“The Former Rabbit” has 4 questions for you

Do you have a plan for 2026? Written down, in your head, on a napkin somewhere? Anything counts.

Have you looked at the plan (if you have one) in the last 30 days? Made a single decision because of it?

If you just said "um...no" to having a plan or to referencing your plan. you're in good company. Most everyone has been there.

That gap between not having a plan and having a plan is real and consequencial. Without a plan, any outcome (or not getting any outcomes) is the result. If you are good with your life or at least your business life blowing around like a leaf in the breeze, that’s likely acceptible. But most of us want to go somewhere, usually somewhere better, and we are much more likely to get there with a plan rather than without one.

We don't plan because we know what's going to happen. We plan because we don't. And a plan only helps if it keeps up with what actually happens.

I have written scads about creating your plan. Peruse my blog and my first book, AHEAD: Strategy is the way to a better future. But that’s not what this post is about. This is about acting on your plan and adapting your plan.

I learned a lot about planning and acting on and adapting the plan the hard way. For many years, I was a short-track speedskater, a marathoner, an Ironman triathlete, and a running and triathlon coach. Sixty marathons. Ironman Canada year after year for 11 years. 100s of race plans. And plenty of race days that did not go according to the plan, at least according to my plan or my client’s plan for the day.

When the heat is on

October 2007. The Chicago Marathon, my hometown race. I needed a Boston Marathon qualifying time, and I was on pace to get it through mile 18.

Then the heat got me. It was a day when race volunteers were pouring full jugs of water over runners' heads. October, yes, but the temperatures were more like it was mid August. I cramped badly and had to walk some. But until then, I was on pace. Then, at mile 23, race officials told us all to walk it in. Race cancelled. Because I was just ahead of the point where the race was called, I continued to run and finished. I even got my medal. But the results did not count and had my time qualified me for Boston, it would not have mattered.

Disappointed in the results? Sure. Necessary to cancel the race? Absolutely.

Now what? My goal hadn't changed. I still wanted my Boston time. Friends were heading to Philadelphia and California International and wanted me along, but those races felt too many weeks away and too far away. Then there was Indianapolis. Two weeks later. A small race, not hilly (or so I'd heard), with relatives nearby.

My running coach, Jim Spivey, was not enthusiastic about me racing again so soon. My Ironman coach, Mike Plumb, said, why not? My running buddies were split. So, of course, I took the plunge.

My plan was simple. Bank time. Run the first half at 8:30 per mile. Then let the pace slow in the back half as my stride naturally shortened, making withdrawals without ever fully emptying the account.

At the halfway mark I was exactly on target. Then my mile times climbed, as planned. Nines. Then tens. At mile 23, I could see I was taking money out of the bank a little too fast. So I pushed the pace back up, even though cramping was my big fear.

Good thing I did! Nobody told me mile 26 was all uphill. My time for that mile matched the mile before it, but my heart rate monitor told the real story. I was working a lot harder just to hold on.

I needed 4:00:59. I ran 3:59:30. Ninety-one seconds to spare. (Yes, I paid for two marathons in two weeks with a nasty cold afterward. It paid off anyway.)

The goal never changed. The race changed. The plan changed, twice. What mattered was knowing my plan well enough to adjust it, without throwing it out.

Sometimes the change is a lot bigger than the weather. I crashed my bike at Ironman Canada and broke nine ribs, shattered my clavicle, and punctured a lung. I had surgery. I healed. I trained. And the next summer I was back on the start line at Ironman Canada. Two people told me someone died at last year’s race. I held up my hands. No, I didn’t die, I am back!

Business works the same way. The market shifts. A key person leaves. A big customer changes what they need. The question isn't whether conditions will change. It's what you do with your plan when they do. Will you be able to raise your hand and say that your business is still around and healthy?

Confessions of a rabbit

Here's a distinction worth getting clear on. A strategy is a deliberate choice about how you'll move toward where you want to be. It describes the big thing or things you will do to get there. A tactic, sometimes called an action step, is how you act on your strategy, how you carry it out to actually get down the road.

I'll use myself as the cautionary tale.

I was a speedskater before I was a runner. In short track speedskating on a 100-meter course in a hockey rink, if you aren’t ahead by the first turn, you're in a bad way for the rest of the race. Passing is hard and risky. You have seen the falls that result. So you practice going all-out off the line. Over and over and over. Gun goes off, you are out like a bullet.

As a result, on the running track I was known for my speed around the first turn. Then I inevitably faded. I was a 60-meter wonder for an older trackster, but at 400 meters I was gassed and holding on for dear life.

Guess what I did in 5Ks? And 10Ks? And even in marathons? Out fast, then hang on and often melt down to a death march. For instance, at the D.C. Marathon in the spring of 2002, I ran the first half in 1:38:18 and the second half in 1:53:26. That was a personal best result but the big fade in the back half was a real struggle. My results made it clear: I was a rabbit.

That fall brought the Chicago Marathon, then my eighth Chicago. The race was only seven weeks after Ironman Canada. Coach Mike and I knew I wasn't fully recovered and trained up to run my fastest marathon. We changed tactics to fight my rabbit tendencies: run even splits the entire race, about 7:30 per mile.

