Challenges of Leadership in 2026 | On Connection

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Transcript

[00:00]  Emma Rose

[gentle music] Hello. Thank you for joining another episode of On Connection. It’s a new year, which usually means a flurry of energy focused on clarifying goals and priorities at both the personal and organizational level. Whether you’re currently involved in finalizing strategic plans or setting your own intentions for the year, we wanted to offer our insights on the trends and challenges that we believe will shape organizational experience in 2026, and what leaders can do to navigate them. At the end of twenty twenty-five, we brought our consulting staff together to share what they’ve been observing across industries and clients, and what that tells us about the forces impacting organizational performance today. Our staff members each have unique areas of expertise and care for diverse portfolios of work, and they each do their own listening and research throughout the year to stay attuned to what’s impacting those we partner with. The opportunity to bring our collective experiences together yielded a set of clear themes that we’ve compiled into a Leadership Insights for twenty twenty-six report, which you can find a link to in the show notes for this episode. These themes point to particular areas worthy of leadership focus this year, things that have been emerging through 2025 but are clearly going to continue to have an impact into 2026 and beyond. Based on what we learned from our peers, Robin, Mickey, and I got together to look at what story these trends are telling, and we’re bringing those essential themes to you along with some actionable insights that we hope you’ll find helpful in guiding your leadership priorities. You can find a visual representation of the four themes that we’ll explore at the front of the insights report. But picture three concentric circles, each representing a theme, and a fourth at the center where all three intersect. Those four areas are as follows, and we’ll get into more detail in the episode. I do share a bit of research and statistics that paint the picture here, and you can find sources for all of that in the show notes as well, in case you’d like to do your own digging. Number one, persistent uncertainty. It will come as no surprise to any of you that this factor stands out as one that will demand the attention of leaders across industries and geographies this year. According to Russell Reynolds twenty twenty-five Global Leadership Monitor, nearly two-thirds of global leaders identify economic uncertainty as their top threat. Yet only around forty percent feel prepared to respond to it, which is the lowest confidence level the firm has recorded since twenty twenty-one. At the same time, PwC’s twenty twenty-five Global CEO Survey reports that forty-two percent of CEOs don’t believe their organizations will remain viable over the next decade without significant reinvention. Under conditions of high uncertainty, teams have to be capable of shifting rapidly and responsibly to changes, requiring frequent and effective decision-making. That agility demands strong alignment and clarity around decision-making roles, processes, strategic priorities, and trade-offs. However, alignment itself falls into our second core challenge, one that has cascading consequences for organizations. Number two, the cost of misalignment. Research shows that senior leadership teams routinely overestimate their level of alignment by two to three times compared to how the rest of the organization experiences them. Meanwhile, a recent survey of CEOs shows that competing operational priorities are one of the top three barriers to reinvention, cited by more than half of CEOs, which points to internal misalignment rather than just external constraints. Deloitte and HBR referenced transformation postmortems continue to show that seventy percent of transformation failures involve leadership behavior misalignment, not flawed strategy or insufficient resources. Given the dynamic nature of the time, alignment isn’t something that gets achieved in one moment and is granted in the next. It has to constantly be cared for as an ongoing discipline. It’s a set of capabilities relating to how well leaders and teams communicate, how they manage and resolve differences and conflicting views, and how available they are to updating their understanding as conditions change. And the degree of trust in the environment is both impacted and informed by how well this is practiced. 2025 research shows that only twenty-nine percent of leaders trust their immediate managers, and that trust declines sharply when senior teams send mixed signals or visibly disagree, which suggests that horizontal misalignment among senior leaders undermines vertical trust. Number three, the need for speed. The pace of work continues to increase, as I’m sure you all feel, with pressures coming from rapid technological change, competitive markets, and high investor and stakeholder expectations around speed and performance. Large-scale CEO research from IBM and PwC shows that speed of execution and adaptability are now viewed as core differentiators between organizations that outperform and those that struggle to keep up. Yet a twenty twenty-five survey of nearly eleven thousand leaders worldwide found that fewer than one in five leaders feel they have enough time to meet the demands of their role with the depth and quality required, despite rising expectations and expanding scope. If we look to the felt experience within organizations, urgency seems to be causing an increased volume of interactions, like meetings, without an increase in efficiency, with forty-eight percent of employees and fifty-two percent of leaders describing their work as chaotic and fragmented, which suggests that speed is being experienced as disruption, not momentum. Of course, all three of these themes are interconnected and deeply influence one another. At the core of all three is our fourth theme, stress. DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast for twenty twenty-five shows that seventy-one percent of leaders report feeling significantly more stressed than earlier in their careers. And about forty percent say they’ve seriously considered stepping away from leadership roles to protect their wellbeing.Gallup estimates that, estimates that low engagement, which is closely linked to chronic stress, costs the global economy hundreds of billions of dollars annually, with 2024 losses estimated at roughly four hundred and thirty-eight billion dollars in productivity in the US alone. They report that overall employee engagement has fallen to twenty-one percent globally, with stress, loneliness, and emotional exhaustion cited as key contributors. When managers are stressed and disengaged, they find that stress and disengagement cascade rapidly to teams, amplifying turnover risk, eroding trust, and slowing performance. We’d like you to consider these four themes as conditions of the current landscape, not a life sentence or something to feel defeated by, but critical factors that should shape how you prioritize your energy and focus this year. My conversation with Mickey and Robin offers some advice for how to approach these challenges, which we hope offers some actionable insights and empowerment as you set your intentions for your leadership this year. [upbeat music] Welcome back to On Connection. This is our first episode of 2026, so happy new year, everyone. Thank you for joining us for yet another year. We wanted to kick off the year by talking about some challenges that we see are going to be forefront for leaders and organizations in the coming year. This came out of a conversation that we had with our full consulting staff. Um, we wanted to bring all of our experiences from 2025 together just to discuss what we’ve been noticing in all of our client organizations and the kinds of trends we’re seeing across industries and organizational size and all of that. So, um, we’re offering some of that to you today. We did also create a report of all of the things that came out of that conversation, so we’ll be linking that below, and that’ll include more information in a little bit more depth than what we’re gonna get into in this conversation. But we do wanna touch on the things that we think are the highest priority or sort of the most pervasive that leaders will not be able to ignore come this year. Um, so Mickey and Robin are joined here today with me, so would you wanna say hello to everybody before we get into it?

