This post was originally published on this site
Every year gives transformation leaders a clearer view of their systems, their culture and their capacity for change. But 2025 surfaced something more important: the limits of our old transformation playbooks. Strategies stalled not because leaders lacked vision, but because organizations have outgrown the traditional ways we manage change.
Most transformation guidance still focuses on alignment, culture, communication and leadership behavior. Useful, yes—but increasingly insufficient. The pace of disruption, the rise of AI and the complexity of modern work demand a new set of muscles inside organizations.
So, instead of rehashing what didn’t go according to plan in 2025, let’s focus on what transformation leaders can do differently and more effectively in 2026.
What will transformation in 2026 look like?
These five priorities for transformation in 2026 aren’t the usual suspects. They reflect where we see transformation moving to, and what forward-looking organizations will need to build next.
1. Shift from change management change capacity engineering
For years, organizations treated change as a communication challenge: Send more messages, hold more town halls, increase transparency. All of this activity missed the fact that the real constraint in 2025 wasn’t messaging, it was capacity. Employees weren’t resisting change; they were overloaded by
