Ten lessons I’m taking into 2026
By the time December arrives, I’m usually tired of grand conclusions.
The year has already delivered its share of lessons, often without asking for permission, and I’ve learned to be suspicious of anything that sounds too neat or too emotional when the calendar turns. Still, there is value in pausing. Not to celebrate or regret, but to take stock of what actually held up under pressure.
So here are ten lessons I’m carrying with me into 2026. Not as resolutions. As reminders.
- Clarity beats intensity. Working harder rarely fixes confusion. Clear priorities, clearly stated, reduce more stress than any surge of effort ever will.
- Strategy only exists where decisions repeat. If a strategic choice has to be re-argued every quarter, it isn’t strategy yet. It’s a preference waiting to be tested.
- Governance is most useful when it is boring.The systems that matter most are the ones nobody talks about because they simply work. Drama is usually a sign of design debt.
- Technology conversations fail when they avoid trade-offs. Real progress starts when people accept that saying yes to one thing means saying no to another, and are willing to make that explicit.
- Trust grows faster through consistency than through charisma. People adapt quickly when leadership behavior is predictable. They disengage just as quickly when it isn’t.
- Speed is not about moving faster, but about removing friction. Most delays are structural. Fixing them requires design, not urgency.
- AI amplifies what already exists. It accelerates good operating models and exposes weak ones. Treating it as neutral technology is increasingly naïve.
- Resilience is an organizational property, not a technical one. Systems recover because people know what to do, not because architectures look good on paper.
- Silence is rarely neutral. When leaders don’t explain what is stable and what is changing, others fill the gap with assumptions, usually pessimistic ones.
- Fewer priorities create more momentum. This remains stubbornly true, even when the environment keeps insisting otherwise.
None of these lessons are new. That, in itself, is the point. What changes from year to year is not the nature of the problems, but the cost of ignoring them. In environments where pressure is constant and complexity keeps increasing, fundamentals matter more, not less.
As the year closes, I’m less interested in predictions than in posture. Staying grounded. Designing for reality. Choosing a small number of things that deserve sustained attention, and having the discipline to let the rest wait.
That feels like a reasonable way to enter 2026.