[08:31]  Robin

Happy 2026, everyone. I don’t know how we got here, but here we are, so…

[08:37]  Emma Rose

Okay. Well, so we played, as we do, in preparation for this conversation with the themes that we think are most worth discussing, um, and we will include a diagram of what we’re talking about also in the show notes, because we started imagining this as sort of a, a Venn diagram with concentric circles because so many of these challenges are actually impacting one another. Um, so there are three core challenges that we think are not going anywhere. Number one, persistent uncertainty. That’s affecting organizations everywhere, all over the place, and is just sort of a fact of the time. Um, second is the cost of misalignment. That probably rings some bells for many of you already. We’ll dig into it. And then third is the need for speed. I’m sure everybody also resonates with that one, but we’ll dig into that one. Um, but we’re gonna take it one at a time, and we’re gonna talk through what we observe in organizations that has a say that that’s an important challenge to pay attention to, and then what we think is actionable for leaders to do within that challenge to care for it. So the first being persistent uncertainty. Who’d like to jump in and give a little bit of context to why we say that’s worthwhile?

[09:58]  Robin

Well, when we look at organizations, and again, this is where they’re all so related, but the constant evolution of organizations and their growth, the geopolitical landscape that we find ourselves in right now, this moment in time, in January of 2026, the, the accelerant of change in the technology, AI, can… nobody can actually have a conversation without saying those two letters together, um, at the, today, is just coming together to say, there is going to be persistent uncertainty. This is not a moment in time where this is happening. This is going to continue, and if we keep trying to treat it like, “Oh, well, if we get past this uncertainty, then…” fill in the blank, we think that that’s misguided, that there’s not gonna be a then when uncertainty is, um, done away with. And so the question then becomes, how do we actually deal with uncertainty instead of being upset about it or saying, like, “This shouldn’t be”? ‘Cause whenever we think like, “This shouldn’t be,” we’re not actually in this moment dealing with what is present and what we actually just need to take care of. Um, I think the other thing is, is that inside of that uncertainty, if we’re trying to make things certain all the time, we keep coming up with solutions that we think are gonna last for forever. I worked in manufacturing, in a manufacturing environment. You always wanted to make a process change that was gonna be the process change. I don’t think we’re gonna have that when we t- are talking about some of the business dynamics. There’s not gonna be a singular solution that lasts in perpetuity. So this constant change, I think we have to help our employees and our teams and our families navigate their way through.

[11:44]  Mickey

AMRO’s twenty, however long it’s been, twenty-five years ago, I guess, when we published, uh, the Communication Catalyst, we drew a distinction in there about the difference between dynamic and static environments inside of companies. The ratio of dynamic to static has changed dramatically. So back then, we were saying, where it’s static or stable, you know, you wanna have a really well-defined process is that people have really clear expectations, that people know where the manual is and how to follow the manual. You know, there’s a process that everybody should just do the same way all the time. Wherever you can do that, it’s still important. If you’ve got a place that you can turn into a clear and stable process, absolutely do it. The dynamic things, where things are complex, and the change is unpredictable, the percentage of those that are facing organizations today we’re saying is way, way more than it was back then, that every client that we talk to is dealing with this persistent uncertainty. So how do we become great in the presence of persistent uncertainty? Before, it was considered to be more unusual and something to get through and get over. Now it’s an area of confidence and capability that’s crucial to grow because the uncertainty is persistent. We’ve got too many things happening, the ones that Robin mentioned about geopolitical uncertainty alone that’s affecting all of these complex organizations. So who are we in the matter of persistent uncertainty, we think, is one of the crucial questions facing organizational leadership in 2026.

