As summer comes to an end, I have been wondering, what if we decided to fall forward instead? There are only a few months left in the year which can create the temptation to mentally write off everything that has not happened yet.

For instance, the strategic initiative that never quite got started. The compensation issue everyone knows needs attention. The employee development conversation that has been postponed three times. The succession plan that remains somewhere on the list.

Suddenly September arrives, calendars begin filling up and we start hearing some version of: we will tackle that properly next year.

Maybe.

What if we didn’t? What if the final few months of the year became an opportunity to move a few things forward, even imperfectly? I decided to have some fun and let my imagination run a little. Some of these may sound aspirational. My question is: do they have to be?

What if culture plans were built on behaviour rather than slogans?

I have seen enough values printed on walls to know that the words themselves are rarely the problem. Integrity. Respect. Excellence. Accountability. Collaboration. All good things.

Culture, however, is not created by the words an organisation chooses. It is created by the behaviours it permits, rewards given and problems it addresses.

Imagine starting 2027 with greater clarity about what those values actually look like in practice. What does accountability mean when somebody misses a deadline? What does respect look like when colleagues disagree? What does good leadership behaviour look like when the pressure is on? That is where culture becomes real.

What if compensation was fair before the employee knew what to ask for?

Pay conversations are changing. Employees have access to more information. Candidates are asking better questions. Pay transparency continues to gain momentum internationally.

Fairness should not depend on whether an employee is confident enough to negotiate, knowledgeable enough to research the market or prepared to threaten to leave. Imagine reviewing internal pay now and asking a simple question: if this employee never asked for an adjustment, would we still believe their compensation was fair?

That answer may tell you quite a lot.

What if strategic plans had owners who actually wanted ownership?

Most organisations do not suffer from a shortage of strategic priorities. They suffer from a shortage of clarity around who is actually responsible for their delivery. There is a difference between having your name beside an initiative and feeling genuine ownership for the outcome.

Before another planning cycle begins, perhaps there is value in asking whether each major objective has someone who understands it, believes in it, has the authority to move it forward and knows exactly what success looks like. A strategic plan should not become a beautifully formatted document everybody agrees with and nobody owns.

What if we became better at recognising transferable skills?

We continue to ask organisations to think differently about talent while often recruiting the same way we did five years ago. Same industry. Same job title. Same background. Same experience. Then we wonder why we keep seeing the same candidates.

People exist whose skills travel exceptionally well, even if their career history is not an exact match. Judgment transfers. Leadership transfers. Relationship management transfers. Commercial thinking transfers. Learning agility transfers.

Perhaps we should spend less time asking, Have they done this exact job before? and a little more time asking, Do they have the capability to succeed here?

What if career fairs and internships actually made young people excited about work?

We spend a great deal of time discussing the future workforce, but I wonder what the future workforce thinks when it meets us. If a student’s first exposure to your organisation is a brochure, a table at a career fair and a description of vacancies, have we really shown them anything?

Young people need exposure to careers they did not know existed, conversations with people who make the work interesting and opportunities to see what a workplace actually feels like. Internships should not simply provide organisations with temporary assistance. Done properly, they should create curiosity.

Finally, what if we stopped treating experience like it has an expiry date?

This one matters. In our enthusiasm for innovation, technology and new ways of working, it is very easy to underestimate the value sitting right in front of us.

Long-serving employees know why certain decisions were made. They know the clients. They know the history. They know which solution failed spectacularly eight years ago and why someone might want to think twice before trying it again. Institutional knowledge has value.

No doubt, everyone has a responsibility to keep learning. Experience should never become an excuse for refusing to adapt, but neither should being less technologically fluent erase decades of judgment, context and contribution. There should be room for both.

Perhaps falling forward is enough

None of this requires a major transformation programme before December. Maybe that is the point. Choose one culture behaviour and define it properly. Review one area of pay inequity. Give one strategic priority a real owner. Interview one candidate whose relevant experience is not immediately obvious. Redesign one internship. Have one conversation with a long-serving employee about what the organisation needs to learn from them before they leave.

Small things but forward things. There are still a few months left in the year. We do not need to finish everything. We just need to make sure we are not standing in exactly the same place come January.

• Kelly Francis is the founder and managing director of Performance Solutions