While some competencies and characteristics of good business leaders are enduring, others have changed with the context of the times. For example, the increasing importance of technology over the last few decades has made tech fluency a requirement for leaders in all industries. With increasing uncertainty, the most under appreciated, yet critical, leadership competency in today’s world is adaptability. Many leaders are struggling to embrace and implement change capabilities as their organizations evolve in this new environment. Our world is changing at an accelerating rate and the only way to keep up is to enhance the ability to shift priorities, adapt processes and practices, and engage employees without losing momentum. In an ecosystem where new threats and opportunities are emerging at a faster and faster rate, being able to lead change and activate others to do so is a necessity for effective leadership at all levels.
Why now
Macro-trends such as demographic shifts, globalization, advancing technology, and more recently, the ongoing impact of the pandemic, supply chain disruptions, and the war in Ukraine indicate that there is greater uncertainty surrounding every industry and organization. Additionally, the amount of information available and the speed at which it’s changing makes the traditional approach of deliberate analysis followed by strategy formulation and execution as discrete (often lengthy) steps untenable. Being nimble, taking on new information, and responding quickly requires enabling and empowering more employees to make decisions and act on them.
Many organizations are also grappling with change fatigue from the repeated need to restructure, implement new systems, or implement new strategies. There is a heightened emphasis on upskilling and reskilling amidst continued high levels of burnout. Without the leadership competency to do this in ways that minimize disruption and maximize the benefits, all this “unwelcome” change contributes to negative employee morale and stress.
An additional key factor is the shift in customer expectations and experiences. With enhanced access to information and the amplifying impact of social media, customers are exerting pressure on businesses to evolve faster—not just on product attributes like price and quality but also on topics like climate change and sustainability. Without the ability to anticipate, identify, and adjust to these pressures, leaders will struggle to navigate the increasingly complex business environment.
Why change capability
Surveys of leaders and practitioners (like this IBM survey) over the years have found that a majority do not think their change efforts have met their initial objectives. This was problematic before but now it is truly urgent. In addition to large-scale initiatives that originate in the C-suite, the current era of uncertainty requires smaller, almost constant pivots at all levels of the organization. Regional and local leaders must be able to make effective decisions and lead successful change, which many don’t feel equipped to do. Just 39% of employees feel capable of responding to changing business and customer needs, according to Gartner. At its core, change and leadership are synonymous, and this capability is a necessity across the organization at all levels.
What stands in the way
Management systems have been designed to provide reliability and efficiency, not adaptability and agility. Many of the tools and practices of modern management are geared towards solving problems and eliminating deviations in processes, behaviors, and practices. Because of this framework, management training and leadership development is often focused on strategic planning, deliberate decision-making, problem solving, people management—all to achieve consistent, incremental performance and minimize change. Today’s leader must achieve reliability and efficiency, but also agility and adaptability. This requires a different focus: experimentation, amplification of new ways of working, faster decision-making, and encouraging teams to try different ideas.
While change management has been largely seen as a process of a specific function that is performed by a few individuals in an organization, building change capability throughout the organization requires shifting both mindsets and behaviors as well as providing frameworks and tools. Change practitioners can be helpful in providing support, but leaders at all levels must be able to inspire and motivate change. In addition to viewing change as limited to the role of a few individuals, it is often seen as something episodic that only warrants change management competency occasionally. With the pace of change around us today, organizational change and hence the need for change competency is continuous.
Many leaders believe they can drive change through mandates, which clashes with the expectations of today’s workforce. Without an intellectually and emotionally compelling rationale for the change, leaders will struggle to engage employees and earn their participation.
Change can be invigorating and exciting, but in organizational life it tends to create anxiety, fear, and resistance—leading to efforts to “mitigate” and “manage” the change. When change is viewed as something that has to be “endured,” the goal is to have to work through it as little as possible, encouraging people to ignore the true scale of change needed and subsequently not recognize change as a crucial business need. For change to not be so intimidating, employees need to think and feel it is necessary and beneficial and believe that they have the skills to navigate it effectively.
What happens next
A significant shift is needed in terms of how we think about change: it is continuous not episodic, it should be expected and not a sign of a crisis, and it is a necessary leadership attribute. Equally, a shift is needed in who is responsible for effective change: leaders at all levels, not just a few practitioners or a transformation team. Change education has become a required leadership capability across the organization alongside competencies like financial acumen and strategic thinking.
When significant change efforts happen infrequently, relying on a few savvy leaders and experts to navigate through it seems manageable. In this new environment of accelerated change, the “hope we can figure it out” approach is increasingly untenable. Building the plane while you’re trying to fly it is a recipe for failure. What’s needed is a deliberate, proactive approach to developing organizational change capability. At an individual level, this includes the knowledge of approaches, frameworks, and tools—and the ability to activate commitment and participation across the organization. Developing organizational capability requires individuals to have the knowledge and skills to identify necessary changes and act to make them a reality. They also need an environment and culture that encourages them to do so. Training and development programs are a necessary but not sufficient component of creating organization adaptability. Leaders will also need to create a culture that values adaptability, risk taking, delegated authority, and agility.
Once leaders recognize the value of a deliberate approach to change in projects of all sizes and invest in change as a competency, their organizations will be far better equipped to respond both proactively and reactively to an unpredictable and volatile context.
About the Author
Gaurav Gupta is a Managing Director at Kotter and co-author of the book Change, which details how leaders can leverage challenges and opportunities to make sustainable workplace changes in a rapidly accelerating world. He most recently helped develop Kotter’s Change Certification Program, a new series of six self-paced online learning courses for individuals and organizations to experience Kotter’s change training.