[13:43]  Emma Rose

One thing that’s important to call out also about how we’re envisioning these concentric circles is that at the center of all three of them is stress. And if we think about sort of the science around stress today, stress itself is a natural reaction from a sys- a human system, but how you channel that energy matters. And so what we’re gonna talk about is a little bit of how do you channel the energy un-under the circumstance of a great deal of uncertainty. Robin, were you gonna say something additional about sort of context setting here?

[14:17]  Robin

Well, just that Mickey brought up this point about the static versus dynamic, right? And I used the example of when I worked in manufacturing. Well, when I worked in manufa– I’m sorry, like, the science works the way the science works, right? So a lot of those processes in place made sense because those chemical reactions were gonna happen because that’s the way the science worked. So you could put a process around that. I think today, because we have so much of the technology that’s changing, and oh, by the way, you’ve got so many humans that you’re having to coordinate effort with, I’m sorry, humans are not that as predictable as we’d love them to be, right? We’d love to say that all of us are exactly predictable day to day, and yet we wake up with whatever mood we have that particular day or that set of circumstances. And so that in and of itself,  I think, Mick, leads to that much more dynamic nature of the work that we find ourselves in.

[15:10]  Mickey

Yeah. Well, now we do have two other things, and we’ll get to those. Let’s go ahead and stick with this for a few minutes. And then we’ll shift, because I think, Robin, one of the under-emphasized, uh, capabilities is our ability to stay present with what is happening rather than what you said before, what shouldn’t be happening. So people get all fixated on, “I wish this wasn’t happened,” and, “The stress is driving me crazy,” and, “I’m overwhelmed.” If that becomes the fixation, it’s actually a form of denial. [laughs] It’s, hey, how does denial work as a leadership strategy if I’m saying what’s happening is not happening? So there is something really important about what to invest in, about how to support people in being able to stay present and conscious and curious in the face of all this change instead of reeling from it and upset by it. And that’s not invested in by a lot of organizations.

[16:21]  Emma Rose

Mm-hmm.

[16:21]  Robin

Well, and we’ll talk about it when we get to the need for speed, but I think the two of those, Mick, really compound one another because of that uncertainty, we’re in a hurry to make the uncertainty go away or to feel better inside of it, and you’ve already got pressure for speed, so we’re seeing accelerated decision-making that doesn’t necessarily always take into account the full range of perspectives that are necessary to make smart decisions, right? And so I think we as humans wanna get away from things that feel uncertain. So we wanna move towards how do we create that certainty. Okay, well, if we make some fast decisions along the way, that feels like certainty, and [laughs] w- have we actually taken into account the picture? Have we had enough of that reflection time to actually understand the problem that we’re trying to solve?

[17:11]  Mickey

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So among the things that we think are really crucial this year for people to focus on, not take for granted, actually invest some attention in, first is this ability to stay present under all this change. So what are you doing to help people actually have emotional agility in the face of all this, to get more interested in what is happening than upset about what they wish was happening? Um, so that’s one thing. I think another thing is there’s a question, Robin, you alluded to earlier when we were preparing: What do we know? Mm-hmm. So in the face of all of this, what actually is reliable prediction? No matter how unstable the whole environment, there’s something in there for us to say, “We do know this.” So for instance, we do know that artificial intelligence is gonna be a crucial impact on the way work gets done.Okay, that’s something we do know. That’s not up for grabs. What are the other things? So getting people together and saying, “In the face of all of this that’s going on, what are the things we do know? What are some things we can be confident in? What are some things that we actually can have some degree of certainty?” [coughs] Even if it’s the minority in all of this, you wanna give people a place to stand. And so I think that inquiry is really important. Another question-

[18:40]  Robin

And you’ll hear us talk about that… Sorry, Mike. You’ll hear us talk about that in other places. Even when you’re insti- when you’re instituting change in your organization, we’ll say, “Start with what’s not changing. What can people count on?” So this may sound familiar to some of you, ’cause we’ve probably talked about it before, but st- anytime you’re talking about places where there’s uncertainty, whether it’s external or internal, start with, “What are the things we do know? What’s not changing today?” Right. ‘Cause even with the way… Let’s- we can use AI, right? It’s literally changing minute to minute, but there are a lot of things about how we’re working or what we care about or what are places in the world that aren’t, uh, we’re not gonna let go of in the face of those changes. So how do we actually help people have some of those pl- um, s- places to stand in that they know are gonna be consistent?

[19:32]  Emma Rose

Mm-hmm.

