A leader who only repeats last year’s playbook isn’t leading. They’re reenacting.

Repeating what worked is comfortable and looks like competence, especially when the earlier version succeeded. The trouble is that a plan is a response to a particular situation, and running it again assumes the situation held still. Judgement is the part that has to be redone each time, and it is the part that quietly gets skipped.

When something worked before, ask what conditions it depended on and whether those still hold. Keep the parts that were about the problem and rewrite the parts that were about last year.