Robin Weninger

Many organizations suffer from "basement thinking," where they mistake busy internal maintenance for strategic progress. Because organizational design dictates what gets attention, teams often perfect their "mopping" processes while ignoring the "roof" work needed to adapt to the outside world. To stay relevant, leaders must break the cycle of internal obsession and intentionally allocate attention to external shifts, even if it means letting the basement stay wet for a while.

AI has raised the "productivity floor," making the ability to generate polished drafts a cheap commodity rather than a sign of competence. As the bottleneck shifts from information retrieval to critical judgment, value is no longer found in the volume of output but in the ability to filter, verify, and make defensible decisions. To thrive, individuals must move beyond "good enough" AI summaries and focus on high-level synthesis and sharp questioning that anchors automated work in reality.

NYE is basically the world’s biggest collective planning meeting with zero agenda and too much champagne. The countdown feels like progress, but it’s just a cue. A strong year isn’t a personality upgrade; it’s a minimum viable year built to work on a bad Tuesday. Boring wins are repeatable actions that survive mood and noise. Pick one boring win for 2026 and protect it. Go big tonight. Go boring tomorrow.

Lead like a good host: don’t attend the room. Shape it by deciding the tone early, engineering belonging, protecting flow over perfect plans, anticipating needs quietly, removing friction before it shows, and ending meetings cleanly so stress doesn’t linger. If your team feels “unconfident” or scattered, it’s often a hosting problem.

Interest is cheap. And it often feels like progress because it rewards us fast. Execution starts when a leader adds the “hook”: a decision that carries trade-offs, ownership, and consequences. If you keep feeding enthusiasm without commitment, you train everyone to stay interested while nothing becomes real.