How To Master Annual Leadership Planning For Success With Dr. William Attaway

Ending the year strong is essential, but many leaders feel lost on where to begin. In this episode, I share the Strata Annual Planning process, a structured framework I’ve refined over years of coaching high-capacity leaders. Mindset is at the core of success, and I’ll guide you through building a foundation of clarity and purpose. We’ll start with the foundational questions—‘Who do I want to be? Where do I want to go?’—then move into long-term vision setting, establishing a path that aligns with your core values.

Together, we explore how regular reflection on wins and setbacks can transform experiences into actionable insights, helping you reframe challenges and celebrate progress. By applying the Strata approach to your goals, you'll be equipped to tackle the next year with intentional focus and a plan to turn your visions into daily actions. Join me, and let’s plan for a transformative year where you lead with clear-minded focus, calm control, and unshakable confidence.


Connect with Dr. William Attaway:
 
If you're ready to approach next year with clear-minded focus, calm control, and a powerful plan, connect with me today at CatalyticLeadership.net. Together, we’ll dive deep into your goals and map out a plan for meaningful growth.

Books Mentioned:

• Catalytic Leadership by Dr. William Attaway 

Join the New Catalytic Leadership Community

Check out our new online membership site, with new resources by Dr. William Attaway and his team added weekly: https://checkout.catalyticleadership.net/

Chapters

• 0:00 Mindset: Key to Success
• 4:00 The Strata Annual Planning Process
• 8:00 Foundational Core Questions
• 13:31 Long-Term Vision Planning
• 16:31 Reflect, Adjust, and Grow
• 19:31 Translating Goals to Daily Actions
• 21:31 Building Clear-Minded Confidence

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway: 0:00

Welcome and thank you for joining me today. I'm so glad that you're here and I'm so glad that you are choosing to invest in yourself, in your mindset and your leadership. My goal today is to add value to you and for you to be glad that you invested your time with me today. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Dr William Attaway. I'm an executive coach specializing in mindset and leadership. I help high-performing entrepreneurs, business leaders, business owners, agency owners and their teams to conquer challenging situations and maximize their potential with clear-minded focus, calm, control and confidence. Mindset is 90% of why people are or are not successful. If you're struggling with an unhealthy mindset, I can help you. If you're struggling with chaos all around you, if you're struggling with focus and you're fighting self-doubt, self-sabotage and imposter syndrome, I can help. I've been a student and practitioner of leadership for nearly 30 years now and I've been coaching leaders for over 25 years. You can book a call with me anytime at catalyticleadershipnet.

Intro/Outro: 1:18

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:35

What I want to walk you through today is what I call the Strata Annual Planning Process. This is something that I've walked many of my clients through, and I want to help you to move into the next year in as strong a position as you possibly can From a mindset and leadership perspective. You, by the way, are the hardest person you'll ever lead, and I want to help you get there. I want to help you make some progress this year so that you don't sit where you are a year from now and wish you had done something different. Here's what I know. I know it's year end, right, and at year end there's a whole lot of people that I'm talking to who are feeling a whole lot of ways, and maybe some of the words on the screen reflect where you are. Maybe this is how you're ending your year, and that's really tough. And I mean if any of this reflects where you are and you're struggling right now. And the question that you may not be verbalizing but that you're asking inside is what's going to make next year different, what's going to make next year hopefully better than this year? Here's what I want you to know your mindset matters. It matters way more than you might think. I've been working with leaders. I've been coaching leaders for over 25 years and in my experience working with and coaching leaders in a variety of different contexts from entrepreneurs and founders to business leaders and C-suite executives here's what I know. I know that your mindset matters. I coach my clients to do a weekly review process because every week, I want them thinking back to the previous week. What went right this week, what went wrong? How would I do it different next time? How would I make it better? And the reason I do that is because of a truth that John Maxwell has shared that reflection turns experience into insight. Here's something you may not know Experience doesn't make you any better. Evaluated experience is what makes you better, and that's what I want for you. I want you to get better. I want your 2024 to be better than your 2023 was. But here's what I know. I know most people are not reflecting. Most people don't think. They simply react to the circumstances around them. That's what they're doing. They're not being proactive. They're just reacting to what's happening around them and they don't think about the right things. So you may be asking well, what are the right things? How do you know what to reflect on and think about at year end. Well, that's where I want to help you, and this comes out of my own journey, my own experience.

