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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
A powerful guide to becoming a strategic leader who makes insightful business decisions and manages risk in volatile and unpredictable environments
Written by a team of seasoned strategy consultants, Strategy and Change: Finding Opportunity in Disruption Through Insight, Choice, and Risk delivers an insightful playbook on recognizing relevant patterns, making consistently sound business decisions, and effectively managing risk in a world defined by disruption and volatility. This follow-up to the authors' first book, Leading with Strategic Thinking, covers major business developments and trends occurring since 2015. It explores disruption from technological advancements, like generative AI, as well as unforeseen crises, like the global COVID-19 pandemic.
In this book, readers will find invaluable insights into:
- The four ways to lead strategy in today's complex business environment: visionary leadership, directive leadership, incubating leadership, and collaborative leadership
- How to analyze problems and make decisions that achieve short- and long-term success
- New methods to evaluate hazards as both threats and opportunities in a marketplace that has become increasingly disruptive and unpredictable
Grounded in the latest research and real-world case studies, Strategy and Change earns a well-deserved spot on the bookshelves of all executives, consultants, and entrepreneurs seeking proven guidance to navigate the new world of business. It's also an invaluable resource for risk management professionals, academics, and early-career professionals involved in strategy and leadership.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
A Global Perspective
Strategic Leadership in a Complex and Volatile World
Notes
1 The Evolving Nature of Disruptive Change
Technology, Speed, and Disruption
The Concept of Disruptive Innovation
The Evolving Impact of Disruptive Innovation
Disruptive Innovation in the Industrial Age
Disruptive Innovation in the Information Age
Disruptive Innovation in the Digital Age
The Implications of Disruptive Innovation
Looking Ahead: An Era of Persistent Disruptive Change
Implications for Organizations
Translating Noise to Signals
Distinguishing the Waves of Change
Recognizing the Varied Impact of Disruption Change
Summary
Questions for Reflection
Notes
2 Implications for Strategy and Leadership
The Fundamentals of Strategic Leadership
Strategy Formation
Strategy Execution
Linking Strategy Formation and Strategy Execution: The Four Types of Strategic Leadership
Strategic Leadership in Practice: The Four Archetypes
Categorizing the Four Archetypes
Strategic Leadership Through a Decade of Disruptive Change
Lessons Learned
Notes
3 Three Lenses
The Actions and Competencies of Strategic Leadership
Three Core Competencies
Aon's Strategic Decision-Makers Survey
Navigating Disruptive Change: Three Lenses
Notes
4 Insight
Our Evolving Understanding of Insight
The Challenge of “Seeing” Disruption
Insight in the Real World: Two Examples
Lessons Learned
Implications for Leading Organizations
Questions for Reflection
Notes
5 Choice
The Difference Between Choice and Decision
Case in Point: A Strategic Decision at New Horizons Development
The Decision: Luxury or Affordable Housing?
Learning Points
How We Learned to Make Choices and Decisions
Rationality Defined
The Value Maximization Model
Weaknesses of the Traditional Model
A New Approach to the Choice Dynamic
Case in Point: Coalition
Learning Points
Implications for Choice Beyond the Tipping Point
Summary
Questions for Reflection
Notes
6 Risk
The Need to Rethink Risk and How We Can Address It
How Leaders Adjusted Their Risk Management Priorities Post-COVID
Emerging/Disruptive Risk Analysis, Including Horizon Scanning
Black Swan Workshops
Scenario Analysis
De-Risking Projects and Programs
The Importance of Risk Appetite
Case in Point: The Importance of Appetite Across a Portfolio of Risks
Toward a More Integrated Model
Why It Is Worth It: How the Effective Management of Risk Unlocks and Protects Corporate Value
Questions for Reflection
Notes
7 How to Lead Through Disruptive Change
What We Have Learned
Identifying Success Attributes
Unique Behaviors of Market Disruptors
Unique Behaviors of Market Incumbents
Managing Organizational Contradictions
The Ambidextrous Organization
Leading the Ambidextrous Organization
Anticipating the Challenges Ahead
Organization as a Competitive Advantage
Implications
Notes
8 A Call to Action
Acknowledgments
Individual Author Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 2
Table 2.1 “Archetype” Market Capitalization Growth Between 2015 and 2025
Chapter 4
Table 4.1 Forms of Bias
Table 4.2 Potential Barriers to Insight
Table 4.3 Simplified Business Canvas Map for GE in 2015
Chapter 6
Table 6.1 Attributes of Winners and Losers
Chapter 7
Table 7.1 Major Transitions in Today's Business Environment
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1 Time required for online services to reach one million us...
