A brief end-of-year reflection, with reading suggestions.
Every year, in December, the same ritual: new goals, new strategies, new ambitions. We treat January as a blank page, ready to do better this time.
But here is the problem: we are about to repeat last year with a different vocabulary.
Peter Drucker, who wrote about leadership long before LinkedIn turned it into performance art, stated an inconvenient truth: one cannot manage what one does not first understand. For innovators and leaders, this is not philosophy. It is a competitive advantage.
While our competitors begin January running in pursuit of new achievements, we prefer to start with new capabilities. The difference? Everything.
Innovation happens slowly until it does not. This is the inconvenient truth about transformation: it rarely arrives suddenly. Most significant changes result from micro-innovations that go largely unnoticed at the time.
That piece of client information we noticed during coffee on a Tuesday morning. The capability we consolidated while no one was watching. The inflection point we reached after a casual comment from someone that completely changed our perspective. Or even an uncomfortable conversation that clarified what we truly stand for. Individually, they seem trivial. Collectively, they reconstruct our entire operating system.
Drucker called this systematic reflection – the disciplined art of identifying where progress truly came from. Without it, we confuse movement with advancement, activity with achievement. It is the difference between busy executives and effective leaders.
What happens when we do not reflect?
We repeat the same mistakes with new justifications. That hire that did not work out? That premature expansion? That investment in technology that no one uses? Without reflection, we will repeat the pattern because we never identified it.
We chase the shiny rather than leverage our strengths. We are drawn to the new and the brilliant while our true assets – the capabilities we have genuinely built – remain unidentified and underutilized.
We confuse exhaustion with productivity. If we worked sixty hours per week this year and plan to work sixty-five next year, we do not have a strategy. We have a diagnostic problem.
And finally, we lose pattern recognition. Our team sees a leader without institutional memory, always starting from scratch, unable to distinguish trends from mere noise.
This is not philosophy. It is strategic wear. And it costs us more than we think.
In innovation circles, we revere the future: emerging markets, disruptive technologies, blue ocean strategies. But reflection is not the opposite of innovation. It is the infrastructure that makes innovation sustainable.
Looking back reveals which methods truly worked, which capabilities were reinforced in a deep and lasting way, which experiences led the organization to learn, and which relationships expanded its reach meaningfully.
This is how innovators build strategic self-awareness. It is also the scarcest resource in most organizations, where everyone is too busy executing to understand what works.
Small wins rarely feel like accomplishments in real time. They are the professional equivalent of compound interest, somewhat dull until, suddenly, they are not. When we stop to recognize them, the cumulative effect becomes evident. The sharpened capabilities now allow us to conduct meetings that actually produce decisions and make connections – of ideas, people, business – that specialists in our field cannot; the clearer instincts allow us to identify risks in the first five minutes or handle that crisis that would have derailed us for weeks last January in a single morning.
That is the significant change that only becomes apparent when we exit execution mode long enough to recognize the pattern. And recognizing the pattern is how we break it. Reflection turns experience into capability. Capability turns uncertainty into opportunity. And opportunity, well, that is what we all seek.
Try Drucker’s seemingly simple question: “Which decisions or actions produced the results that made a difference this year?”
Then go further: identify the capability behind each result, not the result itself but what made it possible. Ask how you can leverage or expand that capability in the coming year. Highlight the small experiences or changes that altered direction. Recognize the people and collaborations that amplified impact. And, no less importantly, admit what did not work and why.
This is not nostalgia. It is competitive intelligence drawn from the most reliable source: your own experience.
If these topics interest you, here are three reading suggestions that may change the way you think strategically for the year ahead and are perfect for the quiet week between Christmas and New Year, when everyone else scrolls:
The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker – The source of much of this thinking. Drucker’s exploration of how executives become effective remains remarkably relevant decades later. The chapter on knowing how you spend your time alone justifies the investment.
How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen – The late Harvard professor applies innovation theory to personal strategy. His argument that small daily decisions accumulate over a lifetime or career perfectly reflects our theme of micro-innovations. Warning: it may make you reconsider more than just your professional strategy.
Range by David Epstein – An interesting counter-narrative to the “10,000 hours” myth. Epstein shows how breadth of experience, unexpected connections, and yes, reflection on seemingly unrelated domains often produce innovative thinking. Particularly valuable if you have ever felt behind for not starting earlier or not specializing.
As we close another year, here is the truth: innovation moves forward, but we understand it by looking back.
Therefore, before leaping forward, look back. Not because the past is comfortable, but because that is where the levers of your future are hidden. The story of your year has already shown you the way; now you just need to read it.
Silvia Almeida, Professor at CATÓLICA-LISBON