Transformation creates an interesting tension for leaders. As the pace and complexity of transformation increase, we tend to focus on what the organization needs to do differently: new strategies, structures, technologies, operating models, priorities. But there is another question that matters just as much: Are you building the leadership capacity required to lead what you are creating? We think of this as the acceleration gap: the distance between the ambition and pace of transformation and the leadership capacity available to make it happen. It is a gap that rarely appears in the transformation plan or budget, yet it can become very expensive in execution. And because it isn't always recognized as a leadership capacity issue, its symptoms are often attributed to something else: resistance, slow execution, competing priorities, poor decisions, or individual leaders who appear to be struggling. But transformation doesn't just ask more of the organization. It asks more of its leaders. More ability to navigate uncertainty. More strategic thinking. Faster decisions. Greater adaptability. More capacity to align people around priorities while continuing to deliver today. And when that capacity doesn't grow alongside the demands of transformation, the gap eventually becomes visible. Here are three places to look:
Most successful leaders have a playbook. You’ve built it over years of
experience. You know how to make decisions, mobilize people, solve
problems, deliver results and navigate pressure. That playbook is part of
what got you here.
But transformation has a way of changing the game.
The environment becomes more complex. Decisions become more interconnected.
The number of stakeholders increases. Teams are expected to deliver today's
results while simultaneously building something that may look very
different tomorrow.
By the time you reach the final quarter of the year, your team has already
lived a lot of life together.
Priorities have shifted. Plans have changed. Some goals have been achieved,
others have quietly slipped. There may have been reorganizations, new
leaders, departures, launches, disappointments and more than a few things
nobody anticipated back in January.
And yet this is often the moment leaders ask their teams to push harder.
For decades, organizations prized specialists. Then came the idea of the
T-shaped employee: deep expertise in one discipline, represented by the
vertical line of the T, combined with enough breadth across other
disciplines to collaborate effectively, represented by the horizontal line.
The emerging idea of the X-shaped employee, recently discussed by Shopify
COO Jess Hertz, takes this further. An X-shaped person doesn't simply
possess expertise and breadth. They can cross boundaries, connect
disciplines, work effectively with other experts and contribute beyond the
confines of their own role.
And I think this idea becomes even more important when we apply it to
leadership.
Resistance during transformation rarely announces itself with, “I don’t
support this.”
More often, it hides in plain sight.
People agree in the meeting, then continue operating exactly as they did
before. Decisions get revisited. New processes are adopted inconsistently.
Leaders say they support the transformation while continuing to reward old
behaviors. Teams ask for more clarity when what they may really need is
greater confidence, capability, or trust.
One of the great paradoxes of transformation is that leaders must create
urgency while also having the patience to build something that lasts.
Executives are rewarded for moving quickly. You make decisions, solve
problems, push through barriers and expect progress. During transformation,
those instincts are valuable, until speed becomes the measure of success.
One of the greatest risks in transformation is not that your organization
will resist change. It is that everyone will agree to change, and still
never transform.
We see this with senior leadership teams all the time. There is a bold
ambition at the beginning, a new strategy, operating model, organizational
structure, technology platform, customer experience or way of working.
Leaders talk about doing things differently.
Then the machinery of the organization kicks in.
When transformation gets difficult, even experienced leaders can fall back
on what made them successful in the first place: expertise. You see the
problem, you know what should happen, so you step in.
That can work beautifully in the short term. But if you become the person
everyone depends upon for direction, decisions and problem solving, you may
inadvertently create the very thing transformation cannot afford:
organizational dependency on you.
Transformation demands enormous cognitive and emotional capacity.
Leaders are constantly switching between today's operational realities and
tomorrow's possibilities. They're making decisions with incomplete
information, navigating competing priorities, responding to resistance and
helping others remain focused through uncertainty.
The instinct is often to keep pushing.
Most executives would describe themselves as transformational leaders.
After all, they've led reorganizations, implemented new systems, delivered
strategic initiatives and guided their organizations through significant
change. Those experiences naturally reinforce the belief that they know how
to lead transformation.
Yet leading change and generating transformation are not the same thing.
