-impact work is a dollar and hour you’re not spending on high-impact work. Frame it as a choice: “We can keep running this program, or we can invest those resources in X. Which serves us better?"

Sunset, don’t destroy. Give people time to adjust. Announce a phase-out timeline. Celebrate what the initiative accomplished in its time. Let people say goodbye with dignity rather than feeling blindsided.

Replace, don’t just remove. People handle change better when they see what’s coming next. “We’re sunsetting Program A so we can launch Program B” lands better than “We’re cutting Program A.”

But most importantly, dare to act on what you learned when you took stock.

You already know what’s not working. You identified it last week when you looked honestly at 2025. Now you have to do something about it.

The organizations that thrive in 2026 won’t be the ones that do the most. They’ll be the ones that do the right things—and have the discipline to stop doing everything else.

Clear the decks! You’ll be amazed at what happens when you make room for what matters.

This article is the second in our series Strategy For What’s Next, designed to help you create meaningful plans and excellent results in the year ahead. Read the first post here.