Most people end a year with a prediction. Builders end a year with a verb.
I have read more 2027 forecasts in the last four weeks than I can count. They all have one thing in common, which is that nobody knows what is going to happen next year, including the people paid to act like they do. The market does not care about your forecast. The team does not care about your forecast. The thing they care about is what you are going to do.
So this last post of the series is not a prediction. It is a list of one. One thing I am building in 2027 in each of the rooms that matter most. Then a hand-off, because this is week fifty-two and the right way to close is to put the pen back in your hand.
At the agency, one thing
We started the agency in 1999. Twenty-eight years in 2027. The temptation in year twenty-eight is to keep refining what already works and quietly let the building drift. I do not want that to be us.
The one thing I am building at the agency in 2027 is a clearer version of the two-roads model I have written about all year. Highly autonomous and deeply human. Not as a slogan. As a rebuilt operating model.
What that means in practice. Reorganizing the team around outcomes, not tasks. Pricing differently because the speed at which we can ship has fundamentally changed and the old hourly math is not honest anymore. Doubling down on in-person time with clients, because the more AI does in the production layer, the more the trust layer gets built across a table, not a screen. Fewer engagements at higher intensity.
If we get it right, the team gets pulled into bigger work and the week feels different on the inside than it did under the old playbook. That is the build.
At the church, one thing
The other room I work in is the church where I serve as Chief of Ministry Staff. Two hundred and fifty staff. Multiple campuses. Stakes very different from billable hours.
The one thing I am building there in 2027 is the bridge between AI capability and ministry effectiveness. Most ministry organizations are at one of two extremes. Either afraid of AI and avoiding it on principle, or using it carelessly in ways that leak trust with the people they serve.
There is a middle path no one has built yet at scale. A values-anchored way of using these tools to free our staff to do more of the work only humans can do. The pastoral conversation. The hospital visit. The hard moment with a family in crisis. None of that gets automated. All of it gets more space when administrative load gets compressed. That is the build.
In our family, one thing
Five kids in our house. Two of them adopted. Two of them at Liberty University. Three still at home in different stages of figuring out who they are. Claire has been the actual general behind every operating system that has worked in our family for the last twenty-plus years. I have learned more from her about leadership than from any book I have read.
The one thing I am building in our family in 2027 is the practice of weekly one-on-one time with each kid that is on the calendar, defended as fiercely as any client meeting, and recurring all year.
Sounds small. It is not. The kids are at ages where the difference between weekly intentional time and "we will catch up when things calm down" is the difference between knowing them as adults and watching them become strangers in their own house. The five years from where they are now to where they will be next is not getting recovered. The time blocked on the calendar is the build.
In my own life, one thing
This one is the smallest and probably the most important.
The one thing I am building personally in 2027 is the daily habit of being still for thirty minutes before the rest of the day starts. Phone in another room. No music. Bible open. Coffee in hand. No agenda except listening.
I have done this in seasons. I have not done it as a year-long discipline. The reason it makes the list is that every other build above it depends on it. The leader who does not have margin in his own head will eventually leak chaos into every other room he walks into. I have done that more times than I want to count.
If the year ends and that thirty minutes held more days than not, the rest of the list has a chance. If the thirty minutes did not hold, the rest of the list will get whatever I have left, which has not been enough in years past.
- What are you building in 2027, not predicting?
- What is the one build for work, family, faith, and self?
- What is the first building action, not planning action, you will take in week one?
- Who is the one person you will tell about each build before January 1?
I am glad you walked the year with me. I will see you in 2027. Now go build.