Dr. William Attaway: 4:14

During my doctoral program, I was privileged enough to get to go be a part of the staff team on an archaeological dig in Jordan, and this is the site where we dug, and it was fascinating several years to be a part of that team and to dig down and see. This is where you'll start, this is the square where I work and you start there, right, it's just level. Everything is at ground level and the first thing you have to do is you have to clear it right. You have to clear the field, you have to clear out your square, your five by five meter square. Once you mark it off, once you do that, then you start to dig down. Then you start to reveal walls, you start to reveal structures, you start to reveal even silos from previous eras and sometimes, as you're digging down, you find a silo and you keep going down and down and down, and you see some of the volunteers here that are going farther and farther down. It involves a lot of dirt, a lot of work, a lot of mud. It's not a clean process, but it is a great process. As you're digging down, you're trying to drain the bathtub of your square, so that way, you're not just digging a hole, but as you go down, you're revealing things that you want to leave in place. Right, you want to see them.

Dr. William Attaway: 5:22

This is a place where I worked for quite a while. This was well what it looks like just a pile of dirt and rocks and mud. But what's inside? What's it going to reveal as we begin to remove some of the extraneous stuff? Well, as you reveal it, you begin to see what was once a silo, a storage silo, and once we get it cleaned out, you get down to the floor. You can see this is what it had looked like, at least part of it, the part that remains. Now. It's fascinating to uncover something like that, isn't it? To dig down and to uncover what's at a foundation level? You can see all kinds of things as you're digging, and this is a picture of that same square at the end of our season that year, and you can see so much that has been revealed by digging down.

Dr. William Attaway: 6:07

What you're after is creating a site map, a strata map, right, so you can see the different layers, right, and you can see, the newer layers are at the top and the older layers are at the bottom. What I've done is I've taken this process of creating a strata map and I've taken and said how you know this really applies to every one of us. This applies to every leader that I've ever worked with, every leader I've ever met. It applies to me and that's why I work through this process. The strata process that I use at year end is this acronym strategic thinking, reflecting, adjusting and taking action. I believe that every one of us has a strata map like this and down at the bottom.

Dr. William Attaway: 6:50

This is your core, this is the foundation and too often, this is the part we don't talk a lot about. This is the part we don't spend a lot of time thinking and reflecting strategically about. We don't ask the right questions and I believe that asking the right questions is the only way to get the right answers. So, when it comes to my core part of my strata process, here are some of the questions that I use that you may find helpful for your process who do I want to be?

Dr. William Attaway: 7:21

Who do I want to be? Where do I want to be? What do I want my life to look like? What values matter most to me? Where do I make the greatest impact? These are core level questions, and one thing I've discovered coaching with so many different leaders, particularly founders and business owners, is that they will often create the what they create a business, they set goals, they set objectives and they begin to accomplish and see great things happen. But one day they wake up and they realize that the what they've created is not in alignment, it's not consistent with who they want to be and the life they want to live.

Dr. William Attaway: 8:10

I've heard many of them say this is not what I thought it was going to be. This is not what I meant to create, and the reason is they didn't ask these core questions. They didn't define the who I want to be before they decided the what they wanted to build. You have to define the who, who comes before what. You have to define who you want to be. What is the life you want to live? Look like when do you want to be. Define it. Use as many colors and as many paintbrushes as you can as you paint this picture, because the more clarity you have, the more likely you're going to move toward it, the more likely you're going to see it come into fruition. Now the core level can also involve your business. Right? There are some core business level questions that you can ask in this process. What's our mission?

Intro/Outro: 10:32

Why do we?

Dr. William Attaway: 10:32

exist, what is our purpose, what are our values. You need to know those things. That's the core, foundational level. If you start trying to build your what without knowing these things, the core, you're going to run into trouble because you're going to hit inconsistencies, you're going to be out of alignment, you're going to be out of integrity with who you want to be and what you're actually building. That's why the strata process is so important, because it helps you, at least once a year, to evaluate, to define, to adjust where necessary and to begin to take action. That's your core level, and I think that's the most important, because once you define that, then we're going to start to build on it. Right, the next level up, we're going to look and we're going to say, hey, where do I want to be three to five years out, in three to five years from now.

Dr. William Attaway: 11:23

Let's think about that Right. Where do I want to be? What do I want my life and my business to look like? What trends do I see emerging? What do I need to be thinking about and acting on now? What will I be glad I started doing today? You know, three years, four years, five years from now, what are you going to be glad you started doing today? I'll tell you for me. I wish 10 years ago I had been networking at the level that I am currently today. If I had been doing that 10 years ago, like I am today, my business would look dramatically different.

