The modern corporate landscape is no longer just “complex“; it is ungovernable. Gartner’s observation of the four converging factors stacked volume, continuous pace, interdependent scale, and external unpredictability is accurate. However, the proposed solution of “routinizing” change through leadership coaching is a legacy response to a futuristic problem.

If change is truly ungovernable, then trying to “equip” employees with “change reflexes” is simply another form of top-down control. To thrive, organizations must stop trying to coach employees through change and start hiring employees who are the change.

The Myth of the “Change-Ready” Employee

The traditional approach seeks “change-ready” employees people who are adaptable, resilient, and willing to follow a leader’s new roadmap. This is a mistake.

When you hire for “culture fit” or “adaptability” as defined by the organization, you create a cognitive monoculture. In a monoculture, when an external shock hits (like a geopolitical shift or a generative AI breakthrough), the entire group tends to move in the same direction, often right off a cliff.

The Shift: Stop hiring for “change-ready” and start hiring for “disruptive difference.” Complexity is best met with complexity. By intentionally selecting employees with radically different life experiences, neurological processing styles (neurodiversity), and industry backgrounds, you create an internal environment of constant, low-level friction. When “difference” is the baseline, external change doesn’t feel like a shock; it feels like Tuesday.

Radical Selection: Complexity as the Point

The provided article suggests leaders should help employees “regulate their emotions” via models like SCARF. This assumes the leader is the steady hand and the employee is the one needing calibration.

In a truly diverse ecosystem, the leader’s role is not to soothe, but to curate the chaos. * Challenge the Selection: If your hiring process filters for people who “work well with anyone” (one of Gartner’s six reflexes), you are filtering out the very “prickly” geniuses and divergent thinkers who see the iceberg before the ship hits it.

• The New Metric: Diversity of Thought (DoT). Instead of “How well does this person adapt to our processes?” the question should be, “How much does this person’s perspective break our current consensus?”

From “Small Wins” to “Constructive Friction”

The original text suggests leaders should clarify “consistent small wins” to maintain trust. This is a “hand-holding” philosophy. It suggests that employees are fragile and need to be shown that progress is being made.

The Counter-Argument: In an ungovernable environment, “progress” is a moving target. Rather than focusing on wins, leaders should focus on Friction Points.

When you have a team of true cognitive outsiders, they will disagree on the “why,” the “how,” and the “when.” This friction is the engine of innovation. The leader’s job isn’t to resolve the disagreement so the team can “feel comfortable,” but to ensure the disagreement is directed toward the external problem.

Foresight Through Collective Dissent

The Gartner model suggests “context-sensing exercises” where employees research triggers like AI and teach the team. This is still a structured, academic exercise.

The Add-On: True foresight comes from Dissenting Scenarios. Instead of a unified team teaching each other about the future, a leader should pit different cognitive groups within the team against one another to “stress test” the company’s survival.

• The “Outsider” Lens: How would a 19-year-old gamer, a 60-year-old retired military officer, and a philosopher all on your payroll view the same geopolitical trend?
• The Result: You don’t get one “scenario plan”; you get a panoramic view of the battlefield.

Routinizing change is a defensive posture; it seeks to make the “chaos” manageable. But in a world of ungovernable change, management is an illusion. The only way to stay ahead of an unpredictable environment is to be as unpredictable as the environment itself.

This requires moving beyond “coaching” and into the aggressive recruitment of Diversity of Thought. When your internal team is as diverse and complex as the external world, “change” isn’t something you do it’s who you are.

To double down on the complexity argument: the disruption needed to navigate “ungovernable change” will almost certainly not come from the SHREK firms the five giants that dominate global executive search: Spencer Stuart, Heidrick & Struggles, Russell Reynolds, Egon Zehnder, and Korn Ferry.

While these firms are the gold standard for stability and prestige, their core business model is fundamentally at odds with the “Diversity of Thought” model.

The SHREK firms are built on de-risking senior appointments for Fortune 500 boards. To a board of directors, “de-risking” usually means selecting candidates with “proven” backgrounds which translates to similar MBAs, similar career trajectories, and a shared corporate vocabulary.