The new year is around the corner and you are figuring out how to get your team fired up for the new year.

That’s great.  But before you dive into new year planning, take some time to look back and savor your accomplishments from 2025.

You can do this in just a few hours.  Look through your calendars.  Come up with the top three accomplishments your team had for every month of 2025.  What were the highlights?  Who were the heroes?  Celebrate these!  Ideally you can have a celebratory lunch or dinner to really appreciate all of your accomplishments.  Savor these for a few days.

Then – focus on 2026.

Set the three most important Strategic Goals that your team needs to accomplish in 2026.  Use the following guidelines.  If you already have the goals, use the guidelines to sharpen them up:

• Outcomes.  Set your goals as outcomes – results – not activities you want to complete.
• Specific & Measurable. This is the only way to know if you are on track.  If you have difficulty, try this book as a resource: Make Success Measurable.
• Aggressive.  If you want to get even more innovative, try setting Almost Impossible goals like they do at Google.  Learn more in this brief, free video.
• Relevant.  What are the three most important goals you can set that will advance your larger organizational goals – as well as the vision and mission.
• Time Bound.  Every goal must have a date.
• Outcome Milestones. Set at least four of these during the year to see if you are on track with your results – not your activities.
• SWOTs.  People like to reserve SWOTs for strategy, but you can use them for each goal.  What Strengths do you have that you can leverage to achieve the goal?  What Weaknesses do you need to develop in order to achieve the goal?  What Opportunities can you seize to help you accomplish the goal?  What Threats do you need to keep an eye on so you are not derailed with the goal?  This analysis can help you set your Action Plans.

Your review and savoring of 2025 will set a positive tone and build your team’s confidence.  This will act as a springboard to catapult you into setting and accomplishing your 2026 goals.  Good luck making a Mission Impact in 2026!

Note: There will be no Insights With Impact blog on December 30, 2025.  Enjoy savoring some time off!

Many of us seek to lead significant, transformational change in our communities and organizations.  As we engage with others it is important to keep these key characteristics of transformational leaders in mind:

*Begin with a sincere commitment to changes that inspire you – from the heart.  What do you care about?  Keep in mind the important values and principles that are the incentive for your change.

*Communicate your change ideas to others, but also ask for their input.  Make as many one-on-one connections as you can with people.  Ask for their input and listen sincerely to what they care about.  Include their ideas in your change plan.

*Demonstrate pride, optimism, and energy as you communicate with others.  Keep focusing on the future that you and others can build together.

*Encourage others to have a growth mindset and demonstrate this yourself.  Be open to new ideas and different ways of doing things so that the change can take hold.

*Acknowledge that you will face challenges along the way, but commit to working together with others to address those challenges and move forward to the future you are building together.

Maybe people try to “act” charismatic and inspirational.  This never works. You cannot fake this.

Instead, find something that you sincerely care about – that inspires you.  Others will see the inspiration inside of you – and it will draw them to co-creating a vision for the future with you.  That is the key to transformational leadership.

Based on my consulting experience and research, I have found that what many organizations call their “strategy” is a glorified To Do List.

Here is how you can turn your To Do List into a Strategy.

Hopefully you have a Vision for your organization – an idea of what you want it to look like, ideally, in the future.  If not, then get some input from a wide variety of stakeholders and create this Vision.

Then, look at your To Do List.  What are the three – five items on your list that will propel you most effectively toward your future Vision?  Make sure that these items are specific and measurable.  The result will be Strategic Goals.

Next – look at your Strategic Goals and ask yourselves:

*What Strengths do we have that can help us achieve these Strategic Goals?

*What Weaknesses do we have that we should address in order to achieve the Strategic Goals?

*What Opportunities should we pursue in order to achieve the Strategic Goals?

*What Threats in the environment do we need to monitor so we are not derailed in our pursuit of the Goals?

Once you have identified these SWOTs, you can summarize them into a Strategy Statement that provides an overall explanation to your organization members on how you are going to:

Leverage Your Strengths, Fortify Your Weaknesses, Seize your Opportunities, and Block Your Threats as you pursue your Vision and Strategic Goals .

You can ask your team to internalize this statement and let it guide them as they create more specific Action Plans to move you forward.

This, of course, is a very brief summary.  But, taking the time to move beyond a simple To Do List to a real Strategy will give your organization the focus and insight needed for high performance.  For a more extensive explanation of the Strategy process, I would encourage you to read my Mission Impact book.

Your three choices are essentially: Speak Up, Keep Quiet, or Leave the organization.

A lot of this comes down to your Values and to your Personal Situation.

