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Reinvention or Risk? Why the Future Belongs to the Bold

Recent global shifts aren’t just trends—they’re turning points. Turning points in how we define performance, lead through ambiguity, and balance today’s demands with tomorrow’s imperatives. The question isn’t whether transformation is needed. It’s whether leaders are ready to reimagine what leadership really requires.

• Is complexity quietly killing innovation?
• Are we bold enough to bet on future customers, not just optimise for today’s?
• What if the real competitive edge isn’t the newest tech—but the most adaptive culture?
• If the case for transformation is so clear, why is change still so slow?

Here’s what’s defining the leadership landscape recently.

The CEO View: Optimism Meets Urgency

Last month, we discussed PwC’s latest Global CEO Survey:

• 60% of CEOs expect economic growth to accelerate this year.
• 42% plan to expand their workforce.
• Yet 42% believe their company won’t survive the next decade without major reinvention.

The paradox is clear: optimism about short-term performance exists alongside deep anxiety about long-term survival. CEOs know their organisations must fundamentally change, yet legacy systems, thinking and cultures are still firmly in place.

Across all the data, one theme stands out: Leaders know what needs to change, but that change isn’t happening fast enough.

• Too many organisations are still chasing short-term efficiency rather than long-term reinvention.
• Transformation is being stalled by outdated metrics, risk-averse mindsets, and the weight of legacy systems.
• Strategic clarity is getting drowned in operational noise.

Leaders are aware that AI, talent, and sustainability must be at the core of transformation—but their organisations remain locked in legacy systems, old success metrics and fear-based decision-making.

Transformation isn’t about awareness—it’s about bold execution. And right now, clarity of purpose is getting lost in operational complexity.

Leadership Imperative

In 2025 and beyond, the most competitive leaders won’t just adjust their strategies—they’ll reimagine what “good” looks like. This means rewarding calculated risk-taking, ditching outdated KPIs and driving cultural buy-in for innovation at every level.

Leaders know what needs to change. But doing it at speed remains elusive.

Transformation isn’t about adding more—it’s about clearing space for bold bets and aligning execution with vision. Leaders must stop chasing marginal gains and start building for the next decade.

As a leader, are you focused on incremental improvement—or meaningful reinvention?

Complexity is the New Constraint

We often hear that “things are changing too fast to keep up.” But another possibility is emerging:

The perception of change is increasing, while the capacity for real transformation is shrinking.

But why?

• Too many priorities make it hard to prioritise.
• Too much complexity makes decision-making sluggish.
• Too much data exists without insight and too much noise exist without enough narrative.

As a result, change feels constant but action feels stuck. Leaders are increasingly reactive rather than proactive, chasing efficiency rather than embracing bold reinvention. Even high-performing teams are at risk of falling into inertia. Strategy becomes performative; transformation gets stuck in committees.

The cost? Organisational energy is being drained by confusion and caution, while the growing complexity of work, increasingly team-based structures and ongoing digital disruption are further driving the shift away from traditional and familiar models.

Traditional bonus models and rigid planning cycles? They’re increasingly misaligned with how work actually gets done.

Arguably we’re optimising for a world that no longer exists.

Leadership Imperative

This isn’t about working harder—it’s about working clearer. Leaders need to simplify where they can, clarify what matters, and create space for execution.

But the real leadership challenge isn’t just “how do we build high-performing teams?”—it’s how do we create the clarity and conditions that allow teams to perform in the first place?

Leaders must:

• Focus not only on efficiency, but on eliminating wasteful complexity.
• Invest in the structures that enable adaptive, cross-functional collaboration—not just more tech.
• Create psychological safety for learning and experimentation—especially when the guardrails keep shifting.

Performance management is another urgent area for leadership reimagination. Not just changing what we measure, but also how we talk about performance: ongoing conversations, collaborative results, and recognition of how goals are achieved—not just whether they are.

The most innovative organisations won’t just invent the future. They’ll redesign how they work, how they define progress, and how they reimagine performance.

Failure, Intrapreneurship, and the Real Culture of Innovation

Leaders love to talk about “failing fast” and “building innovation cultures”, but what does that look like in practice?

