‘Let’s Jump on This!’ The January Leadership Blitz

The manager didn’t have much to do over the holidays, so he drafted a new 2026 plan, and laid out upcoming initiatives in a series of memos. His team arrived at work after the holiday break to find their inboxes full of missives from him, as well as dispatches from his manager, the CEO, and just for good measure, the COO. In the coming week, the follow-ups to all this began.

For employees, the first weeks of January can feel like a duck-and-cover drill, as leaders pump staffs with their latest, greatest ideas. Corporations commonly refer to January as the time for “launching big initiatives” and “resetting goals,” leading to a perfect storm of new ideas and to-dos. Call it the early-year leadership blast. “Some leaders have a hard time truly turning off work, and spent the holidays thinking about their 2026 objectives,” says Kendra Marion, vice president for global assessment services at Korn Ferry. “Now they’re motivated to accomplish them.”

It’s happening more than usual this year because managers are under fire: firms are openly trimming their management layers, and the axe continues to swing across the economy, with 1.17 million jobs cut in the first 11 months of 2025, a 54% increase over the same period in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With managers’ jobs on the line, they are keen to start the new year on the right foot and reset any wayward staff thinking. “They have pent up ideas they’ve been ruminating on, and might be eager to demonstrate action,” says organizational strategist Maria Amato, senior client partner at Korn Ferry.

Experts say the first weeks of the year are particularly prone to manager overkill because of the short December work month, when holiday events and office closures can lead to the sense that little was accomplished. “The perceived inertia can create this feeling of pent-up energy, so leaders release it all in a bombardment of to-dos to their team in early January,” says Marion.

It’s a strategy that comes with drawbacks. When work and initiatives are piled on right after a vacation, HR pros say employees tend to perceive an undertone of payback for taking vacations—whether that undertone is valid or intended. And productivity rarely improves based on manager overactivity. After a holiday, workers are experiencing re-entry stresses like awakening early, recalling project details, and getting into the swing of work, says Louis Montgomery, principal at the HR Center of Expertise at Korn Ferry. “The last thing workers need is bombardment from bosses.”

Indeed, one former leader admits to previously being part of the bombardment. “No one at my company liked me going on holiday because they knew I’d be back with all these amazing ideas,” says Roger Philby, UK head of consulting at Korn Ferry. He’s first to admit that four months down the line, many of those excited memos do not result in actual changes. Instead, he advises that leaders return and  do listening sessions first with small numbers of employees to both see how the ideas land and assess organizational readiness for the ideas at hand.

Communications experts also note that long memos often do not have their intended goals, especially when workers are receiving memos from multiple leaders. The current working population is conditioned by social media and streaming services, with notably short attention spans when it comes to emails and communication volume, says Peter McDermott, head of the North America corporate affairs practice at Korn Ferry. “Do you really want your team to be reading over pages of memos rather than doing their work?” says McDermott. “That’s definitely going to backfire.”

If a memo must be sent, McDermott suggests leading with the main point at the top and delving in further for those who want to continue reading. And the firehouse of new information is best slowed down, with strategies like giving employees a heads up in advance, such as by arranging a 2026 planning meeting, and involving employees. “Let employees feel as if they’re part of shaping it,” says Amato. And above all, experts advise ditching the overly assertive leadership approach in favor of the more targeted tactic of homing in on a small number of priorities that managers want teams to focus on. “Articulate the items that are really important to do over the coming days and weeks,” says Montgomery.
 

Learn more about Korn Ferry’s Organizational Strategy capabilities. 

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