Strengthening the Leaders Who Power Transformation

Midlevel leaders are at the heart of every major shift in a business. They drive strategy forward, keep teams aligned, and make change happen. But the role has grown more complex—and most leaders haven’t been given the tools to keep up.

To meet the demands of constant change, these leaders need to think strategically, move quickly, and connect the dots across people, priorities, and tech.

Explore the full infographic to see how these leaders are stepping up to lead transformation.

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Leveling Up Your Midlevel Leaders

Midlevel leaders are under more pressure than ever. They’re expected to deliver today and drive transformation for tomorrow. But many feel stuck in the middle—pulled between big goals from above and the needs of their teams below.

We surveyed over 600 global leaders to understand what’s really going on. The data shows a clear story: midlevel leaders are ready to step up, but they need the right support to do it.

Explore the full infographic to see what midlevel leaders are facing—and how to help them thrive.

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A New Kind of Collective Intelligence: How AI Is Transforming the Living, Learning Organization

With AI woven into the fabric of business, planning is no longer static—it’s a dynamic exchange between people and machines. This creates a new form of collective intelligence and ushers in an era of the adaptive enterprise. 

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Readiness Reimagined: How to Build a Change-Seeking Culture

Jeff Pacheco

July 21, 2025

For years, “change-readiness” has been a strategic imperative. Organizations have worked to cultivate cultures that adapt quickly and execute decisively. But in today’s fast-moving, AI-driven world, readiness is no longer enough.

Adaptability is still essential—but at a greater speed. The next evolution is already underway: building a “change-seeking” culture. Unlike reactive, change-ready organizations, change-seeking organizations proactively scan for opportunity, challenge assumptions, and move early—before disruption demands it.

Why “Ready” Isn’t Ready Anymore

In Harvard Business Impact’s “2025 Global Leadership Development Study,” 40% of senior leaders said their organizations are placing a greater emphasis on building change-ready cultures. But the data also revealed a shift: 71% now say the ability to lead through constant change is critical, up dramatically from just 58% in 2024. Four in 10 said leading transformation is even more crucial now than it was just one year ago.¹

This reflects a growing acceptance that the need for change is continuous and widespread. And in this environment, the ability to respond quickly is less powerful than the ability to anticipate and act early.

What Defines a Change-Seeking Culture?

Change-seeking cultures don’t wait for change—they initiate it. These organizations:

• Encourage curiosity and experimentation
• Proactively identify new ideas and unmet needs
• Create psychological safety for taking informed risks
• Integrate feedback loops that accelerate learning

They position learning and development not as a support function but as the neural network of transformation—circulating insights, capability, and culture across the enterprise.

How to Foster a Change-Seeking Culture

To foster a change-seeking culture, organizations must go beyond encouraging agility. They must design for it. That means:

• Preparing people. AI is reshaping the way we innovate, and employees need a solid understanding of the tools involved to participate. Our research shows that organizations embracing hands-on learning are more effective at building AI fluency across roles.²
• Democratizing experimentation. Organizations can learn faster by getting more people involved in testing ideas. Vastly increasing the capacity to conduct experiments is becoming more critical for making decisions based on data instead of intuition.³
• Aligning experimentation with strategy. Innovation should be guided by a clear set of strategic priorities that matter to the business. This helps avoid experiments that generate a lot of creative ideas but may fail to deliver meaningful efficiency, value, or growth.⁴
• Fostering psychological safety. If employees fear retribution for failure, they won’t experiment. Leaders must model learning behavior, reward well-intentioned risk-taking, and create space to reflect on and learn from setbacks.
• Embedding feedback loops. Organizations need mechanisms for collecting, sharing, and acting on learning so that successful experiments scale and less successful ones inform future actions.

A Case in Point: Moody’s Moves First

Moody’s—a legacy financial institution—offers a compelling example. In a traditionally risk-averse industry, its CEO, Rob Fauber, chose to go all in on generative AI, even as many peers hesitated due to regulatory uncertainty and technical risks.

