The master, surrounded by ambitious students, was asked: “When is the best time to plant a tree?”
“Twenty years ago,” he replied. Then he added, “The second-best time is now.”
As we enter the final stretch of 2025, this wisdom applies to leadership as well. We cannot rewrite the year behind us, but we can choose how we finish it. Each conversation, each decision, each act of ownership in these last weeks has the power to strengthen your leadership impact and shape the year ahead.
October invites us to pause, not to slow down, but to move forward with clarity and intention.
Regards,
Dan
“Relevant & pragmatic ideas, tools and insights to play at your best.”
For You
As we enter the last leg of 2025, ask yourself; What steps, large or small, will ensure I finish this year with pride and a sense of accomplishment?
Leadership isn’t only about hitting big milestones; it is also about the quiet choices, the conversations, and the commitments that add up to impact.
For You & Your Team
A CEO recently shared with me, “Our strategy is stalled. We aren’t delivering on key priorities, and I only learn about problems from our customers. Everyone has a plan, but we’re not executing on what matters; can you help?”
After observing the executive team’s strategy review, three root causes emerged:
- No clear future picture of success. The team had not done the hard work, and this is hard work, to forge together what future success looked like, so everyone drove their own projects, overloading the “how.”
- Too many priorities. Like a barn of ponies with too little hay, they tried to feed everything; and delivered a bit on everything, but nothing of significance.
- Conversations anchored in friendly avoidance. Reviews became masquerades, hiding struggles instead of surfacing them.
Real strategy reviews demand clarity, focus, and honest conversations.
When was the last time your strategy review surfaced the ugly truths, not just the polished updates?
For You, Your Team & Your Business
Values only matter when they are owned and modelled by the executive team. Yet all too often, executives author the values and then delegate the cascading to HR, which produces posters, handouts, and workshops, but rarely the impact the executives imagined. Posters don’t shape culture; behaviors do.
How can executive teams truly own their company values?
- Build an aligned understanding and promote why the values matter, for the team and the organization.
- Know the values backwards and forwards, so you can call out value behaviors when people live them.
- Ask those around you how well you are living the values yourself, because only the best executives invite that feedback.
When leaders consistently demonstrate the organization’s values in how they decide, communicate, and collaborate, those values cascade naturally into the wider business.
What message are your behaviors sending about the values that matter most?
People, Places & Technology
As 2025 winds down, leadership teams face a pivotal question:
“How do we turn what happened in 2025 into momentum for 2026?”
The best teams know that excellence isn’t created in the mid-year rush; it’s built in December and January, when most are sliding into Christmas parties or slowly returning to the new year.
Taking time to look back, harvest lessons learned, and align priorities creates the confidence to move forward together. That’s why I’m offering a one-day Year-End Leadership Review & Strategic Alignment Session; an impactful day to reflect, realign, and recharge your leadership team for a faster start into the new year.
If this resonates for you, let’s talk.
Thought for the Day
If the highest aim of a captain
were to preserve his ship,
he would keep it in port forever.
—Thomas Aquinas