Leading Through Disruption: A Performance-First Approach to Change

Mar 24

"I don't care that you're meeting every Service Level Agreement [SLA]. We need partners who can innovate." - Alan’s frustrated customer

This jarring feedback hit me just a few months into a new customer engagement. Over the previous years, I grew our managed IT services footprint five-fold in revenue by successfully replicating our delivery model. That model had been built on clear metrics and consistent delivery. Our IT metrics were our competitive edge—we minimized defects, delivered high-quality code releases, and even guaranteed our performance by offering financial credits for any missed SLA.

But my client's harsh feedback made one thing clear: this customer didn't value consistency and stability. They required innovation, risk-taking, and adaptability. The bedrock of our past success—our traditional way of measuring performance—had become our liability.

After a humbling examination of my leadership approach, I recognized we needed someone who thought differently. I reassigned Jordan to lead the customer engagement. Jordan was an emerging leader in my organization. He earned himself a reputation for crafting clever business analytics solutions. But he also got bored quickly and rarely “fell into line” (i.e. he could be challenging to manage at times).

The gamble paid off. Within months, client satisfaction improved dramatically under Jordan’s leadership. He earned our customer’s trust by delivering impactful quick wins, and he implemented a "fail fast" approach that welcomed immediate feedback and rapid iteration.

That was 10 years ago. The experience was a wake-up call, and it completely rewired how I viewed performance.

From Consistency to Adaptability

Accelerating technological change, increased competition, and shorter product lifecycles have transformed our business landscape. Today, nearly every organization faces conditions similar to my customer.

This evolution demands we reconsider what constitutes "high performance." Achieving stable and consistent results is often an illusion. Today's landscape operates on different physics—the half-life of skills and competitive advantage has shortened dramatically. Technologies that once evolved over years now transform in months. Market conditions shift with unprecedented speed, and disruptive competitors can emerge overnight.

In an uncertain environment, adaptability has emerged as the true differentiator—the quality that separates thriving companies from struggling ones. It's an organization's capacity to sense changes in their environment and respond gracefully that will set them apart.

Leadership Framework for Adaptability-Based Performance

My experience with Jordan revealed a crucial insight. Organizations must systematically identify and position people who thrive amid uncertainty—those energized rather than exhausted by change. While many companies acknowledge adaptability's importance, successful ones build comprehensive talent strategies around it. In today's unpredictable conditions, finding and nurturing adaptable talent is perhaps the most consequential skill a leader can develop.

1. Assessing Adaptability in Teams

Recognizing adaptable team members requires looking beyond traditional performance metrics. Individuals who flourish in predictable environments may struggle when conditions regularly change—just as my conventional high performers would have failed where Jordan succeeded.

Look for team members who demonstrate:

Comfort with ambiguity
Experimentation over adherence to established processes
Energy during periods of change rather than exhaustion
Constructive questioning of assumptions and status quo
Quick recovery from setbacks rather than prolonged analysis of failures

Counterintuitively, these adaptable individuals often aren't your "easiest" team members. They challenge established thinking, create productive tension in meetings, and may grow restless with routine. This explains why many high-potential employees are overlooked—they don't fit traditional expectations of "good" team members.

The most effective identification method is strategic experimentation. Assign team members to projects specifically designed to test adaptability—cross-functional initiatives, resource-constrained problems, or situations with shifting parameters or significant unknowns. Those who thrive rather than become overwhelmed in these contexts demonstrate the adaptability your organization increasingly needs.

For a more systematic approach, consider implementing assessments that measure cognitive flexibility, emotional resilience, and learning orientation to complement your observations and build a data-driven understanding of your team's adaptability profile.

2. Creating Environmental Conditions for Adaptivity

Identifying adaptable talent is a part of the equation—equally important is cultivating an environment where adaptability can flourish across your entire organization. Research by Dr. Amy Climer demonstrates that the right conditions elevate everyone's capacity for innovation and adaptability. Learn more about Climer’s research in her new book "Deliberate Creative Teams: How to Lead for Innovative Results."

Psychological safety forms the cornerstone of such environments—a space where team members feel secure sharing ideas and opinions without fear of ridicule. When psychological safety exists, teams engage in what Climer calls "creative abrasion"—the productive friction between different perspectives that sparks innovation.

To cultivate psychological safety:

Model vulnerability as a leader by acknowledging uncertainty and welcomes alternative viewpoints
Establish explicit agreements about how disagreement will be handled productively
Separate idea generation from evaluation to prevent premature criticism
Design meetings that ensure all voices contribute, not the loudest or most senior

Psychological safety creates the condition where adaptability can thrive—where team members feel empowered to question assumptions, suggest alternative approaches, and learn from both success and failure. Without this safety, even your most adaptable employees may withhold valuable insight and eventually leave for environments that welcome their contributions.