[19:32]  Mickey

And I think some of those questions are, what is it about us as, as an organization that remains important? Uh, what of our values are we devoted to, and those are not changing? So any place we can go where people create some stability for themselves in the face of all the instability, we think that’s really important. Mm-hmm. Another question I think really matters is, what do we need to know that we don’t know now? Mm. So just to take the next steps, so it’s something we’ve talked a lot about. Amber Rose, I know you and Kel have worked on this a lot, ab- about probes or pilots, very short cycles. It’s a time to not have the huge program that’s gonna take 10 years. It’s gotta be chunked into what’s happening in the next 90 days, and what question does the next cycle need to answer? Mm-hmm. You know, for instance, let’s say these people that are facing AI, what’s the inevitable next thing that artificial intelligence is going to impact in our organization? That could be a question, that they say, “We need to know what’s the inevitable next thing or next few things that it’s coming at us.” All right, so what’s your short cycle, whether it’s six weeks or 90 days or a month, what’s the short experiment you’re gonna do to answer that question? ‘Cause uncertainty causes so much stress because of the risk in it. Well, the better your information, the lower the risk. So what’s the cycle that we’re gonna do next? What question are we answering that gives us information that lowers our risk and increases our confidence? So I think that’s another important thing to get the right people together about is, what’s the next thing we need to know in the face of all this, and how do we design a pilot or probe? So do you have anything to say about that, Amber Rose?

[21:40]  Emma Rose

Uh, well, I think that I b- I worked with a number of organizations that sort of had the rug pulled out from under them or the world turned upside down this past year. And so a lot of what clients were challenged by, especially leadership, was, how do we manage the emotional state and engagement of our employees, and how do we keep moving forward in some way even though everybody is stressed and worried about what’s going to happen or what might not happen? Um, and a lot of the work on, and top of the focusing on what we do know and where we do need to focus our attention in order to get the information we need to move forward, I think being clear on what people can do also. Like, what’s the contribution that’s still meaningful now that you can take action on today so that people feel like they’re still contributing to the moment and moving the organization forward, um, and having it feel connected to whatever the purpose is that’s mutual that people care about. That helps a lot with stabilizing the emotional state of a team. Uh, if people are going around feeling like everything they were committed to before isn’t meaningful anymore, that’s a problem. So how do you make sure that people are clear on what their contribution is in the moment?

[22:54]  Mickey

You know, I think-

[22:55]  Emma Rose

I think identifying those probes helps make that possible. So what’s the probe that, what’s the research somebody can go do? What’s the experiment somebody is, is encouraged to go take on and s- have that be something that’s gonna be valued by the team and the organization?

[23:10]  Robin

Amber Rose, I think some of the other work that you have done in the last year, um, is also really instructive for during persistent uncertainty, which is w- you still have humans with all of their emotions inside of that, and that, you know, giving some space for those emotions or that stress to be shared in community actually helps the group to get smarter. If you just jump right to, “Here’s the problem-solving that we’re gonna get into,” I think people don’t feel heard. They don’t feel seen. They don’t feel understood. They feel like we’re just trying to skip past a thing, and it tends to cause the system to lock up tighter, ’cause there’s… people don’t feel free to actually have that conversate- c- have that conversation yet. And so I think that’s a lot of the work that you’ve been doing, is how do you create enough space and not have it overwhelm the conversation, that you’re only talking about, here’s all of the stuff that’s terrible. Right. But that there’s enough space to act- for people to actually express that that’s how they’re feeling in the moment such that they can move past it. So I just wanna be cautious, ’cause the way we talk about this sometimes, it sounds like, “Oh, just talk about, like, what’s, what you can do, what is good.” Right. You gotta give that space inside of it for people to actually be clear about like, “Yeah, this sucks. This is not what we spent six weeks planning for last year, and now we’ve gotta start all over again.”

[24:35]  Emma Rose

Right, and I do think that that’s-A critical skill of leadership today is to be able to know when it’s time to create that space for people, and genuinely be present to it and listen. Like, let yourself be affected by it, and let other people be affected by one another. Um, that that’s actually a source of connection, which under stress our usual response is to disconnect. So all… We wanna do everything you can to keep people in connection with one another, and, um… But then know when the time is to also then focus people’s attention and energy on the next step you can take, but not to bypass that validation of whatever people are actually going through, especially ’cause there might be data there. You might actually be informed by some things that help you design what the path forward is in a smart way that’s responsive to what’s really happening in that system of relationships or in the market, et cetera. Um, but in the vein of staying connected [laughs] Mm-hmm … the next one, if I can move us on for the sake of time, is the cost of misalignment. That one, yes, of course, pervasive this year and something to pay attention to. I also think that’s an evergreen challenge as organizations get more and more complex. So it’s also not going anywhere, and often folks like to turn a blind eye to the cost of misalignment. But I think that one is something that most leaders have control over or at least some influence over. So what would you both have to say about that one?

[26:05]  Mickey

I’m still so caught up in what we were just talking about. I’ve gotta get myself to shift.

