Robin Weninger

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.

Many executives hire consultants not to solve problems, but to purchase "Adult Supervision as a Service"; an expensive insurance policy against personal blame. By outsourcing the risk of decision-making to external experts, leaders unconsciously trade their authority for emotional safety. This dynamic creates a dysfunctional inversion where consultants effectively run the show while executives merely "align," leaving the organization void of genuine accountability. The result is a workforce of passive passengers waiting for direction rather than captains taking ownership of outcomes. Ultimately, while leaders can rent intelligence and analysis, they cannot outsource the courage required to say, "This decision is mine."

Many organizations burn energy sanitizing the truth rather than solving it. This essay argues that the First Article of the Cologne Constitution, Et es wie et es (It is what it is), is not a phrase of resignation, but a critical leadership discipline. It proposes that admitting the raw, unpolished state of a project is the only valid starting point for progress. By swapping corporate euphemisms for "Tacheles" (straight talk), leaders stop negotiating with the facts and start acting on them. You cannot navigate a map you refuse to look at.