Figure 1.2 The impact of disruptive innovation over time.
Figure 1.3 The decision ecosystem.
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1 Two options for strategy formation.
Figure 2.2 Two options for strategy execution.
Figure 2.3 Four types of strategic leadership.
Figure 2.4 Our four archetypes of strategic leadership.
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1 The decision ecosystem.
Figure 3.2 Actions and competencies of strategic leadership.
Figure 3.3 Insight, choice, and risk within the decision ecosystem.
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1 Ranked list of words.
Figure 4.2 Example of horizon scanning for new cyber threats.
Figure 4.3 Strategy map of GE in 2015 and in 2025.
Figure 4.4 Analysis of AI workforce impact.
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1 The three components of the choice dynamic.
Figure 5.2 Simplified illustration of the rational actor model.
Figure 5.3 Tangible and intangible assets as a percentage of S&P 500...
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1 Stock price performance by risk maturity rating.
Figure 6.2 Model for integrating risk with insight and strategic cho...
Figure 6.3 Stock price performance by risk maturity rating.
Figure 6.4 Market valuation by risk maturity score in 2016.
Figure 6.5 Shareholder value impact of Perrier incident.
Figure 6.6 Shareholder value impact of Heineken incident.
Figure 6.7 Shareholder value impact of winners and losers.
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1 Points of interface in an ambidextrous organization.
Figure 7.2 Example of intentional connections and separations.
Figure 7.3 Insight, choice, and risk model.
Guide
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Index
End User License Agreement
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Praise for Strategy and Change
“In an era of constant disruption, Strategy and Change is a game changer for leaders evolving their organizations to meet the demands of a shifting landscape. The authors deliver a compelling yet practical guide for navigating disruptive change with relevance and purpose.”
—Terrence Roche,Founder, Green Rock Innovation, and lecturer on strategy and leadership, Northwestern University
“Decision-makers are experiencing dizzying change. The authors of Strategy and Change guide leaders to find opportunity and growth in the face of changes by broadening their approach. Read this book for fresh insights on how to introduce your own disruptively innovative products and solutions.”
—Robert Revelle,CEO and founder, Praedicat, a Moody's Company
“This is the book I wish I had when I started leading strategic efforts around the globe: clear, grounded, and ready for the real world. Insight sharpens your view, choice tests your creativity, and risk reveals your priorities. This book brings structure to each—demonstrating that the best decisions are intentional, aligned with capability, and made with eyes wide open. As a follow-up to Leading with Strategic Thinking, it moves beyond the why of strategic leadership and delivers the how—with models and methods to lead when the path forward is anything but clear.”
—Ingo Schiller,Former president and CEO, Tadano America Corporation, and global CMO, Tadano Ltd.
“Strategy and Change is an essential resource for today's complex world. Through compelling case studies and insightful observations across business, technology, and government the authors both simplify and evolve one's understanding about strategy and how to create sustainable and disruptive growth. Whether you are the CEO, the head of a function, or an aspiring leader, this book will help you bring powerful strategies to life.”
—Jenna Susanke,Chief people officer, Veolia North America
“Disruption is the new normal, and if you don't do it for your business, you will be left behind. The challenge that many businesses leaders face is how to disrupt effectively. In Strategy and Change, the authors masterfully navigate the complexities of modern leadership in an era marked by unprecedented social and technological upheaval. By addressing the intersection of strategy and leadership, they provide a robust framework for leaders to set direction and drive change amid market, social, and geopolitical volatility. This book is an essential read for anyone looking to understand and leverage the disruptive forces reshaping our world and thrive in it."
—Chris DeWolf,Global risk manager, Mars
“A great read that breaks down risk management into clear, actionable steps, with both tips for beginners and valuable insights for professionals. A practical and engaging guide to navigating uncertainty and to making smarter business decisions.”