[26:08]  Robin

Well, I was gonna say something, but I was like, I think he has… There’s something that looks really wise about to come out of his mouth. So

[26:14]  Mickey

Well, I, I wanna say something that I think that’s at the intersection of all three of these things, of this persistent uncertainty, the cost of misalignment, and the need for speed, uh, that you were touching on, Amber Rose. Uh, you know, you were saying one of the things to develop is when do you know it’s time to stop and have that kind of check-in conversation, and I think that applies in all three of these areas. Right. Because if you wanna be fast but not stupid, you better know when to stop and reflect, for instance. And if we don’t wanna pay the cost of misalignment, you need to know when to stop and check in and see when is it too big of a cost for us to put up with. So one of the signals is if you as a leader are seeing behavior that to you just doesn’t make sense. You, you say, “Why are they doing that? W-what?” You’re spending time on this, or they’re raising an issue that you think is irrational, or anything about their conduct that does not make sense to you. That means there is something present for them that’s not what’s present for you. Mm-hmm. ‘Cause people’s actions are always a direct correlate to what they have their attention on, what they’re present to. And so if you as a leader are seeing behavior that just doesn’t make sense to you, you disapprove of it, or you wish it wasn’t happening, the moment that that starts to be recurring, that’s a time to stop and find out, what are people conscious of? What are they worried about? What are they present to? ‘Cause something’s driving their actions that you’re not connected to. And so I think that goes to all three of these. Mm-hmm. You know, earlier-

[28:05]  Robin

It’s particularly relevant here in the cost of misalignment, ’cause I think about w- um, you know, really large organizations that set, theoretically, top-down goals. So they set a goal at the top of the organization, but then individual functional areas create their goals out of it. And so, Mick, I think so often in my functional area, I get so caught up in the goal that I’ve committed to that I’m not… Like, I’m looking at Amber Rose and going, “Why is she working on… Why, why are we putting money over there? Why is that the thing?” And I’ve forgotten, because there’s a whole organization here that we’re actually trying to move forward that has many different parts and pieces. And so in that not having enough feedback loops or information around what are the cycles, to… You said earlier, of the cycles of performance, and are we actually staying aligned? Because alignment might happen today in January, so you might be all sitting here like, “Oh, no, we’re really clear on the goals,” ’cause it’s January. [laughs] And I guarantee you by first quarter somebody’s gonna say, “Wait, why are you working on that?” Um, and so we’re not actually keeping connected enough to ensure that we’re, um, moving forward as one unit. And I think the cost of that is both stress, of dynamics between people on the team, but it’s also time and money, because we spend… We wind up putting all this effort into something that actually somebody else decided six weeks ago we didn’t need.

[29:35]  Emma Rose

Mm-hmm. Right.

[29:37]  Mickey

Yeah, I think that one of the things-

[29:37]  Emma Rose

And just the increase… Yeah, sorry, go ahead. Go ahead.

[29:41]  Mickey

That again runs through all of this is this need to reflect. You know, when are the moments that we stop and take a breath? Those of you who’ve done a lot of work with, you know we talk about align, act, adjust, and when is it time for an adjust conversation. The cost of misalignment, it’s really interesting. Do we give people permission to raise issues? Like saying, “We always wanna know your answer to this question. Where is the alignment in our organization facilitating what you’re out to accomplish, and where is it interfering with it?” Because it’s the job of the most senior people to care about some of the biggest changes that go from misalignment to alignment. So if they’re not getting real-time information, if they’re not hearing, where is our alignment actually helping you get things done, and where is it interfering in a way that’s too costly, it’s something we shouldn’t continue? I, I think it’s-It’s so important because of what both of you said some version of earlier, which is we wish we could get things to just stay the same. Here’s the solution. Yeah, we aligned in January, but March [laughs] does not seem to have that same level of coordination. Uh, so investing in people being free to say what they see about where our alignment is an asset and where misalignment is an unacceptable cost, what’s in place for people to answer that question? ‘Cause I don’t think it’s, it’s asked proactively. It ends up coming up after the cost has become so terrible that we h-have to confront it, and now we’ve had an enormous waste of time where we could have already. So I’d like to see in all these employee surveys, all the input that we try to gather from people, is there some routine way people can say, “Where is alignment being an asset to us, and where has it become an unacceptable cost?” I’d love to see that be a routine reflection.

[31:52]  Emma Rose

Well-

[31:52]  Robin

You know, one of the things… Go ahead, Amorose, please.

[31:54]  Emma Rose

Oh, I was just, I was just gonna say that I had a conversation with a past client this morning, um, somebody that we had been working on executive alignment with. And one of the things that she brought up was that as the organization keeps changing, that challenge is just continuing to be an issue. So they might make strides when it’s of one form, and then somebody retires or there’s a reorg or whatnot, and then there’s this persistent misalignment. And that for her and others on that team, it’s just sort of accepted as a matter of fact now, instead of there being any sort of energy put towards, we could maybe move this or we could shift it or there’s something that could improve. And the only reason I bring that up is because I think that some of the misalignment at the most senior leadership level is part of what allows so much misalignment to happen throughout the organization, and that’s something you’ll see in the report. Um, but if you’re one of those senior leaders, I would say that it’s high leverage in terms of where you want to place your energy and attention, which is always a question for senior leaders. It’s actually a very critical one to say, “Is there something for me to influence to actually have our alignment at that level go a different direction?” And we recognize, of all people, we know that’s not easy to solve for, but it is something that is high value if you’re able to make even some improvement in that domain.

