A Christmas Business Genie’s Guide to 2026
Next year, boring and diligent will quietly win.
It is the end of the year. The time when television fills up with familiar stories. Ghosts. Wishes. Spirits. People learning lessons they probably should have learned months earlier.
Pantomime season is in full swing. There is shouting at villains, cheering at heroes, and at least one magical character promising to make everything better by the final curtain.
So in the spirit of the season, I am joining in.
I am appointing myself a Christmas business genie.
Not the glamorous kind with smoke and fireworks. A very modern genie. The kind that lives in a laptop (like Clippy!), appears during Teams calls, and emerges just as someone says “Next year, we need to be more ambitious.”
I make the same offer every time.
Three wishes.
One for Marketing.
One for Finance.
One for Human Resources.
No extra wishes. No clever wording. And absolutely no “AI will fix this” clauses.
Because if 2025 was the year of bold plans and big ideas, then 2026 will be the year those plans are quietly judged on whether they actually work.
And the uncomfortable truth is this.
By 2026, the organisations that win will not be the most exciting ones. They will be the ones that finally embraced being boring.
Sitting comfortably? Let us begin.
Marketing’s wish
“We want more impact.”
This wish usually arrives wrapped in the language of innovation. What it often means is that a lot of content is being produced, but not enough of it is genuinely useful.
The Christmas genie grants the wish in the least glamorous way possible.
You invest properly in your website.
You publish content that answers real questions.
You stop treating pages as placeholders and start treating them as products.
You design for clarity, accessibility and usefulness rather than novelty.
Your content does not chase attention.
It earns trust.
People find it when they need it and use it.
In 2026, the marketing teams that outperform will not be the loudest. They will be the ones who built web content that works quietly in the background, doing its job every day without demanding applause.
Finance’s wish
“We want control.”
This wish is rarely about power. It is about confidence. About knowing what is happening without having to ask three people and a spreadsheet.
The genie grants the wish through transparency.
Costs can be traced without detective work.
Controls are clear and consistently applied.
People understand how decisions are made and why.
Data is trusted because it is governed, not because it looks impressive.
Processes are documented.
Assumptions are visible.
Efficiency improves because nothing is hidden.
By 2026, the most effective finance functions will not be admired for complexity. They will be relied upon for being boring, open and right.
Human Resources’ wish
“We want stability.”
This wish often appears during periods of change. Not because change is bad, but because it has a habit of being poorly explained.
The genie grants the wish by slowing the story down.
Change is communicated early and often.
The reasons are shared in plain language.
People know what is changing, what is not, and what is still uncertain.
Managers are equipped to explain rather than reassure vaguely.
There is still grumbling. It is December after all. But it is informed grumbling.
In 2026, the organisations that feel stable will not be the ones that avoid change. They will be the ones that communicate it well enough that people are not left guessing.
The reveal
None of these wishes are exciting.
None of them win awards.
None of them make for dramatic endings, or LinkedIn posts that begin ‘Proud to be attending… blah blah blah’.
But together they create something quietly powerful.
An organisation that functions.
In 2026, boring will not mean uninspired.
It will mean deliberate.
It will mean dependable.
It will mean slightly ahead of everyone else who is still chasing magic.
If you had three wishes for your organisation in 2026, which one would you make first. And would you actually accept it if it came true?