How Can We Be More Adaptable As a Leadership Team?
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
In this episode, I dive into what it really takes to build an adaptive leadership team. When the world changes fast, your ability to adjust without losing direction can make or break your success—here’s how to create the foundation for adaptability that lasts.
The Big Question
How can we, as a leadership team, stay adaptable in the face of external and internal change?
Are we sticking to a plan because it’s still right, or just because it’s comfortable?
Or worse, are we discarding plans entirely when they no longer fit—leaving everyone to act independently without alignment?
Signals That Your Plan No Longer Serves You
Major external changes like recessions, pandemics, AI disruption, or policy shifts.
Flatlining or declining KPIs: revenue, profitability, leads, cash flow, engagement.
Team buy-in is dwindling: people no longer believe in or follow the plan.
Siloed execution: departments moving in different directions.
The plan is clearly not delivering the intended results.
How I’ve Seen the Most Adaptive Companies Respond
1. Monitor the Signals
Check KPIs, market shifts, customer feedback, and team morale weekly.
Build this into your team’s weekly, monthly, and quarterly meeting rhythms.
2. Anchor with Long-Term and Mid-Term Vision
Long-Term Vision (10–15 years):
Define your purpose and a bold, inspiring goal (BHAG).
Adapt strategies, not your purpose.
Mid-Term Vision (3 years):
Set achievable financial targets and 2–4 major initiatives.
Revisit only when necessary—avoid changing plans just because the wind shifts.
3. Maintain an Annual Planning Process
Don’t skip annual planning, even in fast-changing environments.
Annual plans provide structure and intent.
Adapt how you reach goals, not whether you set them.
Embedding Adaptability Through Cadence and Culture
Quarterly Planning
The most important piece of your planning process.
Each quarter:
Reassess the annual plan—does it still make sense?
Update your 90-day priorities accordingly.
Monthly Check-Ins
Review progress on quarterly goals (ROCs).
Adjust strategies as needed.
Discuss any shifts as a team—not in silos.
Weekly Rhythm
Keep everyone accountable.
Create space for emerging feedback from customers, the industry, and the team.
Ensure quick detection and resolution of needed changes.
Culture as the Bedrock of Adaptability
Make it more than okay to challenge the plan.
Foster vulnerability and open feedback.
Encourage team members to say:
“I don’t think this plan works anymore.”
“I need help.”
The Right People Make All the Difference
You need people who are:
Mature, skilled, confident.
Willing to challenge the status quo.
Able to take ownership instead of just following orders.
A Question You Can Ask Today
Ask your team: “Is there something about our current course of action that no longer serves us?”
Or try a stop exercise: “What are we doing today that we should stop?”
Thanks for listening!
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How could we be more adaptive as a leadership team? How do we make sure when things change externally in the world, internally in our industry or our business, how do we make sure that we're not running on an old plan that doesn't make sense anymore or. As bad just disregarding the plans we have because they don't fit anymore.
When things change, as we've seen back, you know, great recession or covid or tariffs or whatever's going on in the world or in your company, are you holding onto your plan because it's right. Or are you holding onto your plan because it's comfortable or are you not even holding onto your plan?
Are you just disregarding it because you created a plan at the beginning of the year? It no longer makes any sense. So everybody's just working as hard as they can, working as smart as they can, but you're disregarding the old plan.
Let's start with what the signals are that might tell you your plan doesn't make sense anymore. And then what I wanna do is describe what I have seen, what a lot of my clients have done to make sure that they're creating an environment of adaptability. Adaptability is not. Just about making quick decisions in the moment.
Be smart about where, being smart about where the market's going. It happens way before that. It happens with the creation of, an environment and a culture and a rhythm that allows for that adaptability. But again, let's start with what some of the signals are that. Tell you maybe something has changed and maybe your plan doesn't make sense anymore.
and one of those signals are, you know, the obvious one. There's a major external change, something around global trade and tariffs. Maybe something, you know, the COVID was the great recession was, you know, any number of. Changes, and it doesn't have to be that big. It could be just a change in your industry.