Dr. William Attaway: 12:00

There's so much value in the relational connections that you make with people, and this is something I didn't prioritize early on. Here's what I want you to know. You can begin to plan forward. You can think about this as part of your strata process. What am I going to be glad, three to five years from now, I started doing today? Where do I want to be? Let's again paint that picture with as many colors as we can. Let's clearly define it. That increases the likelihood we're going to get there. And once you paint the picture for three to five years, the next strata up is 12 to 24 months. What do we want to look like in the one to two year range? Right? Similar questions when do I want to be? Where can I be in 12 to 24 months? Let's be realistic. Is it attainable? What do I need to be thinking about and acting on now in order for that to be reality? Again, what will I be glad I started doing today and once you've painted this? This is not set in concrete. You're going to adjust it. You're going to make changes. Absolutely you are, but you've got to start somewhere and the strata process begins to give you that canvas that you're going to paint these pictures on so that you can begin to take steps toward them.

Dr. William Attaway: 13:15

As we continue in the strata process, we're going to move into areas of focus or responsibility, and I want you to think about this. For you, what are the three to five areas that you primarily are responsible and accountable for? So much of this I've learned from one of my mentors from afar, david Allen, who created the getting things done system right and this idea of thinking in terms of focus. What am I primarily responsible and accountable for? What are the primary roles in my life, in my job, in my family? What do I need to start doing? What do I need to stop doing? This is the time you're going to ask these questions. Maybe you don't think about at other times of the year, but during the strata process. These are questions that you ask because, again, the right questions help you get to the right answers. Once you define this and you begin to think through these questions, then we're going to move into the next level, which is projects.

Dr. William Attaway: 14:11

A project is anything that requires more than one step to complete it, right. So you think about the current projects that are on your list. What are my current projects? Do you have a list? You should. Are they all related to your areas of focus, or are there things that you've committed to that really don't have anything to do with areas you're responsible for? Do I know the current status on every project and commitment I have? That's a big one. This is something that you should know and, again, this is part of my weekly review process that I use. This is something that you can use once a year to define the landscape and then, weekly, begin to build it out. Once you've defined your projects and you know the status, guess what what that's going to do is that's going to then define what you do daily, right? This is how you're going to build your next actions list. This is how you're going to leverage your time effectively. This is how you never know what you should be working on. This is how you always know this is what's next.

Dr. William Attaway: 15:15

This is what I should do next. There's never a question because you've gone through the strata process. When it comes to my daily, I'm looking at this and saying does every project have a next action associated with it? Have I completely processed all my inputs into a trusted system? And again, david Allen's Getting Things Done system is key here. This is something I've leveraged in my own life for nearly 20 years.

Dr. William Attaway: 15:38

I recommend this frequently to the people that I work with. You have to be thinking in terms of the whole picture, and that's what the strata process does. This helps me to understand what matters most and make sure that I don't neglect what matters most, for just what's on fire in the moment, I don't let the urgent crowd out the important. What I know is that you have to calendar what you want to accomplish. You have to. You have to calendar it has to show up, because if you're not time blocking, if you're not blocking out time to accomplish and move the ball forward on the things you want to do, you're going to have a challenge. Now I mentioned earlier the review process of this that I do weekly, but once a year I'm going to take a bigger picture of my review and I'm going to ask questions like these what were my biggest wins this year?

Dr. William Attaway: 16:30

What were my biggest misses? Biggest mistakes often produce the best lessons. Those two questions can help you. So often we can immediately identify the misses. We don't think about the wins. High capacity leaders so often don't celebrate their wins.

Dr. William Attaway: 16:45

I'm going to challenge you to change that. I want you to celebrate your wins. I want you to write them down every week. For some of you, it needs to be every day. I want you to capture them, because what this is going to do is this is going to teach you. It's going to train your brain to recognize when wins are happening around you. See, what you focus on is what you get more of. I want more wins. I want that for you too. You got to start capturing these.

Dr. William Attaway: 17:14

This is why I teach my clients to use something called a wins journal, where you're going to capture these daily or weekly, but a minimum weekly where, hey, what went right this week? What can I celebrate? Everything counts. If it's a win in your life, it counts. Fire the referee who's like, ah, it's not big enough, it doesn't no, no, no, no, no. It counts. Capture it, celebrate it. Celebrate the wins, then move into your misses.

Dr. William Attaway: 17:39

Okay, what didn't go well this week? You either win or you learn. What am I going to learn? You have to identify those areas. This is part of my review. And last, what do I need to start doing, continue doing or stop doing in order to focus on what got me the wins? Where do I want to put my time, my energy, my focus, my resources? You get to decide that. You get to define it. I want to do that intentionally and strategically.