• Select companies like Tata, Engie, and Google are rewarding failure as a source of learning.
• Some are renaming these to “Best Nearlings” to reduce stigma.
• Organisations are recognising that calculated failure is a strategic asset, not a liability.

At last month’s Senior Leaders Breakfast Briefing, Oonagh O’Hagan of Meaghers Pharmacy shared that it took five years of missteps to get their digital transformation right. When the market finally caught up, they had their infrastructure and winning strategy in place, along with five years of learnings.

The lesson? The organisations that experiment early can thrive when the market shifts.

Yet most companies are still afraid of failure. Risk aversion is baked into culture, incentives and leadership expectations. The real blockers to innovation aren’t tools, tech or talent. It’s leadership mindset and an obsession with immediate ROI.

True efficiency is often unknown until tested. And genuine breakthroughs don’t tend to follow traditional project management cycles. Organisations obsessed with immediate results don’t reward experimentation, and they definitely don’t reward intelligent failure.

Innovation becomes a house of cards when it’s built on outcomes without structure—or worse, when it’s not allowed to fail at all. We keep hearing that adaptability, creativity, and agility are crucial, yet no one rewards the person who fails as part of the innovation process.

Except for a few of the most innovative companies in the world.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Leadership Imperative

To build truly innovative cultures, leaders must:

• De-risk failure internally, making it a normal part of growth.
• Reward intrapreneurship, not just results.
• Champion learning over perfection, especially in emerging domains like AI and sustainability

Failure doesn’t need to be a setback — it’s a strategic asset, especially in high-trust cultures that are focused on learning velocity over flawless execution.

AI: High Adoption, Low Trust

AI adoption in Ireland has nearly doubled in a year, rising to 91% in 2025. Yet only 8% of organisations are taking an “AI-first” approach.

According to recent research from Trinity College Dublin:

• Shadow AI is spreading, with minimal governance
• Most leaders are still viewing AI as a tool—not a transformational force
• SMEs face growing pressure to adopt—but lack clear pathways to do so effectively

This gap between AI experimentation and execution is widening, with a growing divide in AI governance, culture and capability — particularly between public and private sectors, and between SMEs and global players.

Meanwhile, global players are embedding AI into everything from supply chains to strategy. Ireland has the potential to add €250 billion to GDP by 2035 through AI. But this upside won’t materialise unless leaders shift from experimentation to execution, and from tools to transformation.

At the same time, there must be caution around over-adoption without real understanding. Leaders don’t need to be data scientists, but they do need to grasp what AI can and can’t do – and who’s responsible when it doesn’t work.

Leadership Imperative

While the potential upside of AI is massive, realising that potential requires leaders to move from “wait and see” to “test and scale.” But AI isn’t a plug-and-play solution. It needs clear policies, cultural buy-in, and talent pipelines that match ambition.

Leaders must build AI into strategic planning now—not after a regulatory roadmap arrives. The winners will be those who can innovate within the guardrails—embedding AI into workflows while managing risks and enabling workforce adaptation.

Leaders must also shift their mindset. Under the old knowledge hierarchy, experience equalled expertise. In a digital and AI-first world, your most junior team member might be your best-informed. It’s important they feel safe enough to contribute, which brings us back to the traditional leadership challenges of psychological safety and leadership adaptability.

As a leader, are you building an AI-first mindset—or just waiting for clarity that may never arrive?

The Irish Challenge: Talent, Infrastructure, and Dependency

As discussed in last month’s edition, Ireland’s economic outlook is shaped by external forces and internal constraints. The challenge isn’t just growth—it’s sustainable, sovereign and innovation-led growth. And that challenge is intensifying:

• Housing shortages and a globally competitive labour market are constraining the talent pipeline.
• Infrastructure bottlenecks—from transport to digital connectivity—are limiting the speed and scale of transformation.
• Economic reliance on FDI leaves domestic strategy vulnerable to global decisions.

This isn’t just a government problem. It’s a leadership issue. If Ireland can’t retain or support its talent base, companies will struggle—regardless of ambition. Leading through uncertainty means confronting these structural headwinds head-on—without waiting for perfect conditions. The leaders who will shape the next era of Irish business can’t wait for the system to fix itself. They must lead with clarity, creativity and courage in the face of ambiguity.

