How to Navigate Business Disruption: Leading Through Uncertainty to Build Organizational Resilience
Why business disruption demands a new approach to leadership
No company can think it is immune to the threat of disruption. The term ‘disruption’ is overused, and we prefer to consider it the extreme of a spectrum of change within an industry. Nearly 40% of CEOs don’t believe their companies will be economically viable a decade from now if they continue their current path. Significant changes in how businesses operate or deliver value to customers are caused by emerging technologies altering the business landscape, shifting consumer behaviors, regulatory changes, or unexpected global events. Anticipating these changes or business disruptions, assessing their potential impacts, and developing strategies to navigate them increases organizational resilience. This process can safeguard your company’s longevity and unlock new opportunities for growth and innovation.
Survival of the fittest
Although they can seem intimidating, business disruptions often spark positive change. They typically open the door to replacing outdated business models with more efficient, customer-focused ones. When Netflix disrupted Blockbuster with its DVD-by-mail model and later disrupted itself with its streaming service, it marked a new chapter for the home entertainment industry. Likewise, the rise of smartphones disrupted several industries, from cameras to watches, while providingentirely new businesses in mobile gaming and entertainment. a platform for
Business disruption can raise everybody’s game as companies respond by ‘upgrading’ their portfolio to include better products and services that meet new needs of customers and consumers. Since the introduction and the success of the Nest thermostat, other manufacturers like Honeywell and Schneider Electric have followed and leveraged their existing distribution channels to scale quickly.
The flip side is equally valid. Companies that fail to anticipate or respond to disruptions can quickly struggle to stay afloat. Kodak’s downfall in the face of digital photography is a stark reminder of this.
AI drives business disruption
The pace of AI developments has become more rapid recently. This technological breakthrough is already having a profound impact. Education is the first to be caught off guard, as students quickly started using ChatGPT for researching topics and writing papers. Current AI models sometimes produce what are known as hallucinations. Some see this as a chance to improve students’ critical analysis skills and learn to use AI in ways that lead to better outcomes. Once these institutions move past their own orthodoxy that AI poses a threat to teachers, they can identify new opportunities that make use of this technology.
Although new AI-based services are emerging everywhere, they may influence and disrupt multiple industries in various ways. Companies with strong innovation capabilities will seize opportunities before their competitors do. These companies will learn more quickly, develop better ideas, and be able to experiment with changes in their business models swiftly to test and introduce new value propositions to the market more successfully. Identifying and navigating business disruptions is not just a matter of seizing opportunities—it’s also vital for a company’s survival because it helps them stay alert to changes that could affect them. By analyzing these examples, we can see clear patterns that show how disruptions happen.
The challenges of navigating business disruption
Despite the apparent importance of navigating disruptions, the task is far from straightforward. Business disruptions often stem from technological advances that are difficult to predict accurately. Additionally, how these disruptions will affect customer behaviors and market dynamics is often unclear until they’re already underway.
Organizational inertia can also pose a significant challenge. Employees may resist changes to established processes, while managers might be reluctant to risk the security of proven business models. These challenges make it hard for companies to change course even if the signs are visible to all involved.
Overcoming these hurdles requires strong leadership, effective change management, and an organizational culture encouraging adaptability, innovation, and the willingness to challenge the status quo.
A framework for navigating disruption
Despite these challenges, we offer a way for CEOs to anticipate and navigate business disruptions. We present a framework to demonstrate what forces hold us in place and which forces pull us into the future by viewing our company and the future from four different perspectives.
Re-examining Core Competencies for stretch and opportunities
Core Competencies are unique capabilities, combinations of assets, skills, processes, technologies, and values that allow a company to win customers and build a successful business. If understood well, we can leverage them to drive growth in new areas.
Challenging Orthodoxies that prevent leaders from responding to business disruption
Orthodoxies are the beliefs people in your company hold about what it takes to be successful. These beliefs have accumulated over years of experience in what works and what doesn’t. They guide decisions about where to invest and how to grow the business.
Both these perspectives are the result of past successes, and while they may serve us in the future, we should periodically investigate whether they are still valid or make us vulnerable to business disruption from others. Success from the past is a poor predictor of the future.
Meanwhile, other forces pull us into the future. These forces are indifferent to our preference for maintaining the status quo. Change will happen whether we choose to act on them or not.
