Planners’ Picks — January 6, 2026
It’s a new year, full of possibilities. We will set new goals and resolutions, and many of them will fail in the first quarter due to the struggles we encounter. How do we power through? Hopefully with the help of some of the resources below!
Welcome to 2026, everyone. Let’s make this year a great one.
:: Image of the Week
:: Self-Leadership Development
The 3 Cs of Good Decisions
The quality of our decisions defines our legacy as leaders. We make around 35,000 decisions a day and close to 800,000,000 in a lifetime. Not all decisions are equal. Many are default, some are reversible, but the consequential ones leave us with no U-turn. Decision-making is inescapable. So, let’s delve deeper into the anatomy of good decisions.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91423443/the-three-cs-of-good-decisions-decisions-leadership
”For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice.” – T.S. Eliot
Four Metrics for Success by Eric Barker
From his highly acclaimed book Barking Up the Wrong Tree, Eric Barker tells us the following…
In the pursuit of a fulfilling life, it’s essential to evaluate success through multiple dimensions rather than a single metric. The four key metrics that matter most are:
- Happiness—Feelings of pleasure or contentment in and about your life.
- Achievement—Accomplishments that compare favorably against similar goals.
- Significance—A positive impact on people and the world around you.
- Legacy—The lasting influence you leave behind for future generations.
Importance of Each Metric
- Happiness: This metric emphasizes the importance of enjoying life and finding joy in daily experiences. It encourages individuals to seek pleasure and contentment.
- Achievement: Setting and reaching meaningful goals is crucial. This metric focuses on personal accomplishments and how they align with your aspirations.
- Significance: Making a positive impact on others is vital for a sense of fulfillment. This metric encourages individuals to contribute to their communities and help those around them.
- Legacy: This metric reflects how you want to be remembered. It involves living in a way that benefits others and leaves a positive mark on the world.
Balancing the Metrics
To achieve a well-rounded life, it’s important to regularly assess and balance these four metrics. Ignoring any one of them can lead to dissatisfaction and a sense of unfulfillment. Aim to incorporate elements of each metric into your daily life for a more holistic approach to success.
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How might you use this four-metric structure to develop your goals or resolutions in the new year?
:: Developing Better Habits
A Tool for Breaking Bad Habits (and Building Good Ones)
Every weekday morning when Katy Milkman rolls out of bed, she puts on workout clothes under the outfit I’ll wear to take her son to the bus stop. It’s an odd layering strategy, but it serves a purpose: it removes one tiny barrier between drop-off and my workout. And over time, she has learned that every bit of friction matters.
Katy shares a Q&A with USC psychologist Wendy Wood, who is the world’s leading expert on habits. She last featured Wendy in this newsletter back in 2020, when they talked about how habits are formed. In their new conversation, they focus on one powerful but often overlooked tool for shaping our routines: friction.
https://katymilkman.substack.com/p/a-tool-for-breaking-bad-habits-and?r=3c3hz
”Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” – Mark Twain
Your Time
Here’s another look at Robert Glazer’s first post of 2025 on annual planning and personal goal setting, focusing on how you spend your time currently and what you might want to change about those habits in the coming year to better align with your priorities.
“Most people who complete a calendar audit experience a wake-up call and reckon with how they’ve chosen to spend their time. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s also usually a catalyst for change.”
:: LinkedIn Learning
How to Build a Culture of Appreciation as a Manager
This LinkedIn Learning course How to Build a Culture of Appreciation as a Manager offers a practical, evidence-based approach to recognition. It can help your employees feel valued and respected as individuals, so they’re committed to your team and organization long term. Also, consider recognizing your team as a whole to share a sense of value and contribution for all that has been accomplished.
:: Work Culture & Team Development
Take Your Self and Your Team to the Next Level
Author Heather Younger has created a self-assessment on your feedback style to help you learn and grow as a leader. Understanding your feedback style and identifying opportunities for growth in this area can significantly enhance your self-leadership skills. Use the following self-assessment to evaluate your current approach to giving and receiving feedback and to pinpoint areas where you can improve.
https://www.caringleadershiplearning.com/feedback-assessment
The Leadership Reset: Why Culture Will Be the Real Celebrity of 2026
Culture has always had influence, but in 2026, it becomes the headliner. Not the opener. Not the background soundtrack. The star. And here’s the truth too many leaders still refuse to face: Culture has already taken the main stage. Leadership is just now catching up.
For decades, organizations have operated as if culture were a “bonus track” — something nice to have, something HR would handle, something that sounded good in an annual report.
But the world has shifted. People have shifted. And the gravitational center of power has shifted with them. 2026 will be the year culture takes over as the real celebrity, and leaders who underestimate it will find themselves wildly unprepared for the future unfolding right in front of them.
The Man Who Proved Me Right with CEO Bob Chapman
Simon Sinek has long imagined a world where people wake each morning inspired, feel safe wherever they work, and return home fulfilled by what they’ve created. That vision once felt like a dream—until he met Bob Chapman, CEO of Barry-Wehmiller, who quietly built it into reality.
