It's Time to Cut the Chaos and Let Leaders Truly Lead

Forbes

4 days ago

Leadership is broken.
The issue isn't with the leaders themselves, but with the expectations we've built around them. We hand them a job description that reads like a superhero origin story, then shackle them with process, politics, and unrealistic expectations. We ask them to lead with courage – but speak with caution. We demand agility – but bury them in red tape. We want decisive action – but require consensus or a committee for every move. We ask that they hit their numbers – but don't push your team too hard. In short: leaders are handcuffed – and it's costing us more than we realize.
I once led a strategy workshop for a group of Fortune 500 manufacturing executives. The goal? To ignite true strategic transformation from the inside out. Their planning process had grown stale – short-sighted, ineffective, and void of bold vision.
As a futurist, my role was to provoke fresh insight and decisive action. I introduced them to my Kill the Company exercise, where leaders are asked to think like their fiercest competitors and brainstorm how they would put their own company out of business. The goal is to expose vulnerabilities and name what's broken – out loud – so we can fix it. It's an exercise designed to stop politics and performance and address real issues head-on.
At first, the group hesitated. Their culture wasn't built for this kind of raw honesty. But once they realized they had permission to speak freely, everything changed. What was scheduled as a two-hour exercise turned into the day's entire agenda.
Why? Because they'd never been invited - let alone encouraged - to be this direct. To name the real problems, unshackled by politics or fear.
As one executive told me afterward, excited by what had been accomplished: 'It's not that we don't know what to do. It's that we're afraid to do it.'
A System on the Brink
Teams are exhausted, but so are leaders. Let's talk about the reality many leaders face:
An LHH survey of over 2,600 global executives found that 56% of leaders experienced burnout in 2024, and 43% of companies lost at least half of their leadership teams within the past year as a result.
In DDI's 2025 Global Leadership Forecast, 40% of stressed leaders say they've considered leaving leadership to preserve their well‑being—underscoring a risk of talent pipeline breakdowns from burnout-led departures.
And it's no wonder. Leaders today are expected to be:
All while navigating:
Who would want that job?
From Change to Chaos
Here's the shift no one wants to say out loud: we're not just navigating change anymore—we're managing chaos.
As McKinsey notes in The State of Organizations 2023, 'volatility is a feature, not a bug, in today's organizations,' with just half of surveyed leaders believing their organization is prepared to respond to future shocks. Instead of driving proactive change, leaders feel stuck in cycles of reaction, burnout, and reactivity. The more complexity we add, the more brittle our organizations become.
The result? Leaders are forced into a whack-a-mole approach to daily work, trying to tamp down issues and mitigate constant surprises. After a recent keynote I gave at a healthcare company on leading through change, a VP of Strategy commented: 'We used to manage change. Now we survive it.'
Employees are looking to leaders for clarity. Yet what they're often met with is scripted corporate-speak that says everything, and means nothing; messages so heavily polished by corporate communications that they're stripped of substance entirely.
Because behind every all-hands address is a mental loop that sounds like this:
Be bold—but not too bold. Be clear—but avoid controversy. Lead change—without leaving anyone behind. Drive innovation—but don't risk mistakes. Be human—but also superhuman.
It's leadership in a straitjacket. And it's killing momentum, trust, and morale.
The Cost of Complexity and Chaos
Complexity and constant change are both expensive and destructive. Consider the impact:
Meanwhile, simple, focused leadership yields extraordinary results. Research from the Simplicity Index by Siegel+Gale shows that since 2009, the brands and organizations that simplify outperform their peers on the major indexes by 1600% in the stock market. Why? Because simplicity and clarity drive speed, trust, and customer loyalty.
And that just makes business sense.
Case in Point: Project Raindrop at AT&T
AT&T launched an internal initiative called Project Raindrop to crowdsource simplification ideas from employees. The results were staggering. Teams cut time-to-completion on key tasks by up to 80%, reduced internal email clutter, and saved nearly 3.6 million work hours annually – equivalent to $230 million in reclaimed value.
What made it work? Leaders listened. They empowered employees to call out unnecessary rules. Simplification and clarity became a leadership act – not an administrative task.
We Need a Better Way to Lead.
Leadership today isn't simply a skill problem. It's a system problem.
This won't be solved by the typical solution: executive coaching. We need a culture shift that gives leaders permission to lead clearly, decisively, and unapologetically – with clarity over complexity, purpose over politics, and action over appearance.
Here's how we begin to fit it. Not with more talk, but with three bold shifts leaders can make right now:
'Clarity is kindness. Ambiguity breeds confusion and chaos.' — Brené Brown
Forget motivational posters. People are tired of word salads that sound good but say nothing. They're exhausted from jargon and unclear direction. The bravest thing a leader can do right now is say what needs to be said – with specificity, honesty, and focus.
That means setting goals that are bold and achievable. It means saying 'no' to distractions. It means being direct about expectations, implications, responsibilities and performance – kindly, but without compromise.
Years ago at Merck Canada, internal communications were flooded with email overload. Their solution? One simple rule: any email that didn't require a reply had to begin with 'NNTR' (No Need to Respond). Within months, internal email traffic dropped, and productivity and satisfaction improved.
Simplification saves money, time, and energy because it lets you operate with clarity. But more than that – it restores sanity. It gives teams room to think, act, and breathe.
We need leaders to continually challenge the status quo and eliminate what's not working to make space for what does. If we want speed, subtraction must be as important as addition. Simplifying lets us not just do less – but do what matters most.
'The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.' — Michael Porter
Boundaries are not barriers — they are guardrails that free people to focus.
Clear boundaries around meetings, scope, expectations, and communication protect our time, energy, and attention. They empower us to say yes with intention and no with purpose.
While clarity tells people where we're going and why it matters, boundaries define how we get there together—safely, sanely, and with focus. That means establishing limits on time, scope, and energy to enable bold, clear action.
In early 2023, Shopify made headlines by deleting 76,500 hours of meetings from employee calendars. They initiated a 'calendar purge,' canceling all recurring meetings with more than two people—requiring teams to rejustify them from scratch. This was a bold boundary: you can't take people's time without good reason.
It's time to put guardrails back in place. Without boundaries around priorities, decisions, and timelines, we risk operating in chaos and fear instead of clarity and confidence.
The Time Is Now
We're standing at a crossroads. We can either continue to drown in chaos, clinging to outdated ideals of what leadership should be, or we can choose a better path.
Let leaders lead. Give them space to think. Give them tools to simplify. Give them the trust to speak plainly, set clear boundaries, and challenge the clutter.
Let's reclaim leadership now.