Talk with most senior executives today, and you’ll soon find the conversation turning to the topic of disruption. On the one hand, being a disruptor has become a kind of leadership credential. On the other, disruption is a perpetual source of angst — for leaders as much as those being led. Organizations have always been disrupted by technologies, markets and competitors. What’s new is that they’re increasingly disrupted by the gap between the operating assumptions they rely on and the decision environments they now inhabit.
In previous posts, I’ve explored generative AI’s ability to reshape communications work, the danger of reacting to someone else’s decision-cycle, and the unsettling reality that machines are beginning to form opinions. Underneath all three is a deeper, quieter shift that deserves attention: Leaders are still making decisions as if the world responds in straight lines. If that was ever true, there’s abundant evidence that it certainly isn’t true any longer.
The Gap Between What Leaders Think They’re Managing and What They’re Actually Managing
Despite well-intentioned proclamations by The Business Roundtable and others, most leadership teams still act in line with their knowledge of a handful of familiar stakeholders: investors, customers, employees, regulators, maybe a community group or two. It’s a comfortable setting — clean, bounded, stable. Unfortunately, it’s not accurate.
Today, one decision ricochets instantly across interdependent constituencies whose reactions don’t follow the tidy, predictable patterns that occurred in the past. Announce a restructuring, and you may find activists pressuring a supplier, employees organizing on Reddit, a state AG requesting information and a major shareholder pressuring you to accelerate your plans.
Leaders aren’t dealing with individual “audiences;” they’re dealing with messy, reactive, emotionally charged systems. And systems don’t wait for communication plans, talking points or 90-day roadmaps.
Three Expensive Errors
From my vantage point as an advisor, a builder and a student of human behavior, I see three recurring miscalculations.
1. Believing one constituency sets the pace.
Investor relations teams still assume investors “drive the narrative.” Corporate comms teams still assume the media does. HR teams still assume employees do. Legal teams still assume regulators do.
In reality, they all set the pace simultaneously. And rather than acting in a vacuum, they influence one another in ways that are anything but linear.
2. Planning for events, not reactions.
Organizations still focus more on what they intend to say or do than on how the system will respond to their actions and what that response will trigger next. Misreading this creates more than a communications problem. It creates a strategic problem.
3. Mistaking information for foresight.
We have more dashboards than ever. But dashboards show what happened, not what will happen. Leaders need foresight — what my colleague John Onoda refers to as “seeing around corners.” They need to game out multiple what-if scenarios: “If we do X, how will various stakeholders respond over time? If we do Y, will it be more or less effective than if we do X?” And they need to do this very, very quickly — in hours, not days or weeks.
This ability is becoming a critical new leadership skill. And most organizations don’t have it.
Leadership in a System That Won’t Sit Still
Executives who thrive in this environment are doing a few things differently:
- They assume the organization is always one decision away from a complex chain reaction.
- They model responses, not just messages.
- They understand that reputational, regulatory, social and employee dynamics now move at similar speeds.
- They stress-test ideas before they announce them — not because they don’t trust their gut, but because they’re strategic.
The next wave of competitive advantage will come not just from moving faster, but from seeing farther. Leaders won’t be measured just by how well they navigate complexity, but by how well they anticipate it.