As profiled in Harvard Business Review’s “How a Legacy Financial Institution Went All In on Gen AI,” Fauber focused not just on technology but also on learning and culture.⁵ His team launched the initiative with three guiding principles: Make everyone an innovator, build on new ideas, and deliver real business impact.

They started with learning. Moody’s invested in internal academies, upskilling campaigns, and broad-based AI fluency. The enhanced capability of the organization’s workforce created conditions for accelerated innovation.

By late 2024, Moody’s was deploying an AI agent capable of producing risk reports in just one hour—a task that previously required a full week of human effort. The result wasn’t just improved efficiency. It was a proof point for cultural transformation.

The Leadership Gap

Despite examples like Moody’s, many organizations remain stuck in “wait and see” mode. In our 2025 global leadership development study, 52% of respondents said their company is placing a greater emphasis on building an AI-ready culture. Yet only 36% felt their senior leaders fully embrace AI as a core part of strategy and operations.

This mismatch between aspiration and behavior matters. Cultures take shape not just through systems and programs but also through what senior leaders talk about, reward, and demonstrate. If executives want change-seeking behavior, they need to embody it—openly experimenting, learning, and adjusting.

Getting Started: Building a Change-Seeking Culture

Building a change-seeking culture isn’t about launching a single transformation program. It’s about instilling an ongoing top-down and bottom-up capability for sensing and seizing what’s next. Organizations can take these actions to begin:

1. Start with learning and make it visible. Innovation still starts with people, but given AI’s central role in innovation today, building AI fluency across the organization is essential.
2. Create systems that reward initiative, not just execution. Recognize teams for surfacing new ideas, identifying inefficiencies, and learning from pilots—even when those pilots fail. Normalize the idea that progress can start with anyone’s ideas and initiative.
3. Hold leaders accountable for culture. Make effectively leading change, encouraging innovation, and fostering psychological safety core performance expectations, not soft add-ons.

The Bottom Line

Many organizations still treat change-readiness as a strategic endpoint. But in a world of constant reinvention, it’s only the beginning. As technology rewires markets, roles, and operating models, the ability to initiate and lead change—not just react to it—is the goal.

The organizations that will succeed are those where everyone, at every level, is expected to help chart what comes next. Change-seeking is not a capability confined to innovation teams or digital labs. It is a cultural imperative.

Standing still is now the greater risk. The advantage belongs to those willing to move first.

To find out more about how we can help your organization build a change-seeking culture, contact us today.

1. Harvard Business Impact, “2025 Global Leadership Development Study,” 2025. https://www.harvardbusiness.org/insight/2025-global-leadership-development-study-fast-fluid-and-future-focused/ ︎
2. Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning, “Learning Through Experimentation: Why Hands-On Learning Is Key to Building an AI-Fluent Workforce,” Harvard Business Publishing, 2024. https://www.harvardbusiness.org/insight/learning-through-experimentation-why-hands-on-learning-is-key-to-building-an-ai-fluent-workforce. ︎
3. Iavor Bojinov, David Holtz, Ramesh Johari, Sven Schmit, and Martin Tingley, “Want Your Company to Get Better at Experimentation?,” Harvard Business Review, January-February 2025. https://hbr.org/2025/01/want-your-company-to-get-better-at-experimentation. ︎
4. Rogers, David L., “The Missing Link Between Strategy and Innovation,” HBR.org, March 18, 2024. https://hbr.org/2024/03/the-missing-link-between-strategy-and-innovation. ︎
5. Stuart, Toby E., “How a Legacy Financial Institution Went All In on Gen AI,” HBR.org, March 25, 2025. https://hbr.org/2025/03/how-a-legacy-financial-institution-went-all-in-on-gen-ai. ︎

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Navigating Complexity: A New Map for a New Territory

Larry Clark

It’s an odd fact that, in the U.S., the most common street name is Second Street, appearing in 10,866 U.S. municipalities, according to the National League of Cities. (First Street is the third most common, at just over 9,000 occurrences — go figure).  As luck would have it, I recently had to navigate to an address on Second Street in a nearby city. Not paying close attention to the search results in my GPS, I selected a result and proceeded to the address on Second Street – two towns away from where I wanted to go.

