New Skills to Navigate Continuous Change

HBR.org (Nilofer Merchant conversation) · rss · 2026-05-05 source ↗ Reader 🖥️

Learning Culture & Slack Meta-Skills & Contextual Judgment Psychological Safety Team Autonomy

The biggest barrier to organizational change is not resistance but inherited norms — especially the privileging of confidence over competence and control over co-creation — and leaders who replace those norms with collaborative ownership, curiosity, and tolerance for discomfort will unlock the innovation their organizations already contain.

practical · mixed — A conversational interview that is primarily argumentative (Merchant advances a thesis about what leaders should do differently) but uses narrative case studies extensively. Practical: every proposition ultimately serves 'you should lead this way instead.'

Structure

Part	Role
Opening frame: personal experience of exhaustion from continuous change (Beard, Ignatius)	Context — establishes the felt problem that the interview addresses
Merchant's reframing of change management as control vs. ownership	Core thesis — the central argumentative move that redefines the problem
Competence vs. confidence distinction and its link to innovation	Diagnostic mechanism — explains why existing norms suppress innovation
Three drivers of innovation (new ideas, joining ideas into solutions, solving tomorrow's problems)	Theoretical foundation — borrowed from management canon (Drucker through Edmondson) to ground the practical advice
Case studies: Adobe/Macromedia education market, $2M idea-athon, Orangetheory analogy	Evidence — concrete demonstrations of the ownership/invitation model producing results
Practical rituals: pre-meeting questions, meeting redesign, Shonda Rhimes email norm	Prescriptive application — specific behaviors leaders can adopt immediately
Redefining relevance and leadership as centered in self rather than external knowledge	Philosophical extension — addresses the identity threat that change poses to experienced leaders
Organic spread: change as team-to-team contagion rather than top-down mandate	Implementation model — how the thesis scales without requiring organizational permission

Key terms

invisible norms
Inherited behavioral defaults in organizations that constrain action without being consciously recognized — e.g., rewarding confidence, treating strategy and execution as separate, equating busyness with contribution
ownership (vs. accountability)
A model where people co-decide the direction and therefore sustain commitment even without external enforcement; contrasted with accountability where compliance depends on someone watching
confidence (vs. competence)
The performance of knowing — 'fake it till you make it' — which Merchant says organizations reward but which actively blocks the curiosity and uncertainty needed for innovation
invitation to play
A structured but open call for people across the organization to voluntarily participate in solving a problem, breaking disciplinary silos
co-laboring
Merchant's etymology-based reframing of collaboration: literally laboring together on deciding what to do, not just executing someone else's decision
process mechanics of leading Meta-Skills & Contextual Judgment
The meta-skills of orienting in new situations — tapping ideas, forming teams, shaping questions — which transfer across any domain and replace domain-specific expertise as the core of competence

Propositions

explicitTraditional change management is actually a form of control, not change, because it assumes one group directs others rather than deciding together.conf: high
explicitdevelopedChange driven by accountability (external enforcement) does not persist once the enforcer disengages; only co-decided ownership produces durable commitment.conf: high
supports9) Nils Brede Moe om AI-paradokset, autonomi, læringskultur og fremtidens team · p15 — Same claim from different domains: peer-agreed, co-decided norms persist and control behavior better than externally imposed rules.
refines ←How Fast-Growing Companies Can Make Better Decisions · p4 — Qualifies the claim that only co-decided ownership persists: centrally curated option menus with outcome accountability achieve durable local ownership without full co-decision.
explicitOrganizations systematically eliminate 50-70% of new and novel ideas through self-silencing or ignoring.conf: high
explicitThe three things that drive innovation — access to new ideas, combining ideas into solutions, and solving meaningful problems — all require curiosity and uncertainty, which confidence-culture suppresses.conf: high
explicitStrategy and execution are not separable activities owned by different organizational levels; they must be iterative and co-created.conf: high
explicitThe knowing, speed, and confidence that organizations reward are precisely the capabilities AI does well, making those human behaviors competitively worthless.conf: high
explicitA leader's core competence in continuous change is the meta-skill of orienting in unfamiliar situations, not domain expertise.conf: high
explicitcontestedOrganizational change spreads more effectively through organic team-to-team contagion than through top-down mandates.conf: high
supports11) AI-spesial med Vilde Opsal og Anders Sveen · p20 — Merchant's claim that change spreads through organic team-to-team contagion rather than mandates supports the Heis panel's adoption pattern of surfacing an ordinary successful team as the diffusion mechanism.
contradictsForskning på digitalisering 2026 uke 19 · p3 — Merchant claims change spreads best through organic team-to-team contagion rather than mandates; the research digest holds large organizations need structured, stage-gate transformation frameworks.
explicitExperienced leaders' relevance in a changing world comes not from staying current with external knowledge but from centering on the unique value of their accumulated wisdom and people-skills.conf: medium
implicitThe discomfort of not-knowing is a prerequisite for generating genuine insight, not a failure state to be avoided.conf: high
implicitOrganizations already contain the innovation they need; the problem is extraction (surfacing latent ideas), not injection (bringing in external ideas).conf: high
implicitMeetings are the primary site where innovation is either enabled or killed in organizations.conf: medium

