Engage - Enable - Excite

My Guardrails for 2026

Dec 31, 2025

I’ve been doing this every year since 2019 - which means that this is my 8th rodeo. (My previous words are here.)

After eight years of ‘three words’, you’d think I’d have this all figured out by now. BUT - Intentional | Inspired | Impactful ? To be honest - not as much as it could have been.

‘Intentional’ was meant to be about something more than preparation.
‘Inspired’ is meaningless if it is only in my head.
‘Impact’ requires you to impact something. It hasn’t. At least not in a meaningful way.

Turns out that 2025 was a lot of ‘getting ready’. Not enough ‘doing’. Not to say ‘doing’ was totally absent - but maybe ‘the wrong doing’? Although ‘bread was placed on the table’ - so there is that. Bottom line - it all adds up to 2026 needing to - being - different.

My 3 words for 2026

To remind you dear reader - the words are neither plan, nor strategy - nor even ‘resolutions’ (Freakanomics on that topic). Rather my guardrails for the year ahead - and yes - alliteration once more rears its head.

Engage

Engage by Leighton Robinson on Unsplash

All the interesting work happens at the boundaries. Where people and technology intersect. Where the gap between ‘what we say’ and ‘what we do’ is visible.
SHARED LESSON
I can’t do this by myself. Nobody can. So let’s get that on the table.

Enable

Enable by Leighton Robinson on Unsplash

No more building things. It’s about creating the conditions - the frameworks, the readiness, the structured thinking - that lets you do the work yourself.
SHARED LESSON
Enable capacity. Enable connections. Enable coherence.

Excite

Excite by Jen Theodore on Unsplash

When the conditions are right people want to participate. Friction is removed. Possible becomes fact. That’s when excitement takes over.
SHARED LESSON
Light the spark, don’t control the fire.