My challenge wasn’t that I didn’t know my destination. I was just using the wrong map.

In a similar way, navigating complexity successfully doesn’t start with new skills or behaviors. It starts with using the right map – one that accurately describes the territory of complexity and provides an approach to working through complex situations differently from other types of business challenges.

In a 2007 Harvard Business Review article, David Snowden and Mary E. Boone showed us just such a map – the Cynefin Framework. Snowden’s Cynefin (pronounced kuh-NEV-in) Framework has been gaining popularity recently because of its practical, straightforward approach for categorizing situations and identifying strategies to address them.

The Cynefin Framework sorts situations into four key categories:

• Simple: Situations that can be addressed with good instructions, checklists, or best practices.  Assembling a piece of furniture from a kit is an example.
• Complicated: Situations in which cause and effect can be known up front but may require significant effort and/or domain expertise to address. Things like putting a rocket into space, or even fixing a chronic engine problem in your car, would fit in the Complicated category. Up until recently, most business challenges fell into this category, so the mindset and tools we use for problem analysis and decision-making best fit Complicated situations.
• Complex: Here’s where it gets interesting. These are situations in which outcomes cannot be accurately predicted – where the relationship between cause and effect cannot be known until after the fact – regardless of the level of expertise or effort invested in the solution. Politics, your favorite sporting event and raising children all fall into this category. These situations require a completely different approach and toolkit from Complicated situations.
• Chaotic: These are situations in which the relationship between cause and effect is unclear, even after the fact. In military terms, Chaotic conditions are sometimes described as “the fog of war.”  Battlefield settings and natural disasters can fall into this category.

A more complete description of the Cynefin Framework is well beyond the scope of this blog post, but what is so powerful about the Cynefin Framework is it shows us that complex challenges are not harder, crunchier versions of complicated situations. You don’t just put in more hours or assign more consultants to brute-force your way through them. You navigate them differently because they are different territory.

Because complex situations or problems require a different approach to address them – an approach that requires experimentation and the capacity to allow a path forward to emerge over time – the common cause-and-effect thinking and tools that leaders use to fix problems don’t create the results they expect — just like finding yourself on Second Street, but in the wrong city.

In future posts, we will explore some of the tools used to navigate complexity. But it all starts with knowing where you are, and that is the biggest change for leaders. With a new map, leaders can begin to explore the new territory before them.

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Top 4 Business Challenges Requiring Leadership Development in the Next Year

We surveyed nearly 1,300 leaders from L&D and functional areas involved in planning leadership development in large companies worldwide. The study highlighted four top business challenges requiring leadership development in the next year.

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Leadership Fitness: The Capacity to Thrive in Complexity and Change

The speed, intensity, and complexity leaders face have increased dramatically. In our recent study, four underlying leadership capacities emerged that were necessary for leaders to thrive in today’s environment. We refer to these four capacities as Leadership Fitness.

Download our infographic to uncover the four crucial capacities leaders need to thrive in today’s environment and learn how to effectively implement them.

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Leadership Character: No Longer a Nice-to-Have

In an era of constant change, leaders must demonstrate an unwavering sense of leadership character, as traits such as courage, integrity, and empathy are essential to building trust, fostering collaboration, and helping people navigate uncertainty.

Through a comprehensive analysis of research from Harvard Business School, interviews with Harvard Business Review authors and subject matter experts, and decades of experience working with top-performing organizations around the world, we’ve identified the seven leadership character traits that are essential for leaders at all levels.

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Leadership Fitness: Developing the Capacity to See and Lead Differently Amid Complexity

In a recent study we conducted to better understand how leaders can provide their organizations with a truly human-centered leadership approach, four key leadership capacities emerged that are necessary for leaders to be effective.

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Women Who Lead: An Interview with Lorna Tangirala, General Manager at Amazon, on Developing Confident Leaders

Ania Masinter

March 7, 2025

As we celebrate International Women’s Day, we’re shining a spotlight on influential women who are inspiring change and shaping the future.