If the situation is egregious and strongly violates your values, then you may feel you have no choice but to Speak Up.  If you find yourself in that situation, check out this blog on Giving Voice to Values to do so effectively.

There are a lot of reasons not to speak up.  Retribution for Speaking Truth to Power is a real thing.  Despite all that has been said about protecting “whistleblowers,” many HR systems give bosses a way to get rid of people – legally – who speak up.  One friend recently told me that where she works “people just get reorganized and demoted.”

So, you need to carefully assess your personal situation.  If being demoted or fired would cause a big problem for you then it becomes a question of what is a bigger problem for you – being without a job or witnessing the continued violation of your values.  It may be time to make a plan to proactively leave.

On this note, one of my mentors, Dr. Russell Ackoff, once told a group of our EMBAs a story that his son told him:

“Two skeletons are in a closet.” 

“What did the one skeleton say to the other skeleton?”

“If we had any guts we’d get out of here.”

Sometimes it comes down to guts – and also to having a good plan to redeploy yourself somewhere else.

Regardless, all this shows how important it is for all of us to be clear on our values and then to actively choose what we think is right in the situation.  Asking yourself “What do I stand for” can be a good beginning.

For example, one of my favorite values that we adopted at the Robert H. Smith School of Business is “We do the right things the right way.”

How do you inspire a donor to make a transformational gift?

Find out what inspires them, from their heart.

And you might start with making sure you are clear on what inspires you and your organization.  Here are a couple of activities that you can do at an upcoming staff meeting or Board meeting.  Ask:

“What would the world look like if we were accomplishing our mission 100%?”

This is the kind of world that you really want.  Your organization was created to make an impact on the way the world is today so you can make it more like this ideal.

After taking some time to share everyone’s ideas about this amazing world where your mission is accomplished 100%, then ask everyone:

“If we could have it any way we wanted it – with unlimited resources – what would our organization look like and be like so that we could achieve the dream of our ideal world as effectively as possible.”

So now you have two dreams – one is a dream of the ideal world and the other is a dream of the ideal organization, which could help create that ideal world.

These conversations usually produce some very cool and inspiring ideas.

Next, engage one of your donors with these same questions.  Don’t tell them what you and your team came up with right away.  Let them answer first.  Ask them what they think of when they dream a world where your mission is accomplished 100%.  Then ask what they think your organization would look like ideally to make that happen.  The donor’s answers to these questions will give you clues to what inspires them.

Once you find what inspires the donor then you can build on these conversations.  How would they like to contribute to that inspiration?

Personally, I have seen these conversations convert a “never donor” who became a $50/year donor, then $1,000/year, and ultimately made a $6.4 million bequest to an organization that had an annual budget of $1 million.  That is a transformational gift.

Most transformational gifts have inspiration from the heart at their core.  Find out what inspires your donors and show them a path to transform your Mission Impact.

Whatever new and special activities that you have in mind for 2022, I suggest that you establish them as a part of a Vision you have for your future.  Imagine your “ideal life.”

If you could really have it any way you wanted, what would your life be like?  Start with a clean sheet of paper and dream big.  Here are some resources from two of my colleagues at the Robert H. School of Business at the University of Maryland:

*The book Leader of One by Dr. Gerald Suarez provides a guide for inventing your future.  You will answer questions such as “I am most energized when . . . “” and “I derive joy from . . .”

*A recent article in Forbes by Dr. Rajshree Agarwal, “Six Pillars For Building An Intentional Life In This New Year” provides insights on creating a future based on three “me” pillars: Purpose, Wellness, and Prosperity and three “us” pillars: Relationships, Community, and Nature.

Both of these resources will provide you with ideas to create an ideal future.

Dream a life that inspires you.  Note that this is fundamentally different from how people usually set Resolutions – which are usually based on problems that you want to fix.

Dreaming an Ideal Life = fun and inspiring.

Fixing Problems = ugh.

The “ugh” from a Fixing Problems perspective is why you need the “resolve” in resolutions.  You need to be “tenacious” and “determined” because the problem you are working to solve is “ugh.”

Instead of wishing you extra “tenacity,” I wish you greater “clarity” on your vision for your future.  Best wishes for following your dreams in 2022!

The 1989 film, Field of Dreams, inspired many people and was nominated for Best Picture of the Year.  A number of people I know still call it their favorite movie ever.

Recently, the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees played a game on the original “field of dreams” in Iowa that was quite nostalgic for those of us who loved the movie (and it was the most watched regular season baseball game in 16 years).  When the White Sox and Yankees players walked onto the field through the corn – as in the movie – I admit that I got chills.

