Adaptability is not a culture slogan. It is something you see in the way an organisation makes decisions, allocates resources and gets things done.

After working across projects, programmes, portfolios and transformation initiatives, one thing has become increasingly clear to me:

Most organisations don't struggle with change because their people don't want to change.

They struggle because the organisation itself makes change difficult.

We talk a lot about agility, resilience, innovation and embracing change. But when you look at what happens in practice, the real questions are much more down to earth:

  • Can people make decisions quickly enough?
  • Do leaders agree on what really matters?
  • Can resources move when priorities change?
  • Do teams understand who owns what?
  • Can the organisation stop something that is no longer delivering value?

And perhaps most importantly: can a good strategy actually make its way into everyday execution?

Adaptability shows up when things don't go according to plan

You don't really see how adaptable an organisation is when everything is going well.

  • You see it when the market changes.
  • When a major programme starts slipping.
  • When a new technology suddenly changes the assumptions behind the strategy.
  • When two priorities compete for the same people.
  • When leadership changes.
  • When an initiative that looked promising six months ago is no longer the right investment.

That is when the organisation's real operating model becomes visible.

And I have seen this repeatedly: organisations can have very capable people, good strategies and significant investment—and still struggle to respond.

Not because people don't care. Because the system around them is too slow, too fragmented or too unclear.

Start with clarity

The first thing I look for is usually quite simple: do people actually agree on where they are going?

It sounds obvious, but it isn't.

Leadership teams can sit around the same table and use the same strategic language while having very different interpretations of what it means in practice.

  • One executive is pushing growth.
  • Another is focused on efficiency.
  • Another is protecting an existing business.
  • Another is investing heavily in technology.

All of these priorities can be legitimate.

But an organisation cannot execute five competing priorities with the same level of urgency.

Adaptability starts with making those choices explicit. What matters most? What needs to change? What can wait? And what are we prepared to stop doing?

Leadership is also about making decisions

I have learned that governance can easily become a substitute for leadership.

Organisations create committees, steering groups, reporting structures and approval processes in an attempt to manage complexity.

But sometimes all they achieve is moving the decision one level further away from the person who needs to make it.

Good governance should create clarity. It should make accountability visible. And, above all, it should help the organisation make the right decision in time.

A decision made three months too late is often not a good decision anymore.

Adaptability is therefore not about making every decision faster. It is about making the important decisions fast enough.

Your operating model can either help or fight your strategy

This is another area where I see a recurring disconnect.

An organisation decides it wants to become more customer-centric, digital, data-driven or AI-enabled.

Then it tries to implement the ambition using structures, processes, roles and technologies that were designed for a different organisation.

That creates friction.

  • People start working around the system rather than with it.
  • Responsibilities become blurred.
  • Projects multiply.
  • Technology investments don't always translate into business value.

And eventually someone concludes that the organisation has a change resistance problem.

Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the organisation simply hasn't been redesigned to support the change it is asking people to make.

And then comes execution

This is probably the part I care about most.

Because I have seen enough strategies to know that producing a good strategy is rarely the hardest part. The difficult part comes afterwards.

  • Who owns it?
  • What happens first?
  • Do we have the capacity?
  • What needs to stop?
  • How do we know whether we're actually making progress?
  • What value are we expecting?
  • And what do we do when the plan isn't working?

This is where the gap between strategy and execution appears. And it is often much less glamorous than the strategy itself.

It is about priorities. Dependencies. People. Governance. Decisions. Measurement. Follow-through. The things that don't always make it onto the strategy slide—but ultimately determine whether the strategy becomes reality.

So, what does an adaptable organisation look like?

For me, it is not an organisation where everyone is constantly changing direction. Quite the opposite.

It is an organisation with enough clarity and discipline to change direction when it needs to—and stay the course when it doesn't.

That requires four things to work together:

  • Assess. Understand where you are and what is changing.
  • Lead. Create alignment, ownership and decision-making.
  • Build. Make sure the organisation, technology and capabilities can support the ambition.
  • Accelerate. Turn decisions into execution, measure what matters and adjust when necessary.

These are also the four dimensions I use in the ALBA Transformation Readiness Assessment when looking at an organisation's ability to navigate transformation.

But ultimately, adaptability isn't about a framework.

It's about what happens on a Tuesday morning when priorities change and someone has to decide what happens next. That's where organisational adaptability becomes real.

A question I often come back to

If your strategy changed tomorrow, could your organisation change with it?

Not on paper. Not in a presentation. In practice.