—Dr. Gerold Knight,Chief risk officer, Coca-Cola Bottlers Japan
STRATEGY AND CHANGE
FINDING OPPORTUNITY IN DISRUPTION THROUGH INSIGHT, CHOICE, AND RISK
FROM THE AUTHORS OF LEADING WITH STRATEGIC THINKING
AARON K. OLSON AND WARD CHINGWITHRICHARD WATERER AND B. KEITH SIMERSON
Copyright © 2025 by Aaron K. Olson, Ward Ching, Richard Waterer, and B. Keith Simerson. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available:
ISBN: 9781119988717 (Cloth)ISBN: 9781119988724 (ePub)ISBN: 9781119988731 (ePDF)
Cover Design: Paul McCarthyCover Art: © Getty Images|Aelitta
The process of collaborating on a new book involves a commitment of time not just by the authors but also by the people around them. We feel lucky to have come together as a writing team and to have the support of the individuals named here.
Aaron K. OlsonTo Jeanne, Liam, and Habs
Ward ChingTo Melinda, Andrew, and Christopher
Richard WatererTo Melissa, Felix, and Rupert
B. Keith SimersonTo Darlie
Foreword
DISRUPTION IS ALL around us. As I write these words in early 2025, we see unprecedented changes to political administrations around the world, geopolitical instability remains rife, the rules of trade are being overhauled, and a $1 trillion+ bet is being placed on artificial intelligence (AI).
Does this represent a unique juncture in society? No. With the benefit of hindsight, history can be understood as a sequence of disruptive passages and milestones, occurring through a series of waves, each bringing transformative challenges and opportunities. As we trace these waves of disruption back over almost a century, we can point to rapid information and technological innovation as common catalysts to accelerating change. Where would we be today without the iPhone, the internet, and open-source software? Where will we be tomorrow with AI?
In 2017, St. John's University held an enterprise risk management (ERM) summit for risk and strategy executives. The purpose of the summit was to explore why companies found it difficult to see the risk and uncertainties in their strategic choices. Executives shared that it was no longer sufficient to set strategy, try to beat the competition via better products or services, or simply find new markets. In a volatile, fast-paced world, many believed that the missing ingredient was aggressively identifying and managing the risk in strategy. Navigating the risky waters brought about through disruption requires leaders who can not only set a strategy but also be adept at delivering it. At our summit there was a high level of confidence in leaders setting strategy; in fact, 70% of all executives said that their leaders were effective in this area. However, only 19% of executives stated that their leaders were very effective at both setting strategy and strategic execution.
A chief strategy executive from the New York Stock Exchange once commented to me that “strategy executives are not very good at the unknown risks.” They must pay close attention to the market trends that diminish their current business model, constantly rethinking and challenging the status quo, and looking for innovations, disruptions, and opportunities of their own. They must look for opportunities in the midst of strategic risks and consider nontraditional competitors as a strategic threat.
In a world defined by increasing volatility, we need strategic leadership. That is why this book, and its timing, is so important. The authors assembled here are uniquely positioned to bring new thinking to these critical issues. They offer a blend of academic backgrounds and practitioners' experience gained over several decades in the fields of strategy, decision science, governance, and risk. In the past, I have referred to the relationship between strategy and risk as being a “clunky dance.” This book encourages the reader to blur the lines among strategy, decision-making, and risk, and to face accelerated disruption with a new set of perspectives and guardrails. It challenges organizations to rethink how they lead through disruption, while helping them to do so with practical case studies, frameworks, and tools.
The good news is that there is an appetite from organizations to take this on. In our aforementioned summit, 62% of attendees said that their executives wanted help with strategic risk and uncertainty, with 71% saying that their boards wanted help. That appetite has led to new approaches being developed and deployed to achieve this ambition, but there is still much to do while society continues to transform in front of our eyes. Perhaps over time, the dance will move from clunky to synchronized and beautiful. I hope you consider this book to be a valuable aid as you, and the organizations you represent, navigate uncertainty and opportunity in the future.
Dr. Paul Walker
James J. Shiro / Zurich Chair in Enterprise Risk Management
Maurice R. Greenberg School of Risk Management, Insurance and Actuarial Science
St. John's University
Preface
WE STARTED WORKING on this book in late 2021, six years after we published our first work titled Leading with Strategic Thinking. That book was coauthored by two of us, Aaron K. Olson and B. Keith Simerson, and came out of its namesake graduate course that we developed and taught at Northwestern University. After several years our publisher encouraged us to consider a second edition, and we began with a targeted publication date of early 2023. For a variety of reasons, both personal and professional, the project was soon put on hold. In hindsight, it was a lucky decision.