At its heart, Field of Dreams is about a man who had a dream and pursued it against very challenging odds – even risking the loss of his farm and home.  He probably did things that many of us would never do – because he believed in his dream.

What is your Field of Dreams?  Is there something – big or small – that you are dreaming of doing?  It could be as big as starting a new career or as small as learning Tai Chi or Salsa Dancing.

We all have dreams.  It is a huge part of what makes us human.  Take some time and let your imagination soar.  What would you do if you knew you could not fail?

Then take a leap at your dreams and don’t look back.

“Go the Distance.”

Once upon a time I knew a guy who, everytime I would ask:

“Hey, how are you doing?”  He would answer:

“Not too bad.”

Just think about that.  I’m sure he didn’t really mean that things were bad, but they weren’t SO BAD that he was going to be terribly upset about it.  But then again . . .

How many things in your organization are “okay, fine, not too bad?”  And you are just putting up with it – sleepwalking past it every day.

Is that good enough for you???

What about “amazing?”  Or “extraordinary.”  Or one of my brother Pat’s favorites, “SuperFantastic?”

Try this at your next staff meeting.  Think about an area of your operation which is “okay,” but if it was really great, it would make a big difference.  Then reference that to your team and ask them:

“If we could really have it any way we wanted it, what would amazing look like.”  Dream big.  And once you get some momentum around it, ask:

“What are two or three new things we can try to make this aspect of our organization amazing?”

Maybe not every aspect of your organization can be extraordinary.  But then again, who knows?  And wouldn’t that be cool if you could make something at least much better if not all the way to amazing?

That would be not too bad, indeed.

What should you do?

First, slow down a bit.  I know that you are fired up about your ideas, but you need to get others involved early on.  It will make the vision even better and people will own what they help to create.

Invite others to participate in creating the vision.  I know that you have specific ideas, but share them only in broad strokes.  Examples:

“Wouldn’t it be great if we could build the most (beautiful, unique, impactful, educational, choose your own terms) organization that makes a huge difference in the world?”

“What inspires you when I suggest this?  What would you want it to look like and be like if we could really have it any way we wanted it?  Dream big with me!”

Then sit back and listen.  Let people brainstorm together in small groups (even easier with large groups in our zoom era).  Collect and review their ideas.

Important: Don’t be attached to the details of what you had in your own mind.  Otherwise you will be unable to truly listen to what others suggest.

Invite a few other people to join you in looking over the ideas from the small groups and create themes of what you heard.  Then fashion this into a description of your organization’s vision for the future (not YOUR vision for the future).

You may be thinking “Wait, I am the leader, I am supposed to figure out the vision.”  That is old thinking.  You are the leader and that means you are the facilitator of joint visioning and the communicator of it.  This is a much cooler job than having to figure out everything yourself.

Leadership experts Kouzes & Posner wrote a few years ago:

“Constituents want visions of the future that reflect their own aspirations.  They want to hear how their dreams will come true and their hopes will be fulfilled . . .  The only visions that take hold are shared visions . . . And you will create them only when you listen very, very closely to others, appreciate their hopes, and attend to their needs.”*

Dream.  Facilitate.  Listen.  And then communicate the shared vision with your team.  They won’t “buy in.”  They will “co-own” – which is much more powerful.

*Kouzes, J. & Posner, B.  “To Lead, Create a Shared Vision,” Harvard Business Review, January, 2009.

That’s one way to go and it is a very reasonable thing to do – as we are reminded by this quote from George Bernard Shaw:

“The reasonable person adapts themselves to the world.  The unreasonable one persists in adapting the world to themselves.  Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable person.”

Rather than adapting to a future that you cannot even reasonably predict anyway, I suggest to individuals and organizations that they take a more aspirational approach and invent the future that inspires them.  Then, look into the environment and work to shape circumstances toward your vision.

The “creating your future” approach is a more fulfilling option because “adapting to the future” always involves giving up (if not selling out) what you really care about for the future.  Even if you try and fail in your efforts to shape circumstances toward your vision, it is more fulfilling because you are following your dreams.

This is one of the problems, by the way, of the popular process of “benchmarking.”  Many organizations study what the “best in class” are doing and seek to replicate that.  By doing that they are, at best, following behind the leaders.  They are destined to be yesterday’s news.

A better approach is to “benchmark,” but use what you learn as springboard information from which you dream what you really want.

Our choices are clear.  Adapt, follow, give up on our real dreams.

Or create the future we want and pursue it with vigor.  Follow your hopes and dreams!