Periodic reviews shouldn’t be routine checkpoints; they are strategic inflection points. Done well, they enable reflection, recalibration, and informed pivots that shape both near-term outcomes and long-term success.

Every company enters January with a plan.

Boards have signed off on targets. Leadership teams have aligned on strategy. Decks look sharp. The  ambition is there, but if we’re honest, the gap between the plan and what actually happens is where most organizations struggle.

This is the moment to rally. To reset. To transform insight into collective action.​

Let’s break down how RevOps leaders can use reviews to drive measurable results.

Research suggests that as many as two-thirds of large companies fail to execute their strategy  effectively. Even well-designed plans lose around 40% of their potential value because execution  breaks down. And when you ask CEOs and CROs what really keeps them up at night, it’s rarely the  strategy. It’s whether the organization can actually deliver.

As someone who lives in RevOps, I’ve seen this up close.

RevOps sits in a unique position: close enough to the day-to-day to understand reality, and close enough to leadership to influence direction. Increasingly, RevOps is the function expected to connect the dots between planning and execution.

If 2025 taught us anything, it’s this: 2026 won’t be won by the team with the most impressive  strategy. It’ll be won by the team that executes better than everyone else.

To help us stay on track, here are three focus areas to ensure our reviews drive real impact:

1-Execution depends on forecast clarity.

A strategy becomes real when it hits the forecast. That’s where ambition meets truth. 

The problem? Only around one in five revenue leaders feels confident in the data behind their  forecast. When you’re building a plan on shaky foundations, everything that follows becomes  guesswork. 

High-performing teams treat forecasting as a discipline, not an admin task. They set a regular  cadence: pipeline reviews, mid-week forecast checks, end-week true-ups. And they use clear,  evidence-based criteria at every stage. 

The goal isn’t a perfect forecast. The goal is early visibility. With early visibility comes the ability to  adjust. Course corrections in February are cheap. Course corrections in October are brutal. 

💡
Message for 2026: Build a forecasting environment where truth travels faster than optimism

Practical recommendations:

  • Create a weekly operating rhythm where forecast review isn’t optional.
  • Replace subjective judgement with defined stage criteria and data signals.
  • Use scenario modeling (best case, expected, worst case) so leaders understand the range,  not just a single number.
  •  Treat forecast accuracy as a cultural behavior, not a spreadsheet exercise.

These elements help teams proactively identify issues, rather than react to them. When everyone is working from the same source of truth, it facilitates conversation and collaboration, rather than finger-pointing.

Also critical: having systems and tools integrated in a way that allows for seamless reporting and collaboration. If marketing is tracking engagement in one platform and sales is logging conversations in another, you risk losing the connective tissue that turns insights into action.

2-GTM alignment turns revenue into a true team sport.

Misalignment is one of the biggest silent killers of execution.

Marketing is running one playbook. Sales is running another. Customer Success is solving a  completely different problem. Leadership assumes everyone is rowing in the same direction, but the day-to-day tells a different story.

When teams operate in silos, you get:

  • Conflicting priorities.
  • Contradictory messaging.
  • Poor handovers. 
  • A painful customer experience.

Companies with strong GTM alignment see materially better results: higher growth, higher win rates,  and better retention. It’s not a theory. It’s measurable. 

In RevOps, we see alignment as one of the clearest competitive advantages a company can build. Not  because it’s glamorous, but because it removes friction. It creates clarity. It allows the business to  execute faster with fewer surprises.

Practical recommendations:

  • Align KPIs across Marketing, Sales, and CS so they all support the same revenue outcome.
  • Build a single source of truth for data and reporting. If people debate the numbers, they  won’t act on them.
  • Run cross-functional pipeline and progress reviews so teams can adjust together, not in  isolation.
💡
If strategy is the “what”, alignment is the “how”. Without it, the organisation will always be working harder than it needs to.

3-The gap between intention and reality is where execution risk emerges.

Every plan looks clean in January. Then real life happens. 

Resources shift. A product release slips. Hiring doesn’t go to plan. A segment underperforms. A big  renewal goes sideways. Execution risk is the gap between what you intended to do and what actually gets done. You can’t  eliminate it, but you can manage it. 

The best operators I’ve worked with don’t assume the plan will stay intact. They assume it will need  adjustments. They build a system that makes those adjustments deliberate rather than reactive.

Practical recommendations:

  • Assign a single owner for every strategic initiative and make progress visible.
  • Move away from rigid annual planning. Treat 2026 as a rolling plan with formal checkpoints.
  • Set early warning indicators for your biggest assumptions (pipeline coverage, hiring ramp and product readiness).
  • When something drifts, adjust the plan immediately, not next quarter.
💡
Great execution isn’t about perfection. It’s about catching issues early and adapting with confidence

A Personal Note on Execution Discipline

Earlier in my career at Ometria, I was introduced to the Four Disciplines of Execution (4DX). Like most  frameworks, it doesn’t map perfectly to a modern RevOps environment. A few core ideas stuck with me, and they still shape how I execute today.

Always have a WIG (Wildly Important Goal)
At any point in time, there should be one outcome that truly matters. Not ten priorities. Not a long  roadmap. One thing that, if achieved, meaningfully moves the business forward. RevOps teams are particularly prone to spreading themselves too thin because we sit across  everything. The WIG forces focus.

Respect the whirlwind, but don’t surrender to it
Day-to-day work never slows down. Forecast calls, data issues, stakeholder requests, escalations. The  whirlwind is real. The mistake is letting it consume all available time and energy. Execution happens in the moments when the whirlwind pauses.

The question is simple: When I have space, do I know exactly what the most important thing to work on is?

If the answer isn’t obvious, the plan isn’t operational yet.

Execution is a daily and weekly habit, not a quarterly event
This is the hardest lesson. If you’re not executing in reality, you’re going backwards. Markets move. Competitors improve. Assumptions age. 

Execution isn’t about heroic pushes at quarter end. It’s about consistent, visible progress every week against the WIG. That discipline, more than any framework, is what turns plans into outcomes.

The bottom line: Make every moment count.

Organizations can reflect on what’s working and what needs improvement when they have a strong RevOps foundation, clean data, and aligned execution, enabling teams to rally around intentional, transformative moves.

If you spend your meetings explaining bar charts you are not leading. You are just reporting.

Time to think ahead

Most companies will begin the year with similar goals. Few will end it having achieved them.

The winners will be the organizations that: 

• Forecast with clarity.
• Align their GTM teams tightly.
• Run an operating rhythm that surfaces risks before they become failures.

Get these right, and strategy stops being a deck. It becomes how the business runs.

As RevOps leaders, we’re in the best position to make that happen. Not by owning the plan, but by  creating the systems, insights, and alignment that allow the organization to execute it.