Enterprise Ireland’s new 2025–2029 strategy, Delivering for Ireland, Leading Globally signals a major ambition to future-proof the Irish economy through innovation, scaling, and sustainability:

• 1,000 new startups
• €50bn in exports
• 275,000 jobs in EI-backed firms
• €2.2bn annually in R&D
• 35% CO2 reduction and 3% annual productivity growth

But none of this happens without rethinking how we scale: not just chasing growth, but building innovation systems, strengthening domestic-global links, and investing in intrapreneurship, skills, and sustainability. It demands leaders who can translate vision into executable strategy—across functions, across timelines, and across uncertainty. This is where the foundational capabilities of IMI’s Leadership Model including Executing Strategy, Functional Excellence, and Leading Others become essential.

Leadership Imperative

Execution will depend heavily on solving for skills, innovation, and long-term resilience, and the most progressive leaders in Ireland today understand that economic growth won’t come from simply doing more of the same. These leaders aren’t just trying to survive—they’re redefining success entirely.

They are:

• Championing intrapreneurship and creating space for internal innovation.
• Investing in scenario planning and adaptability as core competencies.
• Re-anchoring their organisations around the customers of tomorrow—not the assumptions of yesterday.

These are not the hallmarks of incrementalism. They are the signals of transformation. The biggest risk in 2025 isn’t recession. It’s stagnation. The best leaders won’t just optimise for efficiency—they’ll reimagine what success looks like.

As the gap widens between awareness and action, the time for incrementalism must end. The future will reward those willing to make bold moves, take calculated risks, and transform not just their products—but their entire approach to leadership.

In a world of compounding complexity, the leaders who will thrive are those who build their organisations to move forward—even when the path isn’t fully visible. It’s not about waiting for uncertainty to pass. It’s about leading through it—with clarity of purpose, bold decision-making, and a willingness to bet on the future.

IMI Research Corner: Performance, Inclusion and Hybrid

In the face of US-led backlash against DEI, controversial return-to-office mandates, and unrelenting hype around AI, many senior leaders are asking a quiet but urgent question: What actually drives high performance today?

We put that question to IMI’s community in recent masterclasses and events—and the answers challenge some prevailing narratives.

On hybrid work, only 5.3% believe a full return to the office will strengthen teams. The overwhelming majority see nuance:

• 50% say it’s a double-edged sword, potentially improving collaboration but damaging talent attraction.
• 39.4% believe it will weaken teams by harming flexibility and work-life balance.
• Just 5.3% say there’s no real impact either way.

On DEI, the direction of travel is clear. Despite headline-grabbing rollbacks elsewhere, 97% of leaders said they intend to maintain or expand their inclusion efforts:

• 53.8% will continue investing while adapting to changing expectations.
• 43.8% plan to double down and publicly demonstrate the business value of inclusion.
• Only 2.7% said DEI should be scaled back to avoid controversy.

When asked about the biggest challenge to high performance over the next five years, AI was not the top concern:

• 42.2% pointed to the difficulty of developing leaders for an uncertain, fast-changing world.
• 19.6% cited the challenge of engaging hybrid teams.
• 18.6% are worried about keeping up with the pace of AI and technology.
• 16.5% focused on attracting and retaining top talent.

Overall, leaders are sceptical about the one-size-fits-all return-to-office push. The majority see nuance—acknowledging that while physical presence might help collaboration, the cost to engagement and retention could be too high.

Similarly, for IMI clients and members, inclusion is clearly more than a compliance checkbox—it’s seen as a strategic differentiator, particularly in relation to innovation and talent. Even in an era of global backlash, few are retreating. Our community sees inclusion not as a PR play, but a strategic lever for innovation, performance, and future-fit leadership.

Leadership Imperative

High-performing teams in 2025 and beyond aren’t built through top-down mandates or superficial shifts. They’re cultivated through adaptability, inclusion, psychological safety, and a rethinking of how success is defined and rewarded.

For leaders, this means:

• Moving beyond rigid goal-setting and into ongoing conversations about performance
• Valuing collaboration and experimentation over traditional, individualised rewards
• Creating environments where diverse voices can shape innovation.

The future of high performance isn’t about returning to what worked before. It’s about reimagining what works now—and for the future.