The environmental conditions you establish set the stage, but ultimately, your day-to-day leadership practices determine whether your organization's adaptive potential is realized or suppressed.

3. Leadership Practices That Cultivate Adaptability

Leading for adaptability requires a shift in how leaders perceive their role. Rather than positioning yourself as the source of answers, architect conditions where collective intelligence can flourish.

This begins with establishing clear, transcendent organizational outcomes that span across departmental boundaries. When teams understand how their work contributes to broader goals, they are more capable of collaborating across dividing functional lines. Your job is to specify the "what" (destination) while giving teams autonomy over the "how" (method)—creating the space where teams can steer toward excellence while continuously evolving their approach.

For instance, rather than dictating that a team use a specific methodology to improve customer satisfaction scores, set a clear target that connects to broader organizational priorities and empower the team to design, test, and iterate their own solution.

Beyond setting clear outcomes, adaptability-focused leaders:

Create systems that reward calculated risk-taking and learning from failure
Establish rapid feedback loops that accelerate organizational learning
Build measurement approaches that value adaptability alongside traditional performance metrics
Normalize course correction as a sign of strength rather than weakness

Perhaps most importantly, leaders must model the adaptability they wish to see. When I reassigned Jordan to the struggling account, I humbly and publicly acknowledged that my previous approach wasn't working. This vulnerable admission, signaled that adaptability was truly valued in our organization.

Your leadership behaviors, more than any policy or pronouncement, determine whether adaptability thrives or withers in your organization. When leaders demonstrate adaptability in their actions, they encourage the mindset necessary to succeed in today's turbulent business environment.

Practical Steps for Leaders

To build adaptability in your organization:

Identify Your Adaptability Champs – Look beyond traditional performance metrics to find team members who demonstrate comfort with ambiguity, natural experimentation, and quick recovery from setbacks. Give these individuals strategic opportunities where their adaptability creates maximum value.
Create Psychological Safety – Foster an environment where team members feel secure sharing ideas without fear of ridicule. Model vulnerability, establish clear agreements for productive disagreement, and ensure all voices contribute to discussions, not just the loudest or most senior.
Set Clear Outcomes, Not Methods – Define clear organizational goals that transcend departmental boundaries while giving teams autonomy over how to achieve them. This balance of clarity in "what" with flexibility in "how" unleashes creativity and ownership.
Reward Learning from Failure – Establish systems that recognize calculated risk-taking and valuable lessons, even when initial outcomes fall short. This counterbalances the traditional focus on flawless execution and encourages the experimentation necessary for adaptation.
Model Adaptability Yourself – Demonstrate comfort with uncertainty, change course when new information emerges, and publicly acknowledge when your approach needs adjustment. Your behavior sets the tone for the entire organization's approach to change.

The Adaptability Imperative

Over the past decade, I've witnessed how adaptability separates thriving organizations from those that merely survive disruption. The Framework for Adaptability-Based Performance represents hard-won lessons from helping dozens of businesses transform their approach to leadership and performance.

At Liberated Leaders, we partner with forward-thinking organizations ready to build adaptability as a competitive advantage. Our Leadership Rising program brings together emerging leaders for a structured six-month journey where they develop practical leadership skills while solving real organizational challenges. This approach creates sustainable frameworks that balance innovation with operational demands—exactly what today's unpredictable business environment requires.

For organizations looking to identify their most adaptable talent, we utilize the scientifically validated TalentTelligent RAND assessment. This evidence-based tool helps leaders recognize high-potential team members who demonstrate the adaptability markers outlined in this article, reducing subjective bias in talent decisions and strengthening succession planning.

Organizations that prioritize adaptability respond faster to market disruptions, produce more innovative solutions, and maintain higher employee engagement during periods of intense change. In a business landscape where the only constant is change, cultivating adaptability may be the most consequential investment in your organization's future.

The question is no longer whether adaptability matters, but how deliberately you're developing it as your competitive advantage.

About the Author

As a Success Architect at Liberated Leaders, Alan leverages 20 years of experience in technology leadership and consulting to help businesses optimize their technology strategies, gain an edge, and scale their operations. He is a twice certified executive and leadership coach who firmly believes that true business transformation can only occur with mindful investment in people and technology. Find out more about Alan on our About page.

Note: This article was 85% human generated and 15% machine (AI) generated.

Alan Fuhs