4 Templates for Success: How Leaders Should Measure Progress in 2026
Hi leaders,
How one is supposed to measure progress is an important question because our definitions of success actually direct our organizations a whole lot more than the success itself.
Below I go through four “templates for success” and break down how they work and how to know if you’re using the right one.
Success as achieving pre-stated benchmarks
So the most common way of measuring success in business spaces is by strategizing, then setting goals based on that strategizing, and creating benchmarks for those goals. The main way we do this in the coaching world is by creating S.M.A.R.T. Goals: goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. If you find yourself a little lost in your trajectory for 2026, revisiting your goal-making process from January might be useful right now. Go back through yours or your company’s 2026 goals and make sure they’re up to snuff with a SMART Goal-analysis.
Success as balance and overcoming dissatisfaction
But what happens if you’re achieving your benchmarks, but something still feels off?
This is where the Wheel of Life comes in. On our “Additional Resources” page, this check-in exercise is a great way to investigate where your new year’s projects are leading you and seeing where your dissatisfaction lies. Maybe you’ve been achieving your goals for this quarter but something still feels off. Doing the wheel of life or some kind of multimodal check-in helps us notice blindspots and build something more holistic for ourselves.
Success as high momentum in one particular area
Other corporate coaching tools teach us that sometimes, it’s less about balance and more about drilling down on what has the most return on investment. S.W.O.T. analysis and Strengths, uses these types of definitions for success.
With S.W.O.T. analysis, you strategize your company’s position in terms of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats–all with the attempt to see your situation clearly in hopes of coming up with a strategy that will help you “win” the situation. It’s less about balance or meeting a steady trajectory of benchmarks and more about one large external form of success. The StrengthsQuest personality system functions similarly but in regards to personality. For these tools, having one large win is a more important definition of success than follow-through or achieving harmony.
Success as mere progress or overcoming difficulties
One can very quickly imagine situations where success is very difficult to measure. Maybe your industry is going through a slump phase or you’ve had a personal life tragedy. In these seasons, often any kind of resilience and continuation is in itself a form of success.
Remember to keep putting one foot in front of the other and re-assess your goals when things feel possible again.
Overall, deciding how you want to define success is up to you or your organization. There are benefits and pitfalls to any definition of success, but by honing in on what you really want, you can ensure that your definition of success leads you toward the right questions and conversations.
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