Be Your Own Best Valentine

Every leader carries a hidden blueprint—the one they’d create if nothing old had to be carried forward.

And yet most of us spend our days maintaining systems we quietly know are past their usefulness.

Before you map out another year inside those inherited constraints, pause long enough to notice the truth beneath the noise:
the work isn’t boring— the container is.

You had plans for 2026:

– build a new team
– bring in people who support the dream
– expand the work you actually want to be doing
But plans built inside old structures rarely create new outcomes.
This is the moment where reinvention becomes not a luxury, but a relief.

So instead of forcing another year of incremental fixes, open the door you’ve been avoiding—the one marked  Start Fresh.
Step into the question that changes everything:

What would we build if we were starting new?

When your team enters this question willingly, something remarkable happens:  defenses drop, creativity returns, and what once felt like a battlefield becomes a shared blueprint for the future.

And the secret is simpler than most leaders expect:  keep your projects small, separate, and clean.
Acknowledge constraints without wrestling them.
Turn each one into its own solvable piece that supports the larger build.

Because in the end, people don’t resist change.
They resist change that feels like loss.
Give them something worth wanting, and they’ll follow you into the new world willingly.

Fran

© 2026, Fran Klasinski. All rights reserved. on republishing any parts of this post, you must supply a link to the original post