Identifying Discontinuities to stay ahead of business disruption
Discontinuities show us what changes are on the horizon and how these could play out. Discontinuities are not about predicting the future since most signs and trends that will drive those changes are already visible today if we are open to seeing them.
Using Customer Insights to target new and emerging needs early
Customer Insights tell us about the deeper needs and problems we could address. As these evolve and change over time, customers will be looking for companies that can help them better than today.
So, will you cling to your core competencies indefinitely? Will you stick to the orthodoxies that potentially can misdirect your investments? Or are you prepared to adapt to changes that are visible on the horizon, develop new capabilities, and serve the new needs of customers?
By embedding innovation to the core of your organization, you can anticipate and even seize disruptive opportunities. Having a robust innovation process that incorporates discovery-based learning and developing different perspectives will help you understand the forces at play and the opportunities that could emerge.
The role of leadership
As a CEO, your leadership is critical to anticipating and navigating business disruptions. You set the tone for your organization’s response, making decisions that shape your business’s future. Successful leaders remain calm and composed during disruptions. They communicate openly and transparently with their team, and demonstrate resilience and adaptability in the face of change. They provide a safe environment for their employees to challenge orthodoxies and for innovation teams to experiment beyond the current business model.
Leaders approach innovation systemically. By anticipating disruptions, assessing their impact, developing a flexible response strategy, executing your plan, and learning from your experiences, you can turn disruptions into opportunities and lead your business to greater success.
Embrace innovation to enhance organizational resilience
A crucial aspect of successfully navigating business disruption is embracing game changing innovation and focus on developing world class innovation capabilities. Disruptions often present the best opportunities for innovation, offering companies the chance to reinvent themselves, discover new business models, or explore uncharted markets. Embedding innovation to the core will increase a company’s resilience simply through its ability to adapt to change.
Adopt an entrepreneurial attitude
CEOs leading in times of disruption need to foster an entrepreneurial attitude by encouraging their team to embrace risk-taking, accept failures as learning opportunities, and maintain a laser focus on customer needs. It means staying agile, allowing quick pivots when necessary, and continuously iterating your products and services based on feedback and changing circumstances.
Leverage technology
Disruptions often arise from technological advancements; at the same time, technology can also provide the solution. The right digital tools can allow businesses to streamline operations, increase efficiency, and create more value for customers. Therefore, investing in technology and digital transformation should be a significant part of your strategy to navigate business disruption.
Engage and empower your employees
Employees are on the front line of disruption, dealing with the changes it brings every day. By engaging and empowering them, you can tap into their insights, build their commitment to your strategy, and improve your organization’s resilience to disruption. It requires open communication, collaborative decision-making, ongoing training and development, and recognition of innovative ideas and solutions.
Designing for organizational resilience
Business disruptions will likely become more frequent and impactful due to rapid technological change, globalization, and climate change. Navigating disruptions is becoming an increasingly important skill for CEOs and their teams. Access to proven frameworks, such as the four perspectives, is essential in discussing change, sharing viewpoints, and deciding a course of action.
Successfully leading through disruption is about surviving the immediate challenges and setting up your organization for long-term success. It requires a forward-thinking approach, and proactively preparing your business to respond. By embedding innovation to the core, organizations can apply a systemic approach to capturing opportunities from disruption.
FAQ: Leading through disruption, and creating organizational resilience
What is business disruption—and how do you know it’s happening in your market?
Business disruption happens when shifts in technology, customer behavior, regulation, or business models change the rules of competition. Early signals often show up as new entrants, changing customer expectations, or declining relevance of legacy advantages.
What does “leading through disruption” look like in practice?
Leading through disruption means making uncertainty manageable: setting a clear strategic intent, challenging entrenched assumptions, reallocating resources faster, and building decision rhythms that spot and act on new signals. It’s less about reacting quickly and more about building repeatable leadership behaviors that turn volatility into advantage.
How can an organization build organizational resilience without slowing down innovation?
Organizational resilience comes from capabilities that let you adapt repeatedly—without starting from zero each time. Examples include clear strategic directions, faster learning cycles, insight discovery, empowered teams, and a disciplined approach to testing new business models while protecting what’s core.
What are the most common mistakes leaders make during business disruption?
Common mistakes include over-optimizing the current model, treating disruption as a one-time project, ignoring weak signals, and defending “the way we’ve always done it.” Another frequent trap is confusing activity with progress—launching initiatives without changing decision-making, incentives, or capability-building.