Lorna Tangirala is one of the general managers of Amazon Customer Service, Stores (ACSS). She is also the DEI lead for ACSS for India. Her approach to leadership centers on relationships, authenticity, and finding the right kind of confidence for herself.

In this exclusive interview, Tangirala reflects on her leadership journey, sharing the defining moments that shaped her, the challenges she’s overcome, and the values that guide her. She describes the importance of mentors in her own career and for women everywhere. And she demonstrates how her collaboration with Harvard Business Impact has helped Amazon build confidence and spark growth in its own women leaders.

Tell us about your leadership philosophy. How do you inspire and motivate your team?

Tangirala: I’m a people leader: I aim to build personal connections with all of the members of a team when I join. [I wonder,] “Who are they?” “What can they tell me about their lives?” I also want to hear about their ambition and career goals. The personal relationships mean that my team members feel comfortable sharing their point of view with me or asking a question, while understanding their short-, medium-, and long-term objectives helps me better mentor and coach them and match them with work that will help them to thrive.

I’m also both a cheerleader and a tough coach—many times over the years I’ve been called a “mom.” When I tell someone they have potential, I keep pushing and nudging them, setting high expectations and standards. But I also have patience as they develop.

What key behaviors do you believe that leaders—and especially women leaders—need to develop for their teams and for themselves?

Tangirala: Every leader, be it a woman or a man, needs to learn to think strategically. It’s not always taught, but it’s important as you move up the ladder because suddenly people under you are looking to you to get your head out of the day-to-day work and figure out where the team is headed.

And while all leaders need to demonstrate confidence and advocate effectively for themselves and their teams, these skills are particularly important for women to develop. We tend to wait for the accolades: “I’ve done my job and I hope somebody notices and gives me credit.” Instead, it’s essential for us to project our self-assurance and claim credit for our work. Say, “Yes, I made that happen!” and be proud of the achievement.

What’s the biggest challenge that you’ve faced as a leader? And how did you overcome it?

Tangirala: The biggest challenge I’ve faced has been myself. Earlier in my career when I had been stepping up the ladder, I had a lot of self-doubt. Impostor syndrome often made me question my readiness for the next job.

Making the most of my support system allowed me to break through those self-imposed limitations. I had strong mentors and sponsors who nudged and pushed me out of my comfort zone. My husband proved to be my strongest ally. I couldn’t see how I could travel for short assignments abroad, but he would remind me what a great opportunity I was facing and take responsibility for putting together a plan for our two young kids. That allowed me to take several global assignments that helped me tailor my leadership style to other cultures, boosting my career.

Reflecting on your career, what stands out as your biggest achievement?

Tangirala: About a decade back in my previous organization, I was promoted to be the director of one of our global service centers. I was the first Indian woman to hold the position. This has given me a huge sense of accomplishment and pride. I slowly climbed up the ladder from the lowest rung. I built the capabilities that I needed. I went through the selection process. And now here I am, paving the way for so many others.

After I got the role, I heard a few whispers that I had only gotten the position because I was a women diversity candidate, which really broke my heart. I took it as a challenge to work even harder. The service center I lead was ranked second among a group of 11. I felt that maybe whoever had made those remarks could finally see that I didn’t just get the role because I was a woman but got it on my own merit.

Why did you choose to engage with Harvard Business Impact for Amazon’s leadership development program?

Tangirala: We chose to engage with Harvard Business Impact to address gender representation challenges in our organization in Customer Service, India, particularly at the middle management level.

While our women leaders demonstrated strong functional expertise and operational excellence, we identified gaps in their ability to challenge the status quo, establish leadership brands, and develop strategic outlook. Harvard Business Impact was selected for their strong industry credentials and ability to deliver customizable, scalable leadership development experiences.

Over three months, we collaborated to create a tailored program that aligned with Amazon’s leadership principles and evaluation methodology, making it uniquely suited to our organizational needs and goals for advancing women leaders.

What have been some of the biggest changes you’ve seen in Amazon’s leaders who have participated in these leadership development programs?

Tangirala: On the quantitative side, we’ve seen significant improvements in the performance ratings and in the promotion rates of the women who have participated in the programs.