Arguments

Leaders should replace change management (control) with collaborative ownership to achieve lasting organizational change. strength: medium

Explicit premises:

Traditional change management is one group directing others — a form of control, not change.
Accountability-driven change does not persist once enforcement stops.
When people co-decide direction, they sustain commitment independently.

Implicit premises:

People have intrinsic motivation to pursue goals they helped define — a broadly Deci/Ryan self-determination theory assumption that Merchant never names or defends.
The time cost of co-deciding is always recovered through better execution — she never addresses cases where this might not hold.

Inferences:

If this is true, the entire change management consulting industry is built on a flawed model, which would explain its notoriously low success rates.

Organizations should reward competence-building rather than confidence-display to unlock innovation. strength: medium

Explicit premises:

Innovation requires access to new ideas, combining ideas, and solving meaningful problems.
Confidence-culture suppresses all three because it rewards knowing over questioning.
50-70% of ideas are lost to self-silencing or being ignored.

Implicit premises:

People can reliably distinguish genuine competence from performed confidence if the organizational norms change — but she offers no mechanism for this recognition problem.
The three innovation drivers are exhaustive or at least sufficient — no argument for why these three and not others.

Inferences:

Organizations that successfully shift from confidence to competence culture would see a dramatic increase in actionable ideas — potentially recovering much of that 50-70% loss.

AI makes human knowing/speed/confidence capabilities competitively worthless, so leaders must pivot to curiosity and question-formulation. strength: low

Explicit premises:

AI does knowing, speed, and data-driven work well.
Research shows AI made junior people 12% faster and 25% more productive but got the answer wrong 19% of the time.
The remaining human value is in formulating new questions and generating insight.

Implicit premises:

AI error rates will not improve enough to close this gap — a strong assumption given the pace of AI development.
Question-formulation and insight are inherently human and cannot be automated — never defended.

Inferences:

If AI error rates drop significantly, Merchant's argument becomes even stronger (human judgment needed to catch AI errors) OR weaker (AI handles everything) — the argument is unstable to AI improvement trajectories.