The tactic to make that happen was to run according to my heart rate. My training had told me under normal conditions a heart rate of 147 to 148 beats a minute yielded roughly a 7:30 per mile pace. So I ran my heart rate.

Was the race perfect? Could I flawlessly execute the tactic? No. Around mile 21, near one-time Comiskey Park, my legs tightened up. I felt like a sports car that had lost top gear. The pace group edged away, and I could not go with them.

Yet, I persevered and finished in 3:27:09, a personal record by more than four minutes. My halves were 1:40:21 and 1:46:48. Still slower in the back half, but nothing like D.C. Coach Mike emailed me afterward, comparing the two races: "So you started slower and finished faster compared to D.C. That's interesting, we may have stumbled onto some sort of concept here. ;-)"

I signed my report on that race: "Lee Crumbaugh, the former rabbit."

Notice the difference. Running by heart rate was not the strategy. It was the tactic that served the strategy. Swap in a different tactic, like checking my watch at every mile marker, and the strategy still stands.

In AHEAD, my book on strategic planning, we lay out benchmarks for effective strategies. Boiled down, a real strategy tells you where it's taking you, what result it should produce, by when, and what you won't do because of it. For me, the "won't do" was going out with the rabbits.

Companies make these choices too. Take Southwest Airlines. For decades it has flown just one type of airplane, the Boeing 737. It has 800 of them! Every pilot can fly every plane. Every mechanic knows every plane. Southwest's own annual reports credit that choice with simpler scheduling, maintenance and training. It still holds to that strategy today.

Open seating was another Southwest signature for more than 50 years. But the assumption underneath it changed. Customers were flying longer trips, and Southwest's research found that 80% of them preferred an assigned seat. Open seating was the number one reason people gave for switching to a competitor. So in January 2026, Southwest retired it.

One strategy kept. One retired. Both deliberate.

What are you assuming?

Every strategy rests on something that has to be true for it to work. My somewhat unconscious rabbit strategy assumed that what wins a speedskating race wins a marathon. It doesn't. (It took me a lot of marathons and even shorter races to figure that out and force my brain to accept changed tactics.)

Assumptions can catch you on race day, too. Take the Boston Marathon in April 2005. It was 11:30 in the morning, sunny and in the low 60s. I was sitting on the pavement in my starting corral in Hopkinton, MA, chatting with three other Boston veterans who expected to run the same pace as I was planning to run.

One of my compatriots was an emergency room doctor from Florida. "This is going to be a tough day," he said. "I'm going to dial it back and abandon my goals for the race."

I thought he was a bit overboard. "Don't you think today is a lot like two years ago?" I asked. In 2003 it had started in the 60s then, too, but a sea breeze off the water cooled us down in the last miles into Boston.

He didn't think so. The wind wasn't as strong, he said, and it was coming from a different direction. It was going to be warmer.

Hmm. I filed that away. And then I ran my plan anyway.

Coach Mike's words were in my ears: go out easy, get on pace later and save something for the hills. I did exactly that. 8:05 miles. Halfway in 1:47, right on target for my goal of 3:45 or better.

And it kept getting warmer. At mile 14, my inner quads started cramping on an uphill. (My marathon nemesis, especially on warm days on hilly courses.) Between miles 17 and 18, I had to walk. On Heartbreak Hill I cramped again and walked some more, while the Boston College students kept me going with jokes and encouragement. I was hurting and laughing at the same time!

No sea breeze showed up. I finished in 4:14:55. Past the finish line I felt hot and cold at once, crampy and nauseous. A volunteer put me in a wheelchair and rolled me over to the medical tent. (After sitting for a while, I was fine.)

Here's the thing. I executed my plan well. But the plan was built for a day that never showed up. The doctor was looking at the conditions in front of him. I was looking at my memory of a different day.

So when you decide what to keep in your business, ask what you're counting on being true. Then ask how you would know if it changed.

Spend one hour before year-end

Here's the good news. Strategy doesn't have to be hard.

Before the end of the year, grab a cup of coffee and set aside one hour (or maybe a little more, time will fly when you are into this). List what you're putting time, attention, effort, and money into. A marketing channel. A type of client. Developing relationships. Using AI agents. A weekly meeting. The way you do your job. Building a stronger organization.

For each item, ask four questions:

1.      Is it a strategy or a tactic?

2.      If it's a tactic, which strategy does it serve?

3.      Keep, adapt or retire? Ask it of the tactic and of the strategy.

4.      What has to be true for this to work? Is it still true?

Watch for anything you can't connect to a strategy. It might be doing real work but not strategic work. It might just be a habit, continued only because of the status quo effect. Either way, it deserves a closer look.

It's easy to keep adding strategies and tactics. It's harder to ask what has stopped earning its place and to find something better. Just ask the former rabbit.

That hour will be a real start on a great 2027.

If you are in the DMV and would rather work through your strategies and action steps with some structure, a coach, and a room full of peers, we are running our Planning for 2027 Workshop on October 23 from 8:30 am - Noon at the Maryland Innovation Center in Columbia.

And whether you are local or not, our FastTrack™ 2.0 Strategic Planning and Implementation System is a great tool for creating or updating your plan for 2027 and the assuring that you not only can answer the question, “Do you have a plan?”, affirmatively, but that you also will be acting on it throughout 2027.