On the more qualitative side, I’ve found that participants have demonstrated increased confidence levels. We see them taking more proactive leadership roles in key initiatives, raising their hands to say they want to lead them, and having a louder voice at the table. We’ve also observed that they’re more able to build strong leadership brands and more willing and able to participate in professional networking.

Initially launched in Customer Service India, the program has had a positive impact that led to its expansion across multiple Amazon verticals and countries.

How have you seen the learnings through the programs applied at Amazon?

Tangirala: The biggest impact I’ve seen generally has been on how these women harmonize their work-life balance so they can raise their hands and take on bigger initiatives.

At our graduation ceremonies for the cohorts, our women leaders share their experiences, and many describe how the program’s thought leadership and working sessions helped them see their blind spots and step out of their comfort zones, and how going through the experience as a cohort meant they felt less alone in doing this work. With allies, they are able to unlock their potential—one even said, “This gave me wings.”

How do you see the role of leadership evolving in today’s world as things are changing so quickly?

Tangirala: So much is changing that today’s leadership demands agility and collaboration. Gone are the days of the traditional command-and-control model. Leadership has moved from more of an individual achievement to a collective or team achievement.

We cater to diverse customers, so it’s important to get those diverse voices into your decision making—whether it is gender or sex, caste, creed, color, or age. They all need to have a voice in the solution you are building. That helps deliver on both business goals and employee well-being.

What’s one piece of leadership advice you would give?

Tangirala: Throughout my career, I’ve been blessed to have strong mentors. For one big project I worked on I was initially a little hesitant, and one of my mentors said, “Lorna, be a tiger, and I will have your back as long as you’re doing the right thing.” That really resonated with me and helped unlock my confidence.

So, I’d say my piece of advice is to build a strong network. Find mentors, mentor others. Then you’ll always have someone there to nudge you to be a tiger, and they’ll have your back as long as you’re doing the right thing.

Ania W. Masinter is an executive editor at Harvard Business Review.

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7 Leadership Lessons from Women Leading Change in Learning and Development

Nina Cheng

March 5, 2025

Successful leaders evolve and adapt their management strategy over time.

Nearly two-thirds of the 1,134 learning and development and human resources professionals who participated in Harvard Business Impact’s 2024 Global Leadership Development Study said it’s important that leaders become more willing to adapt their behaviors to meet business needs. And more than half said it’s important that leaders improve their ability to drive business results in an environment of rapid change and uncertainty.

In honor of International Women’s Day, we asked five seasoned women executives across the talent industry—all of whom have engaged with Harvard Business Impact’s leadership development programs—to share the insights that have shaped their approach to leadership.

Our featured leaders include:

• Takiyah Gross-Foote, VP, Talent Management, Kimberly-Clark
• Ashwini Kapoor, HEAD FUNCTION • Learning & Development, Wipro Limited
• Seanna McGough, EVP, Head of Learning & Development, Regions Bank
• Ewa Mruczek-Lasota, Talent Development & Learning/Leadership and Management Development, VP, State Street Bank International
• Hathairat Takaniphon, Head of Human Resources Learning and Development Division, Human Resources Group, Bank of Ayudhya PCL

Below, you’ll find the moments that prompted these women to rethink the way they managed their teams, the lessons they learned, and their advice for putting that wisdom into practice.

1. Help team members reach their potential. 

Leaders play a crucial role in equipping their teams with the necessary tools and confidence to reach their full potential.

Ashwini Kapoor, Head of the Learning and Development function at technology service company Wipro Limited, describes it as “inspiring others to see possibilities and empowering them to realize their full potential.” Likewise, Hathairat Takaniphon, Head of the Human Resources Learning and Development Division at Thailand-based Bank of Ayudhya PCL, which is also known as Krungsri, says a leader’s role is to create “an environment that empowers teams to work creatively and reach their full potential.”

“The greatest compliment I can get as a leader is when a member of my team expresses that they didn’t believe that what we achieved was even possible,” said Takiyah Gross-Foote, Vice President, Global Talent Management, at Kimberly-Clark, the consumer goods company that owns Kleenex and Huggies. “Even with their doubts, they gave it their all and now, they have confidence to achieve even more in the future,” Takiyah said. 