The book you're holding is a very different story than it would have been. First, we had the good fortune to engage with two colleagues, Ward Ching and Richard Waterer, who ultimately became our coauthors. Ward and Richard bring deep expertise on topics that became critical to our investigation. Second, OpenAI released ChatGPT to the general public in December 2023. The emerging impact of artificial intelligence (AI) is central to our thesis and became a key part of our story in ways that will become increasingly apparent as you work your way through these chapters.
Before we get started, we want to share some background on the work that went into this book's creation. We'll do that in two parts—first by reviewing the research methods we used as coauthors in 2015 and second by describing the work we've now done as a team of four.
The underpinnings of this book lie throughout the pages of Leading with Strategic Thinking (LWST), published in 2015. We'll reference that work in the Introduction, when we highlight one of the more prominent leadership profiles that came out of our work, and again in Chapter 2, when we walk through the essential concepts and principles of what we call strategic leadership.
The framework and key elements of strategic leadership took five years to develop. Our informal discussions as co-instructors in Northwestern University's Master of Science in Learning and Organizational Change program led to a concentrated review of the literature on strategic thinking, strategy formulation, strategy execution, and strategic management. In particular, we drew on the academic disciplines of cognitive psychology, game theory, and systems thinking. We applied this body of work on a multidisciplinary basis, combined with our own experience advising organizations, with the goal of exploring the relatively overlooked intersection of “strategy” and “leadership.”
As we began defining a framework for strategic leadership, we proceeded to assess and validate our work through conversations with academic colleagues and leading practitioners in the fields of strategic management, change management, and organizational behavior. This led to the creation of specific principles and behaviors tied to our framework. To validate our work, we conducted focus group sessions with more than 300 leaders in varying roles and industries from over 10 countries. Over the following decade since the book's release, we've presented our work to thousands of leaders, academic colleagues, and fellow practitioners.
This second book adds two new disciplines to our integrative analysis: decision science and risk management. We addressed these topics in our first book, but our original treatment of decision-making and risk didn't do justice to the critical nature they play in today's complex world. Events since 2015 have made this increasingly clear, as world events demonstrate the critical importance of understanding risk and volatility in its many forms. In turn, these risks heighten both the importance and challenge of making effective decisions.
Our new coauthors bring important insight to these topics. Ward Ching is adjunct professor of risk management at the University of Southern California (USC) Marshall School of Business, where he teaches courses and conducts research in enterprise risk management and disruptive risk innovation. Ward also leads the strategic solutions and innovation practice at Aon, which is the basis of our professional connection. Ward brings nearly 50 years of general management consulting and business strategy experience to our project. Ward led our team's work on Chapter 1, summarizing his research with fellow faculty members at both USC and St. John's University on the evolving nature of disruption, and on Chapter 5, distilling practical lessons from the field of decision science.
Richard Waterer is the global risk consulting leader at Aon, where he is responsible for leading a team of 1,500 full-time risk consultants. Richard has worked in risk advisory for over 25 years, and has a background in enterprise risk management, resilience, and risk engineering. He is a regular speaker at risk leaders' events around the world. Richard applied his combined background as an expert and practitioner in leading our work on Chapter 6, highlighting recognized best practices and opportunities for innovation in risk management.
Consistent with our previous publication, we applied select management and planning tools to our analysis and decision-making. Those tools included the expanded tree diagram (in breaking issues down into their various parts), the affinity diagram (in determining interrelationships and interdependencies), the process decision program chart (in identifying contingencies and countermeasures), and card-sort exercises (to help synthesize and organize the volumes of information we obtained through interviews, conversations, and our review of the literature). We also applied new techniques not found in our original publication. Most notably, we used several AI-based tools in the course of our analysis. While not reflected verbatim in our writing, we used several tools for analysis and to synthesize various source materials, including ChatGPT 4o, Google NotebookLM, Microsoft Co-Pilot, Perplexity.ai, and Zoom AI Companion.
We thoroughly enjoyed the collaborative effort that made this book a reality. We hope you enjoy engaging with the topic as much as we have, and we look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Introduction
GOOGLE CEO SUNDAR Pichai was facing tough questions during his grueling three-and-a-half-hour congressional testimony on a December morning in 2018. He was speaking to the US House Judiciary Committee, whose members were concerned about the company's data collection practices. Some were skeptical of his answers as he struggled to provide straightforward descriptions of the technical and at times Byzantine methods by which the company processed, used, and stored the vast troves of sometimes sensitive data collected from its users.
