How do you choose what to change when everything seems to be changing all around you, whether you want it to or not?

My word of the year for 2025 is Scale, as I thought I would be focused on scaling a few companies, and that has turned out to be the case.

Strategy and Go To Market Motions are my focus, and I have spent quite a bit of time on structure and scaffolding so that almost any company that wanted to scale could pull my work off the shelf and start customizing what they want and be well down the path to success.

In the worlds that I create, how a company uses each season of the year has been important, and how they use each day of the week matters as well.

Next Monday, August 18th, starts a very important 90-day season for most companies, which is what we call the Fast Fall Finish.

This is the period where companies come to grips with what is working and what didn’t work and have to decide how they are going to allocate budgets and plans for the following year.

I would like to know how you are looking at this period in your business and what you are thinking about for next year?

It doesn’t have to be a long answer, but, if possible, I would like to poll my readers on how much change they think is actually going to occur as we head into 2026.

I have a hypothesis that with all the change going on around us these past 5 years, many people have a bit of change fatigue.

We have been conditioned in the last 24 months that almost every 6 weeks, something new will come out of a hyperscaler that will make such a difference that allocating major funds to something new seems like the wrong thing to do.

The Rube Goldberg machine image I keep coming up with in my head is of all these gerrymandered pipes going in crazy directions, and no one dares make a change. The flow inside the pipes is getting more efficient, thanks to the personal productivity enabled by AI tools.

But in the next 18 months, I believe we are going to see companies start changing pipes, or buying new machines altogether, and there will be lots of old pipes lying around the factory floor as we go from Rube Goldberg machines of old to the Flux Capacitor from Back to the Future.

---

I am in the flux capacitor business, and my plan for the next 90 days is to meet with every company that we met with this year and listen to what type of change they think they can stomach for 2026.
I expect a ton of indecision and caution but also know that the pressure to use some of these new tools for more than personal productivity is massive.

From the CEO on down, the question remains:

HOW ARE YOU USING THE NEW TOOLS TO RUN A BETTER BUSINESS?

If I can’t get in front of a company in the next 90 days, then my offerings are not important enough for them relative to the other issues they are facing, and that goes for you as well.

So, bring on the fall, bring on football, and bring on the meetings where we listen and hopefully have rigorous dialogue on how to have a great 2026 together.

Thanks for your readership and friendship,

Drew
​
p.s. Please do share what your top priority is for the Fall.

---