Dr. William Attaway: 18:09

Here's some more questions that I use when do I most need to grow this year? Nobody else is going to ask that question for you. You have to ask it for yourself. What are the biggest issues that I'm struggling with currently? Am I winning in the most important relationships in my life? If I am great, how do I pour some more fuel on that fire? If I'm not, what do I need to change? What am I spending my time doing that's giving me the greatest return on investment? And once you walk through these questions, you're going to begin to see some threads. You're going to begin to see some themes, and then I'm going to ask you to boil this down. I'm going to ask you to boil it down what's going to be my theme for this year, going forward, what's going to be the big idea, my big focus for this year, and then boil it down to one word. What's that word? And this is going to become a word you're going to use frequently? To refocus, to reset when you start to get off track, when you start, maybe some days, to get discouraged. Wait, no, refocus, that word is going to be the word that you use to refocus, because you've walked through this process.

Dr. William Attaway: 19:17

The strata process has led you to this point. Too many people. They're going to walk into the next year without a plan and what we know is the old adage is right right, failing to plan is planning to fail. But investing in strata planning is going to help you gain and maintain the clear-minded focus that you need to win. This is what I want for you. I want for you to win next year, and you can, but it begins at a foundational level with clear-minded focus. That's what the strata process is designed to help you attain. Then you move into a place where you develop calm control. This is something I work with my clients on to help them develop calm control that mindset that is not simply reacting to circumstances but instead is resetting into a proactive place, and those two things are going to yield confidence, and that's confidence that your team is going to feel, your family's going to feel, your clients, your customers are going to feel. It's going to give you confidence in every environment that you step into, and that is what I want for you. I hope the strata process has been helpful, as I've walked through this at a high level. This is something that I work with my clients on to get into the weeds, to begin to build out an action plan so they can execute on this.

Dr. William Attaway: 20:42

Now, for some of you, you're thinking what do I need an executive coach for? Why do I need somebody to help me? Here's what I know Coaching has helped me in my journey to go farther than I could have on my own. It's helped me to get faster to the places that I wanted to go, and I want that for you. And so what I do is I work with high capacity leaders, with high performing leaders, entrepreneurs, agency owners, business owners, business executives. I work with them to help them to achieve their goals and if that's where you are, if you want someone to come alongside you to encourage you, to challenge you, to help you develop a plan and execute that plan and hold you accountable to it. That's what I do. I'd love to have a conversation, if this is something that you're looking for as you move into this next year. Want to book a call with me? You can go to catalyticleadershipnet. Book a call. Let's have a conversation.

Dr. William Attaway: 21:36

This is what I do. I help leaders to intentionally grow and thrive. I help them to move from this place of chaos Into a place of clear-minded focus. I help them move from chaos into calm, control and I help them to develop the confidence that they need to lead their team at that higher level that they know is possible but maybe they've never been able to achieve yet. Now I'd love to hear what your biggest takeaway was from today's webinar. I'd love to hear what you're taking away from this Type that in the chat and if you want some help implementing these strategies, you want me to help you develop an action plan for the next year, a 12-month action plan.

Dr. William Attaway: 22:19

I'm willing to do that as a one-off, without a normal 12-month engagement with me. We can do that as a one-off. Let's have a conversation about what that looks like. Let's develop a customized plan and system for you. Go to catalyticleadershipnet and book a call with me. I hope this has been helpful and informative for you.

Dr. William Attaway: 22:38

That was my goal. But remember information without application isn't effective. That's not going to get you where you want to go. You have to take action. I challenge every client I coach to take action right. Don't just leave this in a notebook. Don't just leave these notes on a piece of paper or on a screen. If you want different results, you have to do something different, and knowing what to do, how to do it and when to do it matters.

Dr. William Attaway: 23:08

Keep learning, keep growing. Be relentlessly intentional about your clear-minded focus. Stop buying into the myth that it's just going to magically happen one day and you're going to figure it out all on your own. None of us do that. I've had coaches for years who help me and challenge me, and still do they help me. See what I can't see, because you can't see the whole picture when you're in the frame. Have a great year end. Reach out, let's talk.

Dr. William Attaway: 23:42

Thanks for joining me for this episode today. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out.

Dr. William Attaway: 24:21

My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business government, of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.

Intro/Outro: 25:02

Thanks for listening to Catalytic Leadership with Dr William Attaway. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode. Want more? Go to catalyticleadershipnet.