[33:18]  Robin

Well, and I think one of the things that was, uh, I– really insightful that came out of the conversation we had internally was about how little shared ownership there is, even at executive levels, of, um, overall goals. And Mickey made a point about because we’ve indexed so far into individual accountability and really making sure individuals are accountable, that we’ve gotten really focused in those executive rooms on, am I doing my, my part? And we’re missing the, that you doing your part without all the other parts and pieces actually working together for the whole is not gonna actually achieve what you want to achieve. Now, I read this book years ago, Whole with a W, and it talked about this in, in medicine, but it, it occurs in lots of places where we have taken the systems apart to try to look at the smaller parts of them, but that’s not how the whole system works, right? So looking at the individual c– um, [lip smack] ingredients doesn’t actually make the recipe work, right? You actually have to look at how it all fits together. And I th– Mickey, when you made that point about the individual, the cost of individual accountability, it was really striking to me because we have indexed so far on making sure people are making promise, and we do it, making sure people are making individual promises and requests, but are they for the benefit of a greater shared ownership in the success of the organization? And I think, Amorose, to your point on at the executive level, I continue to see this as a challenge in really large enterprises of people being more worried about their part of the business than they are about the business.

[34:57]  Emma Rose

Mm.

[34:58]  Mickey

I think that part of that’s because we haven’t treated — Ugh, I gotta be careful. I was about to say the phrase shared accountability, uh, which makes some people crazy. You know, if everybody’s accountable, nobody is. Okay. And we have enormous history and habit around individual promises and assessing those, measuring, and rewarding those. When “I don’t know” stops the conversation, that’s a real problem in organizational development. ‘Cause what I’m seeing all over the place, when you bring up, “Yeah, but you have all these cross-boundary projects and these things that can’t happen without this coordination and collaboration. How are we measuring and rewarding that?” “I don’t know.” Okay, and then they go back to work. [laughs] It, it, and if “I don’t know” stops innovation, you’re in trouble. Right. There’s a difference between, “I don’t know,” and, “I don’t know.” Mm. “Who could we bring together that’s gonna attack that?” And I’m not seeing organizations really attacking, how do we measure and reward this cross-boundary cooperation that is strategically crucial? Mm-hmm. Instead, we just keep asking for it while continuing to measure and reward individual accountability.

[36:28]  Robin

Well, and I think Amorose is probably gonna wanna move us to need for speed, and this actually, Tim, in my mind, Amorose will help us out here, fits so, uh, perfectly with that, Mick, because it, it’s a lot easier for me to get my team to do a bunch of stuff than for me to go figure out some of these bigger problems, right, that are across the whole organization. And if we’re incented on both individual results and the speed of those results and the increasing speed, then some of the more systemic challenges feels like, and this goes back to something you said earlier, we’re just gonna keep putting up with that. Right. We’re just gonna keep putting up with that until it breaks something in the system, and then it’s suddenly gonna become this urgent thing. Mm-hmm. But there’s an awful lot of them that how do we reward shared ownership or shared accountability? That question’s been around for a really long time. There’s just never been as much pressure to solve it as I think there is today in these organizations that have grown so tremendously large and have so many different facets that are dependent on one another for the overall success of the business. And- Right … but again, I think that this starts to dovetail right into what, what does the pressure or need for speed actually do inside the system?

[37:41]  Emma Rose

Mm.

[37:42]  Mickey

You know, there’s an often quoted proverb, “If you wanna go fast, go alone. If you wanna go far, go together.” And I think that there’s a lot of wisdom in that, but it separates speed from connection, which I think is not smart. [laughs] Mm-hmm. I actually think going together can accelerate because it gets in front of the breakdowns that are gonna happen by not being consciously connected. Right. I actually think it’s a source of speed.

[38:21]  Emma Rose

Yeah. And the thing I was gonna do to ki- kind of to close the loop on the alignment thing and this is that there’s this sort of reinforcing vicious cycle that happens where people wanna go quickly because speed is… Speed and money are generally what’s rewarded, or speed to money is what’s rewarded. Um, and so people are so hyper-fixated on that that they’re not caring for that actually the taking the time and then contributing the energy to how well we are aligned, it helps us accomplish more and care for that broader system impact than we would if we weren’t. And so much of the misalignment is gonna continue to be an increasing challenge, because more and more organizations are actually needing leaders to collaborate across boundaries, share resources, be really agile and efficient with how they’re operating, and that happens through greater connection, alignment, and more high-value conversation, not by trying to do things independently. Um, so that’s gonna just be pretty pervasive I think, and harder and harder for people to not pay attention to. And I think one of the things, another question just to add to the if you’re present to there’s misalignment, is what are we all committed to? And if you don’t know the answer to that question, I think the leaders who just have a resilient belief that there is something that’s an answer to that question and goes and stays curious about that and causes those conversations, they’re gonna be the ones that make a difference. Um, but yes, in this need for speed, Robyn, were you gonna add something?

