In the famous words of Dr. Seuss, “You’re off to great places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, so get on your way!” That quote could be the send-off that every parent uses to jazz their kids about the first day of school. There are powerful feelings on the first days of a new school year—the electric thrill, the sense of unblemished beginnings, and the crisp new school supplies. There is also an opportunity for businesses to benefit from this transition into fall. These back-to-school imprints are deep, and if businesses can find a way to tap into them , they can energize their teams and culture with the vibe of new beginnings. According to science, the phenomenon is called the “fresh start effect.” “These “temporal landmarks motivate aspirational behavior,” according to a study from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania . These markers work by prompting psychological resets, allowing you to leave behind failures and start anew. Or perhaps they at least allow you to convince yourself that you are doing that, which is half the battle. Organizations too often miss that reset, ignoring calendar moments and allowing business-as-usual to perpetuate sameness. Here is how business leaders can spark that back-to-school effect in the workplace. Begin with the tangible. Imagine a fresh template for those dreary PowerPoints. Today, you don’t need a fancy-pants designer to refresh your aesthetic. Instead, Generative AI can create amazing new presentation styles in seconds. Where is it written that you have to use the same template for each deck? A different look and feel each time will encourage your audience and you to look at things afresh. Would you want every book you read to have the same cover? Bring the fresh start effect ethos to clean workspaces. Research shows that tidy desks enhance focus and productivity. A clutter-free workspace conveys order and control, freeing cognitive bandwidth for creative thinking. Pair that with a mental decluttering—encourage employees to write down negative thoughts and literally crumple up the paper and throw it away. A study from Ohio State University found that people can purge negativity by trashing their hostility. This crosses cultural divides, as researchers at Nagoya University achieved similar results. Together, a clean desk and a cleared mind signal: “Today, we start fresh.” Once people feel reset, it’s important to continue that feeling. Keep freshness fresh, in other words. Otherwise, the infatuation with the fresh start effect will quickly fade into the grind of the routine. Accomplishing this is all about motivating people, rewarding them, and, through that, affecting behavioral change. Nudge theory can be a driver of ongoing belief in the future. Based on the principles of behavioral psychology, the idea is to keep people moving in the right direction, focused on positive change, through seemingly small but collectively potent behavioral tweaks. Nudge theory can also accelerate change management . After all, creating a culture of first-day optimism is clearly a major form of enterprise change. One suggestion is to mark beginnings and endings of projects with short, symbolic rituals—a kickoff roundtable and a done-and-dusted acknowledgment at close. These moments create psychological validations that workers can achieve more if they view every day as a blank sheet of paper. Another idea is blank-slate days. This is a setting a nudge workday each quarter dedicated to asking, “If we were starting today with no legacy baggage, what would we do?” This reframing frees teams from entrenched habits and builds anticipation for change. As part of that, it give teams permission to revisit one past initiative, guilt-free. This structured do-over signals that failure isn’t final, and that every day opens the opportunity for reinvention Back-to-school season is also about re-socialization. You pick up where you left off with old friends and establish new relationships. Workplaces need to channel the same social construct and recharge the interpersonal dynamics of their business. One way to accomplish that is by putting people from different functional areas together, like bringing research and development and finance into the same space for a fresh cross-departmental start to the fall season. Carol Dweck’s important work on fixed versus growth mindsets is important here. A fixed mindset can lead you to categorize and stereotype people. On the other hand, a growth mindset is a catalyst for breaking free of existing perceptions of and predispositions toward the individuals you work with. Managers have a role to play as well. Imagine a summer-change report, in which team members give one example of how they changed over the summer. It could be a trip, a family moment, a book you read, or a podcast you heard. It sounds touchy-feely—and maybe it is as that—but it also invokes the “What I Did Over My Summer Vacation” assignment that is inexorably linked to the fresh start effect. I’m making my own fall resolutions based on these fresh-start tips. Everyone knows that the pristine notebook didn’t guarantee straight A’s, but it promised hope, structure, and a clean narrative. Businesses deserve that too. If you want real culture reset—not through gimmicks but psychology-powered practice—that’s the back-to-school effect. Think of it as a corporate pumpkin-spiced-latte moment. The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com. The final deadline for the 2025 Inc. Best in Business Awards is Friday, September 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now .