If you’ve ever experienced a traumatic event that was a “close call” – i.e. a horrific traffic accident or a medical emergency – it’s quite likely that afterwards you went through several steps. First there was a sense-making process where you sought to understand what/why/how it happened. Then you did some memory-building to create a narrative about what happened (for yourself or to share with others), and finally you went through a meaning-making process to reconnect with the world in a meaningful way.
“I was meant to be here to see my son get married next year” you might say. Or, if you’re spiritual, you may determine that “God wasn’t done with me yet; I still have a purpose to fulfill.”
This sort of meaning-making is a very human process of creating subjective value and purpose while developing understanding from new situations or events. This interpretive process, often in response to a challenge or disruption, if how we attempt to make sense of both the now and the future in ways that give us both purpose and a desirable existential context.
As humans, meaning-making is about relating whatever is happening (an event, a situation, a bit of drama) to our internal (and highly personal) world. It’s asking and answering the questions:
- “What does this situation signify …to me?”
- “How does it impact my family, my community, or my organization?”
- “What are the implications for me?”
This meaning-making, while highly personal, trickles into the workplace too – no matter our role. And successful leaders in the brave new future we’re rushing headlong into best start mastering something I call “meaning-making in the face of velocity.”
Moving at the Speed of You-Know-What
We’re already in an era where the ground is shifting rapidly and constantly; technology disrupts faster than we can adapt, market conditions pivot before we can go to lunch, organizational structures morph quarterly, and entire job categories appear and vanish like corporate initiatives no one wanted in the first place. It’s like we’re trying to build a house during an earthquake – except the earthquake never stops, and someone keeps moving the blueprints.
The traditional leadership response to this sort of volatility has been to seek stability with five-year plans, clear processes and projected outcomes. But doing those things does nothing because this house we’re building keeps cracking … and no amount of strategic planning can stop it.
The leaders who thrive in this era of speed and acceleration won’t be the ones who can hold things perfectly still (hint: because they can’t). Instead, they’ll be the ones who can help people find coherence and purpose despite the pandemonium. The ones who can translate constant change into language and a narrative that makes sense and connects today’s uncertainty to something people will want to invest in … rather than just endure.
Being able to create clarity and help other move forward with intention requires three interwoven competencies: interpretive agility, identity stewardship, and bounded flexibility.
Interpretive Agility
Let me clarify what I mean here. I’m not talking about being an agile enterprise, but rather about the individual leader’s ability to move quickly and easily during times of flux – and more importantly, to help others do the same. The “interpretive” part though is where most leaders stumble; because it’s not just explaining what is changing, it’s also translating that change into terms that matter to people. It’s explaining change in ways that resonate with individuals and feel deeply personal – and not just like another announcement in the company-wide Teams chat.
After all, when AI reshapes roles (again) or strategy pivots (again) or goals get reset (one more time), the question isn’t just “what do we do now?” it’s “what does this mean for my job? For my career?” For my sense of worth?”
Leaders need to be almost anthropological in understanding how different people make sense of change and disruption, because a 25-year-old and a 50-year-old aren’t just experiencing the same change differently – they’re also experiencing fundamentally different threats and opportunities. One may see possibility while the other sees obsolescence, and your job isn’t to pretend both perspectives are wrong or right or somewhere in the middle, Your job is, however, to help each person find their footing in the reality they’re envisioning for themselves.
Think of it this way: when you announce a major IT platform migration, the engineer who learned to code in the ’90s hears “your expertise just became legacy” while the recent hire hears “we’re finally getting modern tools.” If your communication strategy treats both of them as if they heard the same message and are experiencing the same emotions, you’ve already lost half the room.
Interpretive agility means translating change into language that resonates with everyone where they are … not just where you think they should be.
Identity Stewardship
Per an article in Business Insider last week, “MIT just released a study that found that AI can already replace 11.7% of the US labor market. The study utilized a labor simulation tool called the Iceberg Index, which models 151 million US workers and measures how AI overlaps with skills in each occupation.”