Over five decades, Bob has grown a humble Midwestern manufacturing company into a global business success story, proving that leadership grounded in humanity can scale across the world. Bob sees the people in his company not as line items, but as human beings within his span of care—individuals he feels responsible to help become healthy, fulfilled, and whole. His belief is simple yet profound: when people are cared for at work, they create happier families, stronger communities, and a better world.
He captured this vision in his book “Everybody Matters”, inspiring leaders everywhere to imagine a kinder form of capitalism. Learn what his Truly Human Leadership movement looks like as Simon visits Bob at his plant in Phillips, Wisconsin to interview him.
This Is A Bit of Optimism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6766oydXpw
:: CSN’s Book of the Week Recommendation
Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family
The way we lead impacts the way people live.
Whether a seasoned leader or one who is just embarking on the journey, Everybody Matters will help you understand the impact of your leadership on those in your span of care. The story of Bob Chapman’s transformation and his experiences while leading $3.6+ billion Barry-Wehmiller for 50 years will help you develop the skills and mindset to become the kind of leader today’s world is demanding. Get the book that has been inspiring readers for 10 years, packed with new insights and analysis from the inspirational leader and company determined to shift the definition of success in business.
“Though a lot of leaders talk about this stuff, in Everybody Matters you will see what happens when you actually do it.”— Simon Sinek
Everybody Matters will teach you:
- How treating people like human beings, and not like functions or costs, creates an environment where they share their gifts and talents toward a shared future
- How business growth and people growth aren’t separate ideas but complementary components to creating a vibrant organization that benefits all of its stakeholders
- How a caring culture that promotes listening, recognition, collaboration, trust, and accountability realizes exceptional technology, service and relationships with customers and stakeholders
- How BW’s “hybrid” equity approach to “buy, hold and invest” has led to the integration of more than 150 companies, expanding BW into a $3.6+ billion global provider of solutions in industries as diverse as consumer goods, infrastructure, life sciences, insurance, engineering and business consulting
- How BW President Kyle Chapman intends to grow Barry-Wehmiller, carrying on his family legacy
- How the world is calling for a fresh approach to leadership–Truly Human Leadership®—and how BW is stepping up to help the education sector, communities and other companies meet that need through dedicated outreach efforts
:: Mental Health and Self-Care
Can You Be Grateful for Things That Didn’t Happen?
We often thank people for what they did. And when we experience gratitude, it’s typically for good things that occurred in our lives. But can you be grateful for something that didn’t actually happen? Can you thank others for something they didn’t do?
Yes, and yes.
Philosophers use the term counterfactuals to refer to imagined alternatives to actual events—scenarios that could have happened but didn’t. See this Greater Good Magazine article on the topic.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/can_you_be_grateful_for_things_that_didnt_happen
”Our first responsibility, the most potent offering we possess, is gratitude.” – Robin Wall Kimmerer
:: Creativity
It’s Not Inside You Trying to Get Out, It’s Outside You Trying to Get In
What if you stopped thinking about your ideas as things you need to let out of you, but things you need to let in to you? Things you need to be ready to receive?
If you start to think about creative work this way, “it starts to change everything.” You can stop being afraid and daunted and just “do your job. Continue to show up.”
Read Austin Kleon’s short article on grabbing creative ideas from outside of yourself.
:: Take Five
*Note: CSN occasionally adds “Take Five” articles to take you off the beaten path. Articles are about local or regional areas of interest, but not necessarily focused on leadership development. The intent is for you to take a break from being a leader and relax for a moment!
Improv Class Builds Communication Skills
An innovative approach borrowed from the performing arts is helping health professions students at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health strengthen their ability to engage in active listening and think on their feet, which are key skills they will need throughout their careers. This mirrors the Leadership Improv sessions CSN has partnered with the UW IT-Connects team.
https://www.med.wisc.edu/news/med-student-improv
Note: CSN is holding our in-person Leadership Improv session today! Even if you hadn’t registered, you are welcome to join us at 2:00 pm in 1210 W. Dayton, Room 3139. The more the merrier!
:: Upcoming Events
The Creative and Compassionate Art of Seeing Others Deeply with David Brooks
Join the Middleton Library for an online discussion with prominent cultural writer and bestselling author David Brooks on his book, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply, in which he helps us pose essential questions: If you want to know a person, what kind of attention should you cast on them? What kind of conversations should you have? What parts of a person’s story should you pay attention to?
Driven by his trademark sense of curiosity and determination to grow as a person, Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience and the worlds of theater, philosophy, history, and education to present a welcoming, hopeful, integrated approach to human connection. How to Know a Person helps readers become more understanding and considerate toward others, and to find the joy that comes from being seen. Along the way it offers a possible remedy for a society that is riven by fragmentation, hostility, and misperception.
The act of seeing another person, Brooks argues, is profoundly creative: How can we look somebody in the eye and see something large in them and, in turn, see something larger in ourselves? How to Know a Person is for anyone searching for connection and yearning to be understood.
Register now to take part in a riveting and timeless conversation on how to connect with people from all walks of life and why doing so is paramount to our individual and communal growth.
Note: this is not a UW-Madison event.
https://libraryc.org/midlibrary/104874?uMarketingSource=_LSC_ME_01_0