The competitive pressure to keep pace with digital transformation means organisations are often rushing to invest in the latest AI tools while failing to fund the capabilities that will deliver long-term success: leadership readiness.
In this environment, organisations need leaders who can help manage uncertainty, make decisions with incomplete information, and carve a path to a future where traditional ways of working may no longer guarantee survival.
The new reality of leadership
The gap between the demands placed on leaders and their capabilities isn’t new. Leaders have always had to adapt to changing circumstances. What has changed, says Narendra Laljani, executive fellow at Henley Business School, is the unprecedented pace of change.
For Laljani, this environment echoes Alvin Toffler’s book Future Shock, which argued that rates of change would accelerate until society became overwhelmed.
“Although he wrote that in 1970, he was very prescient. Sometimes I think that time has now come, and the words he wrote suddenly make a lot of sense,” says Laljani. “Nobody knows what’s going to happen next, so I think that stands out as a feature of life currently.”
This backdrop is increasing the demands placed on leaders and further exposing the leadership capability gap. Therefore, to properly navigate this environment, leaders need the willingness to learn and break conventional thinking to sharpen their leadership readiness.
Henley’s latest research describes leadership readiness not as having a fixed plan, but as the organisational capacity to respond, reconfigure, and continue performing when conditions shift unexpectedly. The report argues that while technology and strategy remain critical, organisational resilience is increasingly determined by human capabilities such as judgement, trust, adaptability and learning.
Laljani argues that leaders can only navigate uncertainty by continually learning and rethinking how they approach problems. That requires being willing to challenge long-held assumptions and let go of behaviours that may have driven success in the past. “The worst thing we can do in an environment of constant change is refuse to let go of things that made us successful once upon a time,” he says.
This requires being curious and having an open mind and a willingness to take on new information, says Laljani. This means avoiding echo chambers and seeking out views from a variety of sources and perspectives.
Judgement in an uncertain world
Leaders also need to be ready to operate and lead from a position of only partial visibility.
Laljani argues that effective leaders become comfortable making decisions without perfect information, accepting that uncertainty is an inevitable part of leadership. “There will always be a zone of uncertainty with decision-making; there will always be a black box, and the job of the leader is to pull the trigger despite not having perfect information,” he says.
Having the right mindset, therefore, is critical to making effective decisions when the outlook is unpredictable.
Laljani says this also requires humility and a willingness to engage others rather than pretending to have all the answers. That openness ultimately improves the quality of decision-making. In this environment, judgement, adaptability, and resilience are essential qualities that can help close that leadership capability gap.
Laljani sees continuous learning as the foundation of judgement, adaptability, and resilience. Leaders develop judgement through experience and failure, he says, while resilience comes from learning to recover from setbacks.
Business leaders who struggle to adapt to this environment often lack curiosity or may have a reluctance to learn and challenge their existing ways of thinking.
“Curiosity is about being open to a wide range of information sources and points of view and perspectives, and it’s being interested in the collision of those perspectives,” says Laljani. “I often meet senior people who don’t demonstrate that, and it leaves me with a sense of dismay.”
While leaders have needed those qualities in the past, the pace of change and the transparency of modern decision-making mean those qualities have never been more important.
Why leadership capability determines transformation success
Leaders who are unwilling to adapt and learn will struggle to close that capability gap and help their organisations transform, with potentially severe long-term consequences for businesses.
As Henley’s report notes, transformation isn’t realised through strategy decks or town halls alone, but through changed behaviours, redesigned processes and people’s willingness to work differently. Leadership capability determines whether that transition actually happens.
“There’s a corporate graveyard full of businesses that lost their way, including organisations that once dominated their markets,” says Laljani. He argues that many declined because leaders became trapped by the assumptions and behaviours that had previously made them successful.
Sustained success often requires leaders to abandon familiar ways of working and embrace new approaches, Laljani says. As leadership expert Marshall Goldsmith famously observed: “What got you here won’t get you there.”
To avoid finding themselves in that graveyard, organisations need to invest in leadership capability by nurturing leaders who are open-minded, curious, and confident in making decisions on incomplete information. Leaders also need to develop a reflective mindset that can critically hold their assumptions and beliefs to account when making decisions and reviewing what they might have done differently.
Laljani says leadership development happens primarily through experience, with organisations needing to create opportunities that stretch leaders beyond their comfort zones. “Nobody grows from a position of comfort,” he says.
By being open to continuous learning and rethinking how work can be done, leaders can start to close that capability gap and help their organisations thrive in a world of persistent uncertainty.
Explore Henley Business School’s Leadership Futures research for further insights into the capabilities shaping the next era of work, or discover how its leadership programmes can help leaders and organisations prepare for what comes next.
The competitive pressure to keep pace with digital transformation means organisations are often rushing to invest in the latest AI tools while failing to fund the capabilities that will deliver long-term success: leadership readiness.
In this environment, organisations need leaders who can help manage uncertainty, make decisions with incomplete information, and carve a path to a future where traditional ways of working may no longer guarantee survival.