Pichai was wrestling with a challenge familiar to executives at the time: how to capitalize on the rapid digitization of user-generated content while navigating increasing concerns from the public about who should ultimately own and control that information.
This challenge was compounded by the dramatic pace of technological and competitive change. In just 20 years, Google had gone from its humble beginnings in a dorm room on the campus of Stanford University to being one of the largest and most influential companies in a global marketplace. Despite this historic rise, Pichai knew that its fall could happen even more quickly. The same technological trends that fueled its success could be harnessed by the next startup looking to redefine the very market that Google pioneered.
When pressed that morning to explain the company's practices, Pichai emphasized their focus on giving customers control. He described a service called Google Takeout, established to let users export their personal information from Google and transfer it to another provider:
We started this effort as early as 10 years ago, building [portability] for many of our products. We started an office in Chicago with the expressed goal of providing users with this Takeout capability. I think we were quite unique in starting to work on that as a company, but there's more effort we plan to do there.1
Google Takeout was a key part of Google's story that day, meant to highlight the company's good-faith efforts to give users control of their personal information. Indeed, it was a critical component to a broader defense against accusations of anticompetitive behavior. While a federal judge ultimately declared the company to be a monopoly in late 2024, due to contracts related to browser dominance, Google Takeout was an unqualified success, serving as the catalyst for an industry-wide adoption of data portability standards. As of this writing, you can export your own data by visiting takeout.google.com.
The origins of Google Takeout hold important lessons for executives looking to navigate the kind of challenges faced by Sundar Pichai. We wrote about its creation in 2015 as part of our examination of the relationship between strategy and leadership.2 It is the story of one Google engineer, Brian Fitzpatrick, whose personal mission fulfilled an objective of Google's CEO and ultimately affected how billions of people use internet services today.
More broadly, Google's decision to launch Takeout stands out when viewed in the context of its time. Google embraced data portability in a hypercompetitive marketplace where using personal data to enable customer lock-in was an industry standard practice in a highly lucrative, rapidly evolving industry. It illustrates the broader challenge we'll explore in this book: how organizations and those who lead them can navigate difficult choices that balance risk and reward in the face of increasing complexity and disruptive change.
For executives tasked with managing shareholder value, most of those decisions can be filtered through the lens of two variables—maximizing revenue and managing cost. At the same time, experienced executives weigh two additional factors—opportunity and risk. These factors form heuristics—mental shortcuts for decision-making—both conscious and assumed that guide decisions up and down the organization. That said, a well-honed instinct isn't always well suited to the kinds of novel questions and market shifts brought by disruptive change.
Even for the best executives, choices have become more challenging. Issues of data management and regulatory risk are just two of the complex trends that organizations face today. As in the case of Google, the consequences are amplified by a steady stream of new technologies that challenge existing practices even as they open the door for breakthrough innovation. Most of the leaders we've spoken with agree—regardless of industry or sector—organizations face an onslaught of disruptive events in an increasingly interconnected world.
A Global Perspective
Every four years, the US National Intelligence Council (NIC) produces a report on the state of world affairs and the implications of existing trends for future decades. First published in February of 1997,3 the NIC “Global Trends” report has evolved to become one of the most rigorous assessments of its kind. For our purposes, reviewing the report—and how it has evolved over the course of 30 years—serves as a useful entry point for exploring the volatility and disruptive change that executives must consider.
The 2021 report opens with five themes that underpin a central thesis that at every level society and organizations face cause for concern:
Global challenges:
Shared challenges—including climate change, disease, financial crises, and technology disruptions—are likely to manifest more frequently and intensely in almost every region and country. These challenges, which often lack a direct human agent or perpetrator, will produce widespread strains on states and societies as well as shocks that could be catastrophic.
Fragmentation:
The difficulty of addressing these transnational challenges is compounded in part by increasing fragmentation within communities, states, and the international system. Paradoxically, as the world has grown more connected through communications technology, trade, and the movement of people, that very connectivity has divided and fragmented people and countries.
Disequilibrium:
The scale of transnational challenges, and the emerging implications of fragmentation, are exceeding the capacity of existing systems and structures, highlighting the third theme: disequilibrium. There is an increasing mismatch at all levels between challenges and needs with the systems and organizations to deal with them.
