Why ‘Defining the Business Challenge’ Is Where Plans Live or Die
This is Part 5 in the 2026 Planning Series.
I’ve been in two annual planning meetings where we “defined the business challenge.”
Different category. Different challenges.
Wildly different outcomes.
See if you can spot why.
Story A: Charcoal Grilling Category
We were deep into annual planning, staring at declining grill usage data.
The plan: get people to grill one more meal this year.
Logical, right? More occasions = more volume. The math worked: 3 meals a day × 365 days = 1,095 potential meal opportunities. Surely we could nudge just a few more toward the grill.
Here's the rub (see what I did there?): People were going back to offices. Weeknights were compressed. The "let's make sourdough and grill ribeyes on a Tuesday" energy of 2020 had evaporated.
The reality? Charcoal grilling isn't frictionless. No one wanted an hour-long production involving: lighting charcoal, waiting 20 minutes for it to heat, marinade prep, fire management, scrubbing grill grates at 9 PM, ash disposal, then showing up to work smelling like a campfire.
Hard pass.
The business challenge—"get people to grill one more meal"—wasn't grounded in how people were actually living. It was grounded in what we wanted to happen.
We spent the year executing against it. The results lagged.
Story B: Cleaning Category
During COVID, demand got weird. Trial of no-name brands surged—people grabbed whatever was on the shelf. New habits formed out of necessity, not preference.
The cleaning category fragmented fast. Name brands used to own about 85% of the category. Post-COVID? Closer to 60%. As one of the leading brands, that hurt.
Offices were reopening. Routines were normalizing. The question: How much of this actually sticks?
The temptation was to assume we'd permanently changed behavior. But let's be honest—people weren't going to keep wiping down their mail forever. (Or garbage cans. Remember that? Wild times.)
The business challenge was framed around protecting behavior as the category normalized—knowing that sustained choice against the competition would ultimately determine share.
The risk wasn't short-term volume. It was consumers forming chaos-driven habits that wouldn't hold.
The guiding question wasn't "How do we get more?"
It was "How do we make sure we're their first choice—when they're planning their trip and when they're staring at the shelf?"
That reframe changed everything.
What got prioritized. What didn't. What we said no to. How we spoke to consumers. The retailer narrative. What PR amplified. The innovation benefits. The creative. The messaging.
The result? The brand clawed back more share than it had pre-COVID.
Because we were solving the right problem.
The Difference Most Teams Miss
Both challenges were rational. Both identified real problems.
But only one diagnosed where the business actually needed to win.
The grilling challenge was aspirational. It assumed consumers should change behavior because the business needed them to. It focused on driving usage when usage wasn't the constraint—practical friction was.
The cleaning challenge was contextual. It recognized behavior had already changed. It focused on winning consideration against the competition—the actual constraint as the category normalized.
That distinction is everything.
Because once the business challenge misdiagnoses the constraint, every strategy that follows is compromised.
This is why defining the business challenge—and diagnosing the right constraint—is the most important and most skipped step in annual planning.
A Gut Check for Your 2026 Business Challenge
Before objectives, goals, or campaigns—does it pass these tests?
Grounded in reality, not hope — How people are actually living, not how you wish they were
Reflects real constraints — Not just theoretical opportunity
Accounts for where you're losing — Remember that audit you just did?
Narrows choices — Doesn't expand them
Applicable across the business — Innovation, sales, creative, messaging all ladder up
Gives teams a shared lens — Makes tradeoffs easier
Works without magical thinking — Doesn't require consumers to suddenly adopt new habits
If the answer isn't clear, the plan that follows won't be either.
Because when the business challenge is vague or misdiagnoses the constraint, you spend twelve months very busy solving absolutely nothing.
If this year only solved one problem for the business, what would it be?
Working through your 2026 planning right now? Reply with your business challenge and I'll tell you if it sounds diagnostic or aspirational. (Seriously—I love this stuff.)
Next in the series: Turning a business challenge into a real strategy using OGST framework