[40:00]  Robin

I was, but now I got enamored with the conversation we were having, and so I’ve lost what that was. Um- [laughs] On the need for speed, I do think people look at it in too small a segment of time. And what I mean by that is, like, every moment has to be going fast, as opposed- Mm-hmm … to, yeah, we’re gonna spend some time answering some of these really big questions and making sure that we’re aligned, and people feel like that’s too slow, there’s not enough action. They don’t see that as being part of the execution. It is actually part of how we’re, we’re gonna get there, and that if you don’t spend that time, you’re gonna spend it reworking the stuff that got went off the rails, right? And so, how do you expand the way that you think about, and again, Mickey referenced this earlier, we talk about it as, as cycles of align, act, adjust. And that all of that is execution, not just the act phase. So the speed is not just in the action, it’s actually all of it. And to get to that faster act or execution, you need to actually spend the time knowing, are we going in the same direction? Do we have those questions answered that we need? Have we learned from what we did the last time? So all of those parts and pieces will accelerate us over time, Mick, but it’s in this moment when we’re having it, it, it’s like it’s, like we, it’s like we have a speed addiction. It’s not fast enough right now.

[41:21]  Emma Rose

Mm-hmm.

[41:22]  Mickey

That’s an interesting way to say it. It’s a speed addiction rather than a conscious commitment to the pace of achievement. Mm. ‘Cause if it’s an addiction, it’s thoughtless, and we’re not looking at what the moment we’re stopping to reflect is an accelerant. Right. It is- Right … a catalyst. Yeah. Well- Because in the addiction- Yeah … everything’s fast all the time, and that means we miss moments, we miss signals, uh, we do things that are gonna have to get undone. Uh, you know, decision-making, you said this earlier, I, I see a lot of executives who are proud of how decisive they are, but there are moments when that, “Hey, I’m decisive,” is just simply dismissing input. It’s not taking into account, you know, a variety of points of view, all because, “I need to go fast.” Mm-hmm. I also think that this addiction to speed is part of what has us continue to pay the cost for misalignment. Mm-hmm. I was on a call today with one of the chief people officers in the world I have the most respect for, and we were in a conversation about what’s at the executive level, the next C-level in that organization, what does she see as challenges in managing succession and development? And she said it’s that under stress, all these people doing things that they can only do together, they will retreat to do the thing they can do alone.It’s like the moment things are not working well, then they’re thinking, “Or I’m not getting the cooperation I want,” or, “The collaboration is not easy enough, I’m just gonna go do something I can do myself.” So she was saying-

[43:16]  Robin

I literally had this conversation with somebody yesterday who they’re planning this whole thing, and I was like, “Is that yours to do?” And she said, “No, but I think who should do it isn’t gonna do it, so I’m just gonna do it.” [laughs]

[43:28]  Mickey

[laughs] Which then- Like- … breaks the alignment, which- Right … so this, this addiction to speed. So I like this, th- uh, Robin, the difference between speed as a commitment and speed as an addiction. Mm-hmm. ‘Cause the addiction is thoughtless. As a commitment, you’re stopping and thinking, “What gives us time to achievement, not just a fast moment?” Right. Yeah.

[43:55]  Robin

Because I think that’s it. It’s the speed of achievement, uh, of achievement, not the speed in, of action in this moment, and I think we get those two confused sometimes.

[44:05]  Mickey

Yeah.

[44:05]  Emma Rose

Mm-hmm.

[44:06]  Robin

Like, are we moving to action fast enough? I get it. We wanna do that. But if those actions aren’t gonna add up to this achievement, we’ve just spent a lot of time doing crap we don’t need to do.

[44:17]  Emma Rose

Yeah. Right. Well, you know, I think that if we kind of back it up to the individual psychology piece of it too, people will default to self-preservation where that feels at risk. And so I think that senior leadership, to go back to that, they are the ones modeling that speed is the thing that’s the most important. So if you’re a senior leader and you feel like other people are doing things quickly at the cost of quality, um, then look at yourself and the other people that are at your level and what you’re actually demonstrating, what your behaviors are. But I think it’s challenging because think people individually are worried about what they’re accountable to, and they wanna be seen as somebody that’s performing and fulfilling their obligations. So you have at the C-suite people that feel accountable to a board or to the CEO or to whomever, and then the row behind, below that, they feel accountable to the C-suite, and then the row below that, they feel accountable to… And so how the top chooses to place value on time does end up permeating through the organization. And so I do think that’s the highest leverage place to look. Um, and on the individual level, you can pause yourself and ask the question, “Do we actually have to be moving this quickly? What is it actually time for now?” And if you’ve spent any time with us, you’ve probably heard that question before. [laughs]

[45:40]  Mickey

[laughs] You reminded me, Amber Rose, of a, a company that shall remain nameless at the moment we did a lot of work with, who was concerned about their time to market was so much longer than competitors with competing products. And so they really wanted to go after a breakthrough in time to market. And they’d been doing this for around 18 months when we got involved. And what the CEO really came to, which I really respected ’cause we did a major analysis, is that they were confusing how fast they could get to market with how quickly are they gonna introduce a product that customers love and want. Mm. So they tried to win the time to market game by just going fast. And what they were improving was the number of failed products. [laughs]

[46:34]  Robin

[laughs]

[46:35]  Emma Rose

[laughs]

[46:36]  Mickey

So we changed it from time to market to time to customer satisfaction or time to customer adoption. Mm. And it completely changed what they saw as sources of speed. Speed to what? Well, speed to customer success is different than just speed to something’s now in the catalog and on the market.

