It's November, calendars are full of end of year reviews, budget conversations and Christmas parties, next year can feel like next year's problem.
But for a lot of businesses, the annual kick off is only a few months away. Take out the Christmas and summer break when internal stakeholders are hard to pin down, and the real planning window is closer to weeks, not months.
The start of the year is one of the most valuable moments an organisation has to shape how its people think, feel and act. There's research to explain why, and the kick offs that make the most of it have one thing in common:
They're planned before the year ends.
The science of a fresh start
There's a reason so many of us set goals in January. In 2014, Wharton researchers Hengchen Dai, Katherine Milkman and Jason Riis published a study on what they called the "fresh start effect". They found that people are significantly more likely to pursue their goals after what they called temporal landmarks: the start of a new week, a new month, a new year or a new chapter.
The numbers are striking:
Google searches for "diet" rose by 82.1% at the start of a new year.
Gym visits rose by 33.4% at the start of a new week and 47.1% at the start of a new semester.
People were 145.3% more likely to sign up for a goal commitment at the start of a new year.¹
The researchers' explanation is that these landmarks create a mental line between our past and future selves. Last year's missed targets feel like they belonged to someone else, the new year feels like a clean slate.
For a business, that's an opportunity for a strategic investment in growth, culture, community and pipeline acceleration. If people are naturally more open to change, motivation and new goals at the start of the year, it's one of the best chances you'll get to point that energy forward.
The momentum gap
The problem is that most organisations aren't pointing that energy anywhere in particular. Gallup's latest State of the Global Workplace report found that global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, the second year of decline in a row. Gallup estimates low engagement cost the global economy around US$10 trillion in lost productivity, roughly 9% of global GDP.²
The biggest drop was among managers. Manager engagement fell from 27% to 22% in a single year, and managers are now no more engaged than the people they lead.² That matters, because managers are the ones who carry a strategy from the stage into the day-to-day.
And the clarity often isn't there to begin with. Gallup's research has found that only about half of employees strongly agree they know what's expected of them at work.³
So every January, people arrive back with a natural appetite for a fresh start. Many of them, and many of their managers, aren't sure what they should be starting.
The kick off is where the fresh start gets a direction
This is where the annual kick off earns its place.
If sharing strategy were the only goal, a slide deck would do. But people need more than information, they need to believe in the plan, understand their role and feel part of something bigger.
Bringing everyone together builds shared energy, clarity and purpose. Sales teams leave motivated, managers aligned, new starters connected and everyone clear on what success looks like.
It's what we call the Feel Economy, and it's something we're genuinely passionate about at CAPITAL-e. It runs through a lot of what we talk about and share. The idea is simple: as more of the work goes digital, the things technology can't replicate, like trust, belonging and connection, become the real differentiator. Your kick off is one of the few moments in the year built entirely around them.
Momentum doesn't come from the calendar turning over. It comes from what you do with that moment. Timing is everything.
The kick offs that change something are designed backwards. They start with a few questions:
What do we want people to know when they leave?
What do we want them to do differently?
How do we want them to feel?
Your people will come back in the new year ready for a fresh start either way. The only question is whether you've given them somewhere to take it.
Planning your 2027 kick off, offsite or summit? Let's talk about what you want it to change.
¹ Hengchen Dai, Katherine L. Milkman & Jason Riis, "The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior", Management Science (2014). Figures are increases relative to baseline across three field studies: Google searches, university gym visits and stickK goal commitments.
² Gallup, State of the Global Workplace report and press release, 8 April 2026.
³ Marco Nink, "Many Employees Don't Know What's Expected of Them at Work", Gallup Business Journal, 13 October 2015.