Narratives

Orangetheory coaches tell you '90 seconds, it's supposed to be hard' before an all-out sprint — Merchant uses this as an analogy for the discomfort leaders must normalize.
→ Supports the proposition that discomfort is a prerequisite for growth, not a failure state. Makes the abstract advice viscerally relatable.
A consulting engagement where the CEO wanted to fire her for wanting to talk to more people, but within 3-4 weeks the 'elephant in the room' emerged and was solved collaboratively.
→ Demonstrates the ownership/invitation model in practice and that going slow to go fast actually works within bounded timeframes.
Adobe vs. Macromedia: Merchant's team discovered 50% of Macromedia's revenue came from education, proposed winning the education market, and Adobe became the dominant player — while the CEO was handing out a book on 'Execution' that blamed people for not working hard enough.
→ Illustrates the strategy-execution unity thesis and the failure of the confidence/control model. The CEO's book symbolizes the old norm; the cross-functional team's discovery symbolizes the new.
A $2M idea-athon where cross-disciplinary teams self-organized, and one team found a 5% insurance benefit by promoting stair usage — 90% of submitted ideas were self-funding.
→ Supports the proposition that organizations already contain their own innovation (extraction not injection) and that inviting people across silos unlocks latent value.
Shonda Rhimes putting a footer on all emails saying 'respond when it works for you' despite sending emails at 2 AM.
→ Supports the proposition that leaders must actively signal that sustainability matters, and that norms are set by explicit counter-signals, not just intentions.
Returning from a 12-week sabbatical to find teams having the exact same conversation she left.
→ Supports the proposition that meetings are the primary site of innovation failure and that without deliberate norm change, organizations default to stasis.
A senior leader worried about relevance due to age and AI unfamiliarity, whom Merchant reframes as having irreplaceable wisdom and people-dynamics expertise.
→ Supports the proposition that relevance comes from centering on accumulated wisdom rather than chasing external knowledge.

Questions addressed

✅ Why does traditional change management fail to produce lasting organizational change?
Because it is control (accountability model), not change (ownership model). People revert as soon as enforcement stops.
✅ What should leaders do instead of traditional change management?
Co-create direction through 'invitation to play,' normalize discomfort, reward competence over confidence, treat strategy and execution as unified.
⭕ How do you prevent burnout in a continuous-change environment?
Merchant offers the Shonda Rhimes example and 'signal that sustainability matters,' but does not provide a systematic framework — it remains at the level of individual leader signaling.
⭕ How do you measure whether the new norms are working?
Merchant identifies that organizations currently measure tangibles (speed, efficiency) rather than intangibles (creativity, curiosity) but does not propose specific metrics or measurement approaches for the intangibles.
✅ Can an individual leader drive this change without organizational support?
Yes — through team-level success that spreads organically ('everyone looked over and said I want some of that').

Gaps

incompleteMerchant assumes co-decided ownership always produces better outcomes than directed change but never addresses contexts where it might fail — e.g., crisis situations requiring speed, organizations with deep expertise asymmetries, or cases where employees genuinely lack the context to contribute to strategic decisions. The ownership model may have boundary conditions she does not explore.
Read next: Gary Klein's work on naturalistic decision-making; research on when participatory vs. directive leadership outperforms.
incompleteThe AI argument is instrumentally deployed to support her pre-existing thesis but is not seriously engaged. She uses a single data point (19% error rate) and does not consider how the argument changes as AI capabilities improve. The claim that question-formulation is uniquely human is asserted without defense.
Read next: Ethan Mollick's work on AI and organizational productivity; Karim Lakhani's full research (which Merchant cites but only partially).
incompleteNo measurement framework for the intangible qualities she advocates (curiosity, creativity, collaboration). She identifies the measurement gap but does not close it. Leaders who want to implement her advice have no way to know if it is working.
Read next: Amy Edmondson's psychological safety measurement instruments; Teresa Amabile's research on measuring creativity in organizations.
incompleteThe burnout question is acknowledged but not adequately addressed. In a world of continuous change where leaders must constantly tolerate discomfort, the sustainability question is critical. Merchant's answer (signal that rest matters) is necessary but clearly insufficient.
Read next: Christina Maslach's burnout research; Cal Newport on sustainable productivity.
illogicalMerchant claims strategy arcs have shrunk to near-zero (citing Rita McGrath) while also claiming collaborative co-creation of strategy (which takes weeks) is the answer. There is a tension between 'the world moves too fast for long-term strategy' and 'we should slow down to co-decide.' She resolves this through the 'go slow to go fast' aphorism but does not seriously address the timing tension.
Read next: Rita McGrath's 'The End of Competitive Advantage' for the full argument on transient advantage and its implications for decision speed.

New Skills to Navigate Continuous Change

Structure

Key terms

Propositions

Arguments

Narratives

Questions addressed

Gaps

Related documents