It could be how AI is impacting your industry. But one, the obvious signal is there's some external change that you need to account for. Now, another way to see change is your KPIs. Your key performance indicators are flatlining, you know, or shrinking. You are. Not even close to your targets, whether it's revenue, whether it's profitability, whether it's the number of marketing qualified leads coming in, or your cash flow or client engagement, whatever it is.
Sometimes it's flatline KPIs that tell you there's some change going on in the world or in the industry or in your company that you're not accounting for. Another signal is dwindling. Team buy-in the team no longer believes that the plan makes sense. So they're either sleepwalking through,execution of that plan, knowing that's what they're being told to do, but it's not the right thing.
or they're disregarding it in total. And then again, everybody's just working real hard and smart. But it happens in silos. We need everyone aligned. We don't need sales and marketing and operations and service all separately working hard and doing what they think is the smart thing to do for their function.
We've gotta be aligned. So there are signals that something's going on and we've got to be flexible. We've gotta adapt our plan. By the way, another signal is just, you know, your plan isn't working. So do we keep working a plan that's not successful, or do we adapt?
So let's talk a little bit about how we create a more adaptive environment, and it starts with monitoring those signals.
We just talked about. As easy as that sounds, if you are not looking at least weekly at your KPIs, if you are not monitoring how engaged your team is, if you're not monitoring the news of the world going on, if you're not monitoring the voice of your client or customer, you're gonna miss the ability to adapt.
So it starts with. Monitoring the signals and not just doing that as an individual, but talking about that as a team. In your weekly or monthly and or quarterly meetings, are you talking about the voice of the customer? Are you talking about the marketplace and how and if it's changing? So first you've gotta monitor the signals.
The second thing, and this is almost gonna sound counterintuitive. But you need a long-term plan and a midterm plan or a long-term vision, and then a midterm vision and plan. Now that sounds like that would cause you to not to be adaptable. We've got this long-term thing that's getting in the way of us making short-term changes.
But here's one of the things that's super critical, is. If we are adaptable, which is typically a good thing, being adaptable without some longer term vision for the company, without some midterm, you know, long term, 10 or 15 years, midterm, three years. Without that vision and without some semblance of a strategy and plan, we wind up just being adaptive by going whichever way the wind blows.
And before we know it, we don't recognize our company anymore, and we are not living consistent with our purpose. So when I say long-term vision, that starts with your purpose as an organization. Why do you exist? When you adapt In the short term, you wanna make sure you're adapting to a plan. Changing your company if need be, to one that's still consistent with why you exist.
So part of your long-term vision is your purpose, and part of it is what Jim Collins calls your big, hairy, audacious goal, your 10 to 15 year flag on top of the mountain, what is it that you want to create? Now, sometimes adapting in the short term means. You need to change your long-term vision, but more often than not, your long-term vision doesn't change.
Your method of getting there might change. Your reason for being your purpose doesn't change, but your method of living that purpose may change. Your big, hairy, audacious goal may not change, but your way of getting there may change or maybe your timeframe. Changes a little bit. Now that long-term vision might change, but man, that ought to be the exception, not the rule.
And we need to use that long-term vision as our North Star when we're being adaptive in the short term. Now, the midterm vision is important too. You are typically, I think of that as a three year. Instead of a big, hairy, audacious goal, it's a three year highly achievable goal that comes with some financial targets that comes with two or three or four major initiatives and differentiators that help you to get there.
And again, it may be that something like tariffs or covid or recession, it might impact where you want to go in three years. But the first thing you want to do is say, wait a minute, how can we keep that three year vision and that three year strategy intact again? We just might change what we're doing in the short term to get there.