[46:57]  Robin

Which, Mick, I think is a great, like, antidote to some of this need for speed or speed addiction, is speed for the sake of what? Speed to what? Making sure that we answer… like, ask and answer those questions, and not just once, but continually. Because even in that case, right, th- if we go back to 90-day cycles, they might not have been able to answer that question in the first 90 days. It might have taken them a cycle or two to realize, like, “Oh, we’re putting a lot of stuff out in the market that was just failing.” Uh, so how do we s- keep asking the question of, “Speed for what? Speed to what? Where, where are we actually trying to go with that?” And also, I just wanna give a bit of realism to, for the executives that might be listening. We also recognize, like, the pressure from Wall Street, the pressure from boards to actually meet goals and objectives e- each quarter and to show progress quarter over quarter is enormous and does put so much of this speed in a context that can feel unmanageable to the rest of the organization. So for you to actually help be the communicator of how it makes sense in the organization, and also to manage the expectations of your boards and Wall Street such that you’re performing at a level that a- exceeds their expectations, ’cause let’s face it, that’s exactly what they want, but makes sense to the people that have to execute, I think is the dance that you’re constantly having to do.

[48:21]  Emma Rose

Mm-hmm.

[48:22]  Mickey

So, uh, I know, Amber Rose, you said we’re gonna put the entire report, make that available to people, but if you look at these three things, we just think it’s time for a little reflection for anybody listening to this about how are you gonna respond to this condition of persistent uncertainty, uh, what can you do for us to see and thus not have to pay the cost of misalignment, and have that be proactive rather than reactive, and how do we make sure that we’re not addicted to speed, we’re actually committed to timely achievement that’s really meaningful. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So those are the three things we chose to highlight today.

[49:05]  Emma Rose

Well, and I’ll just, um, say too that one of the things that came up in our conversation as the consulting staff was, um-That stress is something we hear from every client everywhere. And that I think that a lot of the time that just gets accepted as something that we have to keep working through. But then you have all these leaders and employees saying that they’re getting burnt out. You have worries about engagement, and follow-through, and innovation, and all of this stuff. And so stress isn’t something that we can just say, “That’s just something we all need to deal with.” I also think that given all three of these things we think are producing stress perpetually in these organizations, that it’s important to question where is stress worth it and where is it not, um, and where do you have any role to play in maybe shifting the energy in a more productive direction. But that’s my final thought. Robin, what’s on your mind?

[50:05]  Robin

I think for me, the thing that we… the word we haven’t said but that keeps coming up for me is how do we, how do we develop resilient leaders? Mm. Right? That all of this requires a certain level of resiliency in the face of the speed, in face of constantly needing to align, and, um, in this persistent uncertainty. And so how do we really help leaders to build those skills for themselves such that they can be better leaders for the rest of the organization?

[50:34]  Emma Rose

Beautiful. Well, um, did you have one final thought?

[50:39]  Mickey

Yeah. I don’t know if one of you’s got that ready to hand, but that quote that Rio, one of our colleagues, found, about 84% of leaders say they feel unprepared for future disruptions. Um, I know it was a McKinsey survey. For 2025. In 2025. Yep. I think that all three of these contribute to that feeling of being unprepared. So getting in front of these, bringing the right people together to discuss them, we think is a way to begin to feel more prepared than we may feel today.

[51:21]  Emma Rose

Right. Well, so these were our musings on what we got from our conversation with our colleagues, and you’ll be able to dig into a little bit more depth in the report. We encourage you to do so. And if there’s anything that you have thoughts or questions about, we always love to hear from you, so please drop us a note. But, um, we hope this has been valuable in terms of the use of your time and energy, and that it’s inspiring some of the direction of your thought as you enter the year. But we will catch you on the next episode. Until then, stay well. Bye-bye.

[51:58]  Robin

Bye, all. Bye, everybody. [outro music] Thank you for tuning in to On Connection. If you’ve enjoyed today’s conversation, here’s how you can help us keep the dialogue going. Follow and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. Leave us a review. Your feedback helps others discover the show and join the conversation. And lastly, share this episode with someone who would love it as much as you did. This episode was produced by Guy Connolly. Original artwork is by Dana Buckingham, and music is by Cast of Characters. Special thanks to Conversant’s extended community who inspire the continued evolution of our work and stand with us in our commitment to change leadership, business, and the world through conversation. You can learn more about Conversant at www.conversant.com. On Connection is created and produced by the members of Conversant. Awakening the world to the power and joy of authentic human connection, we set a new standard for leadership that produces meaningful, enduring impact. Until next time.