New Year Reflection

Welcome to 2025. This is just about the fifth year of Managing the Maelstrom, which started on the eve of the shutdown on 13 March 2020. How far we have come, yet we still don't appear to be out of the maelstrom.

I avoided sending out a missive last week, figuring many would be away from the office and not wanting to add to your headache of a post-vacation inbox. Also, if you remember from the week before, I was orienting everyone to Leader Self-Care as the holidays came upon us. As part of your Leader Self-Care, I hope you had the chance to relax and reflect.

In that spirit, every New Year at Forrest & Company, we encourage our clients to reflect on what the outgoing year meant and project forward on what the New Year will be.

I struggled to define 2024 at the beginning; it took a lot of searching to determine what 2024 would be for me. As with all plans, none survived first contact, so it morphed a bit as events overtook.

I concluded that 2024 was a time to be trans-national in thought and deed. While I had been working on Flourishing as a project through Humanity 2.0 in Rome and The Human Flourishing at Work project at Harvard, those projects had slowed by the end of 2024. New changes were on the world's horizon. Instead of the world coming together, we saw divisive nationalism, ethnicity, and religion come back to the forefront. Lofty ideals seemed to be set aside for the lowest common denominator.

At the end of 2024, some of the trends in business included:

• A focus on productivity which looked beyond performance solely and took into account the measure and cost of doing work
• Confusion over the Return to Office reigned supreme in Human Resources circles as organizations tried to balance business needs with personal preferences
• Further, there was churn and a lack of decision-making as organizations tried to game risk and reduce it as much as possible by postponing decisions

All this, combined with external influences, merely accentuated the impact of the VUCA world. VUCA, coined over two decades ago, reflects the Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous world we live in.

VUCA was a main characteristic of the COVID era when I first wrote these missives, but it has stayed with us. Its only antidote is good clear thinking but, to do that, one needs to take the time to think, overcome the Tyranny of Do, and reflect.

So, what will 2025 mean to you? What will you reflect on to determine a starting point for your path this coming year in the face of VUCA, business, and national trends? ?

I would like to leave you with my sixteen-year-old son, Alastair's, thoughts. When asked what 2025 would be, his answer was simple: consistency. So, may I offer this to you: be consistent in thinking through the challenges you face in 2025, and you will find the path. Consistency in choosing thinking over action will pay off in the long run.

Welcome again to 2025, and all the very best to you and your family for the New Year.