'cause just like the longer term vision, if every time the world changes, we're changing our three year strategy and our three year plan and our three year targets. We're gonna wind up as a company blowing with the wind and being all over the place. So you might change it, but that's not what you ought to initially be doing.
So number one, we need to monitor the signals. Number two, we do need that long term and midterm vision.
And then number three, and again, this might sound counterintuitive, is we need an annual planning process. Remember, we're creating a foundation for being adaptable. Yeah. Part of that foundation is sometime towards the end of one year.
For a lot of us, we are planning the next year. Being adaptable doesn't mean you're not creating that plan. I have had leaders say, why are we even planning the world is changing so fast that we don't need a plan? Or why are we setting goals? The world is changing so fast. I believe that's the wrong thing to do.
I still think you need that annual plan. Now we're gonna talk about how to make that plan more flexible and adaptable. But just like you need the long-term vision and the midterm vision, we need a one year set of targets. We need a one year set of priorities because again, when the world changes, the first action is not to disregard those plans.
The first action is to say, how do we still, is there a way we can still make those plans come true? We just have to come at it in a different way. But if I'm at point A, I need to know where I want point B to be, and my one year planning, my three year planning, my 10 to 15 year planning, make sure I have some anchoring in place.
But now let's get to the part that is where you're actually. More adaptive given those anchoring visions and strategies and plans. Assuming you've got an annual plan, we need quarterly planning. I believe the quarterly plan is the most important part of your plan. You don't make things happen in 10 or 15 years.
You don't. Execute three years or even one year. The stuff you do is happens. the most important stuff you do happens in these 90 day sprints, these quarterly plans. And if you've got the right annual plan with every quarter, you should be carving out, biting out the next 90 day chunk of the annual plan.
Now, how does that make you more adaptive? More adaptive now? One way it makes you more adaptive is every single quarter you are rethinking what your priorities are. You're not just creating priorities at the beginning of the year and trying to stick to them all year. That's a pipe dream. What winds up happening is three or four months after you create the annual plan, the world changes, and then your plan's at a date, and it sits and it gathers dust.
And you disregard it or you, or worse off, you follow it right off the ledge, right off the cliff. So the quarterly plan is a way to of saying, okay, if these are my priorities and these are my targets for the year, what's the next 90 day chunk I need to carve out based on what's going on in the world today?
Now, here's the other thing that's super important. With the quarterly plan is in the quarterly planning exercise. You don't take the annual plan as a given. One of the things I do with my clients every quarter is we look back at the annual plan, the targets and the priorities, and we say, does this plan still make sense?
It is actually pretty rare. That I get through 3, 6, 9 months with my clients and their annual priorities don't change very often, the financial targets might stay the same. Those might change too, but more often the financial targets stay the same. But your priorities,the two or three or four most important things you need to do to get there, they're typically gonna change throughout the year.
Now. Every one of them isn't gonna change. But what you wanna do before each quarterly plan is not just blindly say, what's the next 90 day chunk of our annual plan? So you gotta look and say, does this annual plan still make sense? And if it doesn't, let's change it. And that's so important to your adaptability.
So the quarterly planning is important, not just to plan the next 90 days. But to reevaluate the annual plan.
Then we've got monthly, a monthly rhythm, the monthly check-in. Now, when the world changes, it doesn't typically magically and conveniently happen right at the end or right at the beginning of a quarter.
Surprisingly enough, sometimes the world changes right smack in the middle of a quarter. So do you wait until you're quarterly planning to do something about it? Of course not. You've got a monthly check-in to see how you are doing on your quarterly plan, your quarterly priorities, which I call rocks, your quarterly targets, other KPIs.
But the other thing, the monthly plan gives you a chance to do, just like within the quarterly plan, you're looking back. At the annual plan and saying, does that still make sense? Is there anything we need to adjust in your monthly check? And you are looking at the quarterly plan and saying, does the quarterly plan still make sense?