Think about that. When someone’s expertise becomes obsolete or their role transforms beyond recognition, they’re not just being moved out of a job/job function – they’re also experiencing professional grief.
And let’s be brutally honest; we pretty much suck at this part of managing corporate change. We announce the restructure, offer the reskilling program, and check all the boxes. But we rarely acknowledge how someone’s sense of professional identity is being dismantled – piece by piece – in real-time. Usually in a conference room with terrible lighting and a Webex camera that makes everyone look like hostages.
The leaders who’ll excel understand they’re not just managing tasks or even careers – they’re helping people navigate identity transitions. You’re a guide for people crossing a river where the stones keep moving. You’re not carrying them across – you can’t. But you are helping them find their footing again and again and again …without making them feel weak for needing the help.
Helping people navigate this journey means knowing when, as the leader, to push and when to hold still. It means not treating every moment of resistance as obstruction, but knowing that a “pause” may be necessary.
Bounded Flexibility
This sounds paradoxical, but when they’re in constant flux, people don’t need everything to be fluid; that’s just going to make them feel exhausted and disoriented, Being flexible as an organization doesn’t mean that processes, principles, and promises are all subject to change based on the quarter’s priorities nor is everything negotiable. That’s not flexibility, it’s vertigo.
Bounded flexibility, on the other hand, means being able to adjust and pivot as needed while simultaneously being crystal clear about your organizational anchors: “we will not compromise on x,” or “our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion will never change.” Having defined fenceposts and guardrails allow people to breathe.
Here’s what that might look like in practice: your company is going through its third restructure in two years. (Congratulations, you’re in good company.) But instead of pretending it’s an “exciting transformation,” you say: “We know this is unsettling and you may have concerns and questions. Here’s what’s changing and why. Here’s what’s not changing – your manager relationships, our commitment to development, the values we use to make decisions. Here’s what we don’t know yet, and here’s when we’ll know more.”
You’re acknowledging the bedlam and helping people navigate the situation (even the uncertainty!) without losing their minds.
The Meta-Skill: Deep Human Pattern Recognition
Underneath all of this sits a fundamental capability: deep human pattern recognition. Not in the data science sense, but in the wisdom sense. It’s about understanding how people respond to threat and what gives them resilience. It’s having the ability to understand how meaning gets constructed … and destroyed and reconstructed.
This isn’t soft skill territory – it’s survival intelligence. Because when everything else is uncertain – understanding the fundamental patterns of human psychology becomes the leader’s most reliable map. It’s being tuned in and recognizing when someone’s silence in meetings is strategic withdrawal versus them being overwhelmed. It’s recognizing the need to wonder if, when your team pushes back on a new initiative, it’s due to resistance to change or, perhaps, a legitimate concern about a flawed approach.
Many leaders default to assumptions. The best ones get curious.
Those leaders ask questions that uncover what’s really happening beneath the surface and notice patterns across individuals and teams. They understand that human behavior under stress is predictable and that speed/velocity can be a key contributing factor. Being curious requires paying attention at a time when most of us aren’t … because we’re too busy managing the acceleration ourselves.
The Work Ahead
The leaders who develop these capabilities won’t just survive the velocity – they’ll also help their people grow through it rather than just endure it. Meaning-making in the face of velocity isn’t just a nice-to-have leadership capability – it might just be the difference between organizations that transform successfully and those that don’t. Leadership in times of rapid change takes courage and fortitude, but we can help employees navigate workplace change and uncertainty when we remember the very human need to find meaning.
The hardest part is that many of us weren’t trained for this; we learned to lead in a world that moved slower. We started working when corporate stability was achievable and a strategic plan had a shelf life longer than yogurt.
Yet here we are – meaning making in the face of velocity even as we help others do the same. Helping people in our organizations find their footing when the ground won’t stop moving.
Because it’s not slowing down.
