“Calm down, Mom.”
I don’t know why my kids are always telling me to calm down. Maybe because I’m always excited by news, small or big.
In this situation, I wasn’t going to calm down. My son and I moved this summer. As the NKOTB, he wasn’t sure how he’d measure up on the sports teams. When he came home to tell me he’d made the football varsity squad, I freaked out a little. A lot. He’s in 10th grade.
He shrugged it off. The team hasn’t had a winning season in years, he explained. (They’ve gone a combined 5-21 over the past three seasons, including back-to-back winless years in 2023 and 2024.) It’s a small school, and they need every body they can get. To him, that made varsity no big deal. To me, it made it a very big deal. I believe in celebrating success despite the size of the moment.
My enthusiasm carried over to last Thursday, the night his team (David) went up against the Lakers (Goliath). Their mascot doesn’t sound intimidating, but it struck fear into our team and our fans alike. They’re good. Really good. They’ve made the playoffs the last two years running, and the week before our game, they defeated their opponent 56-0.
And Thursday’s game? It was awesome, with a special underscore to the word “awe.”
Us Ram fans were in disbelief the entire first half because we hung in there. We were trailing, but not by much. In the third quarter, we closed the gap. It felt like we could actually win. By the time we had the ball with a minute left, we were down by 9. We knew we likely wouldn’t win, but we were ecstatic because we weren’t losing by a lot.
When the game was over, I told my parents I was going to go congratulate the team on their almost victory. My dad thought it sounded odd to celebrate the defeated. But in my mind, they won. So much.
Call me a growth-mindset junkie, but losing by 9, with a real shot at losing by only 1, was a huge win for this team at the start of the season. They needed the confidence to know they could compete, the validation that they’re good, and the momentum to carry into the rest of the season. Sometimes the scoreboard doesn’t tell you the whole success story.
Translating This to Business
I keep thinking about how this maps onto what’s happening in the business world right now.
A year ago, many of us set goals, built strategies, finalized budgets, and synced our forecasts for 2026. We made a lot of assumptions about how the year would unfold, and a lot of those assumptions didn’t survive first contact with reality. Geopolitical conflict disrupted energy markets and supply chains. Interest rate volatility reshaped the cost of capital. Tariff and trade policy shifts forced companies to rework sourcing overnight.
Persistent inflation squeezed margins. And the accelerating pace of AI adoption upended workforce plans that looked solid twelve months ago.
None of us built our 2026 plans around that combination. Yet here we are.
I know a lot of leaders are trying to close out this year not by hitting the ambitious goals they set in January, but by hitting the readjusted, humbler goals, and still finding a way to hold their heads high doing it.
Now that we’re past Labor Day, we’re heading into a different pace. This is the stretch where we need to motivate and inspire our teams to finish strong. A few focus areas as you do:
- Focus on small wins. Not every win looks like a win from the outside. Name it anyway.
- Cheer the signs of momentum. A close loss, a hard-fought quarter, a team that didn’t fold: those are data points worth celebrating out loud.
- Be the leader your team needs you to be. You might feel wary, uncertain, or frankly frustrated by how the year went. Work to shift that energy into something your team can actually use.
2026 isn’t over. And you’ll be planning for 2027 soon enough. Use what’s left of this year to build the internal confidence that carries a team into a new year, a new schedule, and a new shot at toppling giants.
PS. I can’t help but talk about my Michigan Wolverines. Don’t make your success come down to a controversial, surprise moment. Build your system now so you can depend on a consistent, steady march to victory. (But if you do get that Hail Mary, bust through the barriers and storm the field. A win is a win, despite how ugly it is.)