Contestation:
A key consequence of greater imbalance is greater contestation within communities, states, and the international community. This encompasses rising tensions, division, and competition in societies, states, and at the international level. Many societies are increasingly divided among identity affiliations and at risk of greater fracturing. Relationships between societies and governments will be under persistent strain as states struggle to meet rising demands from populations.
Adaptation:
Finally, adaptation will be both an imperative and a key source of advantage for all actors in this world. […] The most effective states are likely to be those that can build societal consensus and trust toward collective action on adaptation and harness the relative expertise, capabilities, and relationships of nonstate actors to complement state capacity.
4
Later in the report, these themes are brought to life through five scenarios for what the world might look like in 2040, each a specific configuration of power and influence presented “to widen the aperture to the possibilities.”
These themes give us a lot to think about. This is magnified when we compare the latest report to the NIC's original “Global Trends” report, authored in 1997. That first publication described China in skeptical terms:
By dint of its size, regional sweep, economic growth, territorial claims, and insistence on being taken seriously as a major foreign policy player, China will preoccupy US policymakers through 2010 and beyond. While China has the potential to become the region's dominant military power, it is beset by significant internal problems that in our judgment will preclude it from becoming so during this time frame. Indeed, many of the global trends we highlighted—population (and strains associated with urbanization), energy demands, and food—are domestic issues for China. As a result, its military modernization and power-projection capabilities will increase only gradually. The Chinese central government will continue to have difficulties collecting revenues to fund its programs. With 70% of its population still in agriculture, China has a long way to go to develop a modern economy on a nationwide basis.5
Fast-forward to today, and China is a global superpower central to the NIC's analysis, with further complexity arising from a notable emphasis on nonstate actors like corporations and ideological communities.
The major themes of the NIC “Global Trends” report and the evolving nature of the report's findings over time leave us with one unavoidable conclusion: the issues leaders face today have become more complicated and the decisions more challenging.
Strategic Leadership in a Complex and Volatile World
These two examples, Google Takeout and the NIC “Global Trends” report, serve as an important backdrop for the issues we'll explore in this book. In Google, we see the impact when leaders set a bold strategy and empower individuals to drive change. In the “Global Trends” report, we see how complexity and volatility are making those kinds of strategic choices ever-more challenging. This is the focus of our analysis: how organizations, and those who lead them, can drive strategy in an increasingly complex and volatile world.
We'll do this through a series of investigations. We'll begin in Chapter 1 with a review of the evolving nature of disruption and the factors driving its acceleration. In Chapter 2, we'll look at how a decade of disruption has affected four organizations that we originally profiled in our first book. This will set the stage for the heart of the book, Chapters 3 through 6, where we look deeply at organizations through three lenses that we see as essential to an organization's success in the face of persistent disruptive change. We'll close our review in Chapters 7 and 8, translating our analysis into practical actions and a call for C-suite members to think differently about how they can create value by working together in new ways.
We started using the term strategic leadership in the early 2010s to describe how the best leaders drive change. The concept emerged as part of the graduate course we developed at Northwestern University, focused on the intersection of strategy and leadership. We organized the course, and the associated book about our teaching, on several principles we can briefly summarize as we close this introduction.
First, strategic leaders understand the fundamental connection between what they want to achieve and how they will make that happen. This is the key insight that makes some leaders more effective than others.
Second, strategic leaders interact with others in specific ways based on the situation. There is no one definition of what great leaders do. The leadership attributes that drive results in one situation can be a leader's downfall in the next. As we researched what made these leaders successful, we arrived at four types of strategic leadership, each best suited for a specific set of circumstances and to achieve specific outcomes. We'll describe these types in Chapter 3.
Third, strategy and leadership are relevant at every level in an organization. Issues of strategy aren't limited to the boardroom; anyone in the organization can drive strategic change with the right insight and influence. Since publishing our first book we have taught thousands of leaders how to do this through our graduate course and in workshops around the world.
These three principles are an empowering message for individuals interested in driving change regardless of their role or level in an organization. They're equally useful to executives as they think about how to define and manage their organizations. Great leadership, like great ideas, can come from anywhere. Executives who want to get the most out of their teams can create conditions where the entire workforce sees themselves as leaders and understands the kind of leadership they should apply to achieve organizational outcomes.
