The Pace of Change Is Accelerating: How to Help Your Leaders Keep Up

When Netflix first launched in 2006, it took two years to reach one million users. Facebook did it in ten months. TikTok? Two months.

ChatGPT? Just five days.

In a globalised economy where technology has flattened distance and shortened time, the pace of adoption and transformation is accelerating. As the speed of change intensifies, so too does the complexity of managing it, and the pressure on leaders to adapt has never been greater.

The question in 2025 isn’t whether leaders can keep up with change – it’s whether they can get ahead of it: The impetus for leaders to reinvent their approach is intensifying, while their time is increasingly limited. Emerging research paints a clear picture that today’s leaders are facing a crisis of confidence and capacity:

• 45% of CEOs are not confident that their organisations will survive more than a decade on their current path—up from 39% in 2023.
• 97% of global CEOs report having taken steps to change how they’ll create, deliver, and capture value as leaders over the next five years
• Less than one-fifth (19%) of leaders say they have sufficient time to fulfil their responsibilities with the depth and diligence required.

Leaders are being asked to do more with less by managing increasingly complex change initiatives, often without the time or resources to do so effectively. Despite today’s leaders recognising the need for transformation, they face significant roadblocks to organisational reinvention:

• 64% of CEOs cite regulatory environments as a major barrier to reinvention.
• 55% point to competing operational priorities, and 52% highlight a lack of skills in the workforce.

These challenges are exacerbated by the fact that 61% of talent management leaders agree that changing demands on talent management exceed their team’s capacity to deliver. In other words, the organisational systems designed to support change are struggling to keep up with the pace of transformation.

An emerging trend amongst leaders, and one of the most pressing issues facing leaders today, is how they allocate their time (and how much of it is reportedly wasted):

• Up to 80% of leaders’ time is spent on communications and meetings.
• CEOs claim roughly 40% of their time spent on routine activities like decision-making meetings or communication is used inefficiently.

These “leadership time sinks” leave little room for strategic thinking or proactive change management, both essential tools for leading an organisation through uncertainty.

The Path Forward

How can leaders effectively steer their organisations through this era of transformation? The most successful leaders are adaptive when choosing between the necessary and the correct and are able to balance complex, interdependent forces: offsetting strategic pragmatism with purpose; simplifying processes while maintaining human-centered ecosystems; integrating robust technology while taking their people on the change journey – the list goes on.

These Adaptive Leaders embrace a proactive, empowering, and efficient approach to change. Straight from our Leading Through Change Toolkit, here are three ways that Adaptive Leaders are approaching the accelerating pace of change:

1) Adopt a Proactive Approach to Change
Rather than reacting to change as it happens, leaders must anticipate it. This requires staying ahead of industry trends, investing in scenario planning, and fostering a culture of agility within their organisations. Learn how best-practice organisations are adopting strategic foresight strategies ➔

2) Empower Teams to Drive Change
Change cannot be managed from the top down alone. Leaders must empower their teams to take ownership of transformation initiatives. This means investing in upskilling programmes, fostering collaboration, and creating clear channels for communication to ensure full alignment. Discover change cascade techniques and tools in our Leading Through Change Toolkit ➔

3) Streamline Decision-Making Processes
In today’s accelerated world, your leaders can’t afford to be bogged down by inefficiency. By streamlining decision-making processes and reducing time spent on low-value activities, your leaders can free up time to focus on the bigger picture: their strategic priorities. How a better approach to data management can help simplify and streamline decision-making ➔
 

GET YOUR LEADING THROUGH CHANGE TOOLKIT ➔