2. Take a collaborative approach. 

A leadership approach built on collaboration is often the most impactful.

It’s about “being able to build authentic bonds and connections where the team feels heard and valued,” says Seanna McGough, EVP, Head of Learning & Development at financial services provider Regions Bank.

“Hire a team that is smarter than you. Listen to them and learn from them.” Hathairat emphasizes that collaboration thrives on diversity and inclusion. “I personally believe in strengths and diversity. Recognizing and embracing the unique strengths and styles of each team member are key,” she says. “By leveraging our differences, we create a stronger, more innovative team that drives success together.”

3. Balance talent development and business results. 

Effective leaders focus on developing their team members to help them progress in their careers while also driving the business toward its goals.

“True leadership,” says Ashwini, “transcends individual accomplishments. It is the ability to foster collective success.” Likewise, Seanna says that leadership is fundamentally about “empowering the team toward your vision while executing against performance results.” 

4. Practice inclusive leadership behaviors. 

Women executives have the potential to cultivate environments where all individuals can do their best work. 

“Embracing the unique strengths and styles of each team member is key to innovation and organizational success,” says Hathairat. “By celebrating our differences and leveraging them, we build a stronger, more resilient team capable of achieving extraordinary outcomes.”

Ultimately, this is about recognizing leadership potential in all team members, says Ewa Mruczek-Lasota, Talent Development & Learning/Leadership and Management Development, VP at asset management firm State Street Bank International. “We all can take a lead with our expertise and ideas to make a difference to the circumstances of our colleagues, clients, and the communities we serve.” 

5. Embrace change. 

Being open to the possibility of change is critical to success as a leader. Sometimes that means taking on new and unfamiliar assignments; other times it means learning about new technologies in your industry. 

“Be flexible and adaptable,” Seanna says, “with work assignments, work locations, and your work team.” “Leadership begins when you step out of your comfort zone,” says Hathairat. “It’s about embracing the unknown, taking risks, and inspiring others to grow alongside you.”

Some of the most meaningful parts of Takiyah’s career “have been my willingness to learn, stretch and grow by taking on different projects, gigs, and roles,” she says. “The number one advice I would give leaders is to keep learning,” Takiyah adds. “Never get complacent!” 

6. Display vulnerability. 

Modeling vulnerability for your team can feel intimidating, but it’s especially important for women in positions of influence. 

That might include letting team members know that you take some responsibility for their shortfalls. “When you witness less-than-stellar behaviors or outcomes on your team,” says Takiyah, “take a moment to be introspective and examine how your leadership approach may be contributing.”  

In turn, displaying vulnerability as the manager will help your team improve its performance. Ashwini says that women leaders who display courage in trying something new and also acknowledge when they’re facing a challenge “encourage teams to take calculated risks and grow from failures.”  

7. Prioritize your own well-being. 

Women leaders can model for others how to prioritize their well-being. 

Ashwini advises women leaders to set boundaries, encourage their team to practice work-life balance, and provide team members with resources that address their physical, emotional, and mental health needs. Ewa also cites the importance of self-compassion. “As women,” she says, “we tend to set the highest expectations for ourselves.” 

Sometimes taking care of yourself is as simple as pausing for a moment. Ewa recalls the advice she once received from a more senior HR executive: “Whenever you feel overwhelmed and lost, slow down and breathe.” The tip has “never failed me to this day,” Ewa says.

Ultimately, leaders who take care of themselves are better positioned to serve others.

Driving Impacts through Leadership

The leadership lessons shared by these influential HR executives highlight the power of adaptability, collaboration, and a commitment to continuous growth. These women leaders are spearheading change by building work environments where employees can deliver business results, grow in their careers, and develop into the next generation of inspirational leaders. 

At Harvard Business Impact, we are honored to support leaders like these in their journey to drive meaningful change. Their insights underscore the profound impact of investing in leadership development—for both individual growth and organizational success.

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