The old stonecutter walks every morning to the same place by the river.
He sets down his tools. He washes his hands. He touches the stone he is shaping.
Only then does he begin.
A traveller once asked him, “Why do you do this every day?”
The stonecutter smiled. “The stone then knows I have arrived. And I remember why I am here.”
The traveller watched him work. The movements were simple, yet over time, the stone revealed a form.
The stonecutter never spoke of goals, and he didn’t make promises about what this year’s stone would become.
What we practice becomes our direction. And that progress is rarely because of a mega-decision, but instead created through a series of small rituals, practiced repeatedly.
Your year will not be shaped by your resolutions. It will be shaped by your rituals.
Enjoy your January news2use, and all the best for an abundant and healthy 2026.
Dan
“Relevant & pragmatic ideas, tools and insights to play at your best.”
For You
At the start of a new year, we rarely suffer from a lack of ambition. What gets scarce is focus, to choose what matters most.
The real question is not what could move the year forward, but what deserves our best energy; the kind of energy that shapes decisions, sets direction, and signals what matters most. When everything feels important, we become reactive. When a few things are chosen deliberately, momentum follows. January is the moment to decide where you will play your best game, not across everything, but where it counts.
A simple way to test this is to look at your calendar. Not the aspirations you carry into the year, but the actual commitments you have made over the next four weeks. Your calendar is not just a scheduling tool; it is a mirror of your priorities and a forecast of your impact. If your best energy is scattered, your game will be uneven. If it is focused, your impact will be felt. Before the year gains speed, take a moment to ask yourself; does my calendar reflect the game I want to play, and play well in 2026?
For You & Your Team
Alignment is one of the most talked-about leadership topics, and one of the least practiced where it matters most, across teams and functions. In matrix organizations especially, performance depends less on formal structure and more on the quality of collaboration. Misalignment rarely announces itself openly. It shows up quietly, with side comments about “the others,” in growing frustration about dependencies, or in decisions that seem harder than they should be. The first quarter is where these patterns either get addressed; or become the norm.
There are clear signals that it’s time to connect and recalibrate. When you hear your team talking negatively about other teams instead of with them. When you realize you are no longer present in the meetings of your most important collaboration partners. Or when you have not asked, recently and openly, how other teams experience working with you; as a helpful partner, or as a hindrance. Playing your best game in a matrix means making alignment a shared discipline, not a polite assumption. It requires the courage to surface misalignment early, without blame, and the willingness to have the conversations that re-establish clarity and trust.
What misalignments or low performing collaborations is your team carrying into the new year?
For You, Your Team & Your Business
“The strategy is clear, we’ve communicated the vision,” I heard many times towards the end of the year. When I ask what happened next, the answer is often telling. There were no real questions. No hard challenges. No debate. At first glance, this can sound like alignment. It is often the opposite. Strategy that is met with silence rarely translates into strong execution.
Strategy and execution are not a one-time moment of proclamation. They are a series of engaging, sometimes uncomfortable conversations that test assumptions, surface concerns, and sharpen choices. If strategy could succeed through a single setting, it would be like telling your partner you love them once, early on, and never mentioning it again. Commitment, like strategy, is sustained through dialogue and then anchored in action. The first quarter is where this dialogue either begins, or where the gap between intent and action quietly opens.
Where, in the coming weeks, are the conversations scheduled that allow strategy to be questioned, stress-tested, and translated into concrete choices? Where do leaders and teams engage in real exchanges about trade-offs, priorities, and execution, not to repeat the vision, but to make it workable? (This is another opportunity to use your calendar check.)
Playing your best game as a business means creating the space for these conversations now. Execution does not fail because strategy was unclear. It fails because the conversations that bring strategy to life never truly happened.
People, Places & Technology
In most leadership roles, there are few safe places to think out loud.
Yet to play your best game, this is what is often needed; thinking out-loud to test assumptions, challenging early conclusions, developing options and sharpening judgement before decisions are taken.
This is where a sparring-partner relationship makes the difference. Not as coaching in the classic sense, and not as a rigid development program, rather as an ongoing conversation. Structured when depth matters, informal when speed counts, focused on clarity and momentum.
At the start of a new year, leaders rarely lack vision. What they often lack is a thinking partnership that helps prevent what is costly, like strategic drifting, leadership isolation, and decisions made a quarter too late.
The most important work happens in conversation. If you are looking for a thinking partnership to step up and step into the new year, I would be happy to discuss this with you.
Thought for the Day
“Life is always right.
No need to turn
around and spin.
I live my dream,
and finally accept
what I have in my hands.”
-Jwala Gamper