Very often when I work with a leadership team, I'll come in and do their quarterly planning and someone will say, you know, this rock, I didn't make any progress on this quarterly priority on this rock. because I realized two months ago it didn't make sense anymore. And sometimes they realized two months ago it didn't make sense anymore, and they adjusted.
They purposefully said, okay, we're not gonna focus on that. We're gonna focus on this instead. Or they purposefully said, we're not gonna focus on it this way, but we're gonna tweak it to look like this. But I'd say just as often, there's no discussion. And someone just stops working on something. 'cause it doesn't make sense anymore if you're doing your monthly rhythm.
Right. And by the way, the annual planning with my clients is typically two days. The quarterly planning is one or two days, depending on the size and complexity of the company and your monthly rhythm with your leadership team. Your monthly check-in meeting could be, I've seen it anywhere from two or three hours to a full day.
And part of what you've gotta do there is as a leadership team say, does this quarterly plan still make sense? Don't just let people independently decide they're gonna stop working on something because they don't think it makes sense anymore. Make those decisions as a leadership team. So you're not only adaptive, but you're aligned.
You're aligned with that new plan. Now no shock after that monthly rhythm. The next thing that's important is a weekly rhythm. The weekly rhythm is not only to hold the leadership team and yourself accountable for the things you committed to do, but it's also the time to talk about any voice of the customer, voice of the industry, what's going on in the world, and understanding if anything needs to change.
And having some of those discussions and making decisions about new plans and new strategies, you're gonna do that weekly and you're gonna do that monthly, obviously, as well as quarterly.
so the rhythm is important, but your culture is just important. You need to make it more than okay to challenge what's going on.
If you or members of your leadership team are afraid to challenge a plan and say, wait a minute, I'm not sure this makes sense anymore. If you're afraid to ask the difficult question, then you're gonna wind up blindly just go right off the cliff. So you need an environment where it's okay more than okay to challenge.
When I talk about culture, I always talk about the three V's of culture, Vision, Values, Vulnerability. We need to make sure we're living our core values. We need to make sure there's vulnerability on our leadership team. Vulnerability is, you know, the ability to give and receive feedback on another person, or feedback on our plan to give and receive feedback without fear of retribution.
the vulnerability to say, Hey, I don't think I can make this plan. I need some help. So culture and the ability to question and if someone questions you to not be defensive about it, that's such an important part of adaptability, the openness and honesty on your leadership team. And, but then in addition to culture, but still around people.
We need the right people on the team. If we've got a bunch of mediocre performers or a bunch of people who are just following orders, adaptability goes out the window. We need to make sure we've got a team that is mature enough and talented enough and confident enough,and skilled enough to not just follow orders, but to take ownership.
Make the difficult decisions and challenge. So if you notice all of those things are not things that are, you know, go do this tomorrow to be more adaptable, that it's a foundation you need to build over time. A lot of companies say we need to be adaptable, but they haven't put that foundation in place.
But maybe there is one way to start. The world is changing really fast and maybe faster than ever. Although I'm 60 years old and I've always heard the world is changing faster than ever. Is it really? Or has it always changed really fast? I don't know, but it's changing. One thing you can do tomorrow is go back to your team.
Whether it's the leadership team or if you're on the leadership team going to the leadership team or maybe going to the team that reports to you, go back, but go back to your team and ask the question, you know, is there something about our current course of action that no longer serves us? Another way to think of it is do a stop exercise is there anything we're currently doing today that we ought to stop doing?
That doesn't make sense anymore. One thing you could do right now is ask the question, but I want you to also build that foundation. That foundation as a review of monitoring signals, the long and midterm vision, so you have an anchor that you could be flexible around the annual planning, the quarterly planning, where you're questioning the annual planning, the monthly check-in where you're questioning your quarterly plan.
The weekly accountability and shifts there, making it more than okay to challenge making sure you've got the right people that aren't just following orders. I always say if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. Being more adaptable is a critical part of that. Talk to you soon.