Practice Evolution, Not Transaction
2026 Patterns to Track, and Swirl to Interrupt
As we step into 2026, here are a few invitations – to disrupt old stories, challenge easy fixes, and build, lead, and deliver with fierce presence and grounded accountability. See this as a call to practice evolution, to move beyond mere transacting and into living strategy.
1. Stop with the “Our Founder” Nonsense
- Work is not a church; Teams are not cults.
- Culture is shaped not only by behavior, but also by language patterns.
- Humans may play roles, but are not disassociated identities or mythical characters.
- Use names to keep you in relationship with reality.
- Stop projecting.
- Start leading yourself.
2. “I’m so Busy” Narrating Is Cosplaying
- You are programming your neurology for the gerbil wheel, not building the flywheel.
- Words are spell casters – you are collapsing time instead of expanding it.
- Stop playing the victim of your own poor system and workflow designs.
- Start designing out of "busyness" and into strategic.
3. It Was Never Meant to Be Easy
- Breaking out of entrenched programming, old paradigms, and corporate patriarchy is a sacred intent.
- Ease and simplicity are devilish distractors.
- Check-in on where you need to level up versus perform.
4. Sovereignty and Agency Mean Accountability
- Distributing leadership, decisioning, and delivery around a system means your ass is on the line.
- It does not mean a free-for-all.
- Nor does it mean isolationism, heroism, or self-service.
- Stop offshoring accountability while expecting freedom.
- Stop blaming as a decoy for not actually showing up yourself.
- Start taking ownership with humility.
5. Institutional Thinking Benefits the Institution
- Do lab work.
- Gain greater knowledge and become better strategists through direct experience.
- Stop enjoying power's upside in leadership without cracking free of your control needs.
- Start bravely questioning your own relationship with the institutional mindset.
6. Bureaucracy Is Inside You, Not “Out There”
- Programming runs deep.
- Clean the cache.
- Bureaucratic ways are context and content.
- Stopping the insanity means you need to excavate your own mental models, mindsets, and methods.
- Stop pushing against an imaginary boogie monster.
- Start acknowledging and dismantling the architectures within.
7. Transparency & Openness Depend on Strategy and Context
- Over-sharing has no theory basis.
- Transparency is always context-dependent.
- Open technology and human channels risk control and predatory behavior.
- Stop expecting a technology system design to be an organisation design.
- Start working on your own transparency and communication values so you aren't confounding openness and control.
8. Know Your Audience
- Design for the desired outcome.
- Engage the group, don’t just inform them.
- Stop forgetting to start with your audience.
- Begin with their needs, not your assumptions.
9. Truth Is Responsive Access to Your Own Heart
- Truth is not faux vulnerability or pearl clutching.
- Radiating your truth (not over-sharing) opens other's access.
- Stop being so in your head.
- Start surrounding yourself with people who expect more of you.
10. Control Is Control, Freedom Is Freedom
- Get honest. You cannot have it both ways.
- Behavior plays are how individuals and systems elevate out of low-vibe, control-based operating.
- Stop feeding the reptile.
- Start detoxing.
11. New Technology Always Arrives for System (and Consciousness) Upgrades
- Technology applied to low consciousness fields simply yields new low consciousness technology applications.
- The tech itself does not change the consciousness state of the operating system.
- Don't miss the point.
- Do be strategic about the system elevation – or degradation – potentials.
12. Energy Does Not Lie
- Your energetic field precedes all words, deeds, behaviors, and operating.
- Your field is the radio signal; the actual platform.
- When you build atop an untuned field, you'll simply operate atop a phony energetic baseline.
- Stop bypassing.
- Start tuning.
13. Strategy Is a Practice
- A practice is a discipline.
- Stop relying on random emergence, hope, or disguised control mechanisms.
- Advanced, sophisticated play relies on committed practice.
- Start using routine.
- Do the lab work.
14. Decisioning Collaboratively Is Forward Propulsion
- Coherence is central to effective decisioning.
- Actioning cannot be separate from a strategy discipline.
- Stop operating outside the rigor of collaboration and coherence.
- Start tapping into the unseen currents that fuel collective progress.
15. Presence Is Leadership
- Presence means your heart and mind continually serve the moment.
- It demands your dominant narratives, habits, and glitchy gremlins stand down.
- Stop excusing impatience with weak justifications.
- Start curating curiousity to level up all moments.
While the future doesn’t wait, and evolution is not optional, the turning of the Gregorian calendar page can be a false start "to get it done now" or "build the one-dimensional plan." These are the same old fallacies, driving the same old fears, and thus driving the same old architectures.
Instead, begin the calendar year as a player in your system's conscious evolution. Begin to build a practice using these fifteen invitations. Approach each with discipline. Commit to tuning your own and your system's energetics as a way to start anew.
Swirl may feel like progress, but it's simply movement without strategic meaning. You'll know – deeply – when true evolution is underway. Progress is satisfyingly challenging, not chaotically exhausting.