We believe these principles are durable, but they need to be reimagined to stay relevant in a rapidly evolving world. In 2015, nobody would have predicted that large parts of the economy would be conducted for a full year entirely over Zoom. Equally, the idea that AI could enable intelligent agents or humanoid robots to have a meaningful role in the workplace would have seemed like pure science fiction. As we face the very real possibility that these events may soon take place, it's a good time to reflect on the implications of disruption for every organization's approach to strategy and leadership.
Notes
1
. “Google CEO Sundar Pichai Testifies on Data Collection,” C-SPAN (2:55), December 11, 2018,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfbTbPEEJxI
.
2
. Aaron K. Olson and B. Keith Simerson,
Leading with Strategic Thinking: Four Ways Effective Leaders Gain Insight, Drive Change, and Get Results
(Wiley, 2015).
3
. “Global Trends 2010,” National Intelligence Council, November 1997,
https://www.dni.gov/index.php/who-we-are/organizations/mission-integration/nic/nic-related-menus/nic-related-content/global-trends-2010
.
4
. “Global Trends 2040,” National Intelligence Council, 2021: 2–3,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/45390866
.
5
. “Global Trends 2010,” National Intelligence Council.
1The Evolving Nature of Disruptive Change
OUR LIVES ARE marked by technology and innovation. We have collective memories, such as when the world paused to watch Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. We have individual memories, like receiving a first Zoom call with a distant family member during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. We remember these as times when the world changed in a moment and the impossible became possible.
These moments also open our minds to future innovation. Though for some it may be hard to imagine working side by side with virtual intelligent agents and humanoid robots, it's worth reminding ourselves that many of the technologies that we take for granted today were once considered miracles of science. It wasn't that long ago that someone with a touchscreen iPhone would attract jealous attention from the flip-phone-wielding traveler sitting next to them on a plane.
Figure 1.1 Time required for online services to reach one million users.
It's especially interesting if we notice how quickly these innovations become part of the status quo. The acceptance of new technologies is getting faster. Figure 1.1 shows the velocity of adoption for several online services introduced since 1999. Netflix took 3.5 years to reach one million users. ChatGPT took five days.1
In addition to this increase in velocity, we've also seen significant turmoil. Disruption seems to be a permanent feature of our lives. A look back since the early 2000s can serve as a reminder:
Financial collapse:
In 2008, a financial crisis, triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, brought on a global economic downturn sending most international economies into an extended recession.
Swine flu:
In 2009, the H1N1 influenza virus unexpectedly emerged to test global health care resources. H1NI served as an unheeded warning for future pandemic conditions.
Arab Spring:
In 2011, anti-government protests known as the Arab Spring triggered significant political change in the Middle East and eventually globally.
Ebola:
In 2015, the outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa caused thousands of deaths across six countries, requiring health workers to rush to contain an outbreak that could have devastated the entire continent.
Brexit:
In 2016, the United Kingdom voted to exit the European Union, leading to global political and economic ramifications while causing governments to question the value of economic union.
Global pandemic:
In 2020, the world was taken by surprise with the rapid and devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus caused unprecedented widespread economic disruption and the death of countless millions of people globally.
Climate change:
Throughout this period, the science of climate change triggered an increasingly urgent international call for enforceable treaties and redirected capital to combat the effects of rising sea levels and carbon-based pollution.
War:
As of this writing, ongoing military conflicts involving major countries such as the Ukraine and the Middle East dominate international political discussions about security, safety, and allyship across the world.
Just as this list reminds us of the degree to which disruptive events can occur over a relatively short period, it should also open our minds to the potential forms of change that might lie ahead.
As we consider the implications of technological speed and disruptive change, we should also reflect on instances when these two trends intersect—indeed, the rapid adoption of technology can often prompt the disruption of well-established norms and institutions. Corporations like Montgomery Ward, Blockbuster, and Kodak have disappeared due to new forms of competition brought on by innovative technologies.
COVID-19 brought the combined implications of speed and disruption into stark focus. Only a few months after news stories emerged from China regarding a mysterious virus, most of the economic, social, and governmental systems of the world came to an abrupt halt. The world was paralyzed without a clear pathway out. Since then, the systemic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have forced decision-makers to confront the underlying sources of continued disruption as they examine strategic choices affecting their organizations.
Technology, Speed, and Disruption
We can take three key points away from these examples:
The speed of technological change is accelerating. Some product life cycles are now measured in months and quarters rather than years or decades.
Disruption is enabled by technology. At the base of most disruptive events is some form of technological innovation without which that event's impact would not have been as significant or as widespread.
