Ask Alto: What is “stagility” and why do leaders need to know?
In an age of chaos, leaders can work on combining agility with stability to achieve their business objectives.
“Not only are we facing one disaster after another, but those messes are all linked, making things even worse.” – What is this era of calamity we’re in? Some say ‘polycrisis’ captures it, The Guardian.
From tariff wars to climate change, from disgruntled employees to class actions, from legal and business risks to Covid fallout, we’re in a polycrisis, says Dr Reena Patel, Global Managing Partner and Practice Leader, Consulting DSG Global / AltoPartners USA.
Patel says that some aspects of the uncertainty and fatigue experienced by both business leaders and their employees are unique to the United States. But globally, the atmosphere is tense. The issues faced by leaders include:
• As the workforce becomes increasingly multi-generational, differences in expectations around remote work, communication, and work-life balance necessitate rethinking how teams collaborate and lead across generations.
• A movement against traditional diversity, equity, and inclusion programmes, with organisations instead integrating this work into existing systems. Ensuring level playing fields in talent acquisition, mobility, development, and retention is a critical part of that process.
• High turnover in leadership-level positions across the board, possibly linked to burnout. This has a knock-on effect on succession planning. “People aren’t talking about the impact of burnout on leaders. As consultants, we’re seeing a lot of questions about how to think about succession at a time where leaders are tired and disillusioned.”
• Leaders face decisions about how to embrace new technologies for workforce efficiency, alongside concerns about responsible technology use, cyber security and possible impacts on staffing levels.
• Economic uncertainty, including the likelihood of a recession, is leading to caution in spending and investment, which makes a long-term focus difficult.
• Patel is also seeing an increasing demand from employees for soft skills from their leaders, particularly for communication and transparency.
All these factors lead to what Patel calls pivot fatigue. “It’s hard to think long-term when you are forced to act short-term on a daily basis. There’s uncertainty, there’s nervousness, there’s fatigue… and yet leaders must move forward. There’s work to be done, there’s business to be had, and there are people whose livelihoods depend upon it.”
How are employees doing?
Not well. The Deloitte 2025 Global Human Capital Trends Report estimates that about two-thirds of workers globally are overwhelmed by how quickly work is changing, and 49% are worried that the pace of change will leave them behind or make their skills redundant. “The average worker experiences 10 planned enterprise changes each year – including organisational restructuring, culture transformation, large technology initiatives, and more – up from two in 2016.”
What should leaders do?
The need to navigate uncertainty while managing complex internal and external dynamics requires a significant shift from traditional leadership styles.
The concept of “stagility” is a good place to start. Writing in the Deloitte report, Shannon Poynton, Sue Cantrell, Nic Scoble-Williams, David Mallon and Gaurav Lahiri say the ability for organisations to evolve and adopt new models of work depends mainly on the ability of the workforce to go along with them – and the ability of the workforce to adapt depends on a feeling of stability.
Providing stability while enabling organisational agility starts at the top, with a commitment to adaptive and agile leadership. The aim is to understand environmental complexities, recognise the need for change, and challenge the status quo. The key to doing this is the ability to devolve responsibility to teams who are empowered to experiment and learn from failure.
Jamie Garner, Head of Transformational Leadership with The Inzito Partnership / AltoPartners UK, says a nuanced approach to leadership development recognises the value of both skill acquisition (horizontal development) and deep, transformative growth (vertical development). In this new paradigm, leadership is not a title held by a few at the top: “It’s a quality that can be fostered across an organisation.”
On the stability side of the equation, the Deloitte report says leadership needs to find ways to anchor the work, the organisation and the worker. Traditional anchors like job descriptions, defined teams and hierarchical structures are being challenged. Finding new anchors across the three levels is a process that needs to take into account:
• Work: Use technology to create value for both the organisation and the worker, who should be empowered to restructure their work with AI. That also means acknowledging AI’s potential “silent impacts” such as increased workload, harder tasks, reduced autonomy, isolation, and fewer learning opportunities.
• Organisation: Develop structures focused on outcomes, not just actions, moving towards networks of multidisciplinary teams aligned to specific business outcomes. Cultivate workforce ecosystems that extend beyond organisational boundaries for upskilling and tapping into diverse talent pools.
• Worker: Focus on skills and potential more than rigid job descriptions. Understand individual workers’ motivations, interests, and passions to personalise their experience.
Patel says that the continuous transformation required in a “polycrisis” environment means leaders need to develop cross-cultural and international competency, crucial skills to anticipate geopolitical movements and diversify income streams. But – critically – leaders need to develop soft skills.
“People have become a lot louder about what their expectations are, about how they want to be communicated with. Employee experience is still a critical factor in organisations that we’ve worked with and are working with. But people are thinking about what that means today. It’s not just about celebrating their cultural norms and having soft conversations. It’s also about what we are doing to help employees feel like they belong, that they can participate, that they’re part of the solution, and that we hear them and that they’re valued.”
Written by Renee Moodie
Further reading:
Ask Alto : Burnout – what causes it and how to deal
Ask Alto: How to make AI work in your organisation
Rethinking Leadership: It’s Time to Get Personal and Listen
Ask Alto : What is strategic empathy, and why is it a key leadership skill in 2025?
How to be better at communicating bad news – a guide for CEOs in troubled times
AltoPartners Guide to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: Cultural competence and diversity initiatives
Reena Patel
Global Managing Partner, Consulting AltoPartners Mission Viejo