Whose work grew this year while your praise stood still? Find someone you talked up a year ago and haven't really engaged since. Look at what they're actually doing now. Then do what you can to share what they've become, specifically and in public if you can. The test of recognition is simple... whether the picture you have of someone has kept up with where they are now. Done honestly, it closes the gap between what you say you value and what your attention actually tracks.

What most organizations do under pressure is fix things near the surface. The urgency is real, and fixes at the execution and systems level produce visible results fast. The problem is that a fix at the wrong level doesn't just fail to solve the problem. It spends capital, creates change fatigue, and gives the skeptics more evidence that nothing ever really changes. The willingness to attempt the harder fix, the one at the right level, gets weaker every time the wrong one is