In this article we share nine insights on these challenges. The questions below frame each area. The following sections offer reflections and practical suggestions to support your own conversations and choices.
- Protect focus.
How do we help organisations and people prioritize, reduce noise and direct energy towards what creates the most value?
- Establish direction.
How do we build shared understanding of where we are going and why? How do leaders find the courage to act without all the answers?
- Act together.
How do we build cultures and structures that enable cross team collaboration, shared learning and innovation?
Looking for a speaker or facilitator? Contact us!
Suggestions for 2026:
Leaders go first
Leaders define reality and give hope
Many employees feel insecure about their role and competence. Fear is bad for innovation and learning. People long for clear expectations and conditions to succeed and for leaders who are honest about risks and clear on what matters most.
As Jennifer Garvey Berger points out, today’s uncertainty requires leaders to lead differently. Without having all the answers, they still need people who want to follow them into the unknown. When leaders describe reality, name the uncertainty and sketch a small number of possible paths ahead instead of one fixed plan, they release energy and willingness to move. Simple scenario planning can help by making it clear what could happen, what you will watch for and how you will adjust together.
To form a credible narrative leaders need time together. Management teams need space to explore the real challenges and agree on what they are trying to achieve. Only then can they be the steady lighthouses the organisation needs. This demands leaders who know themselves, can carry uncertainty and invite others into a spirit of let us solve this together instead of trying to have all the answers.
Protect focus
Protect focus in self designed work
Many roles used to have clear job descriptions. Today more people design their own work and spend much of the day coordinating with others. This makes priorities and simple ways of collaborating more important than ever. Executive teams help by spending real time on strategy, building shared insight and making a few brave choices together. Leaders then support teams in prioritising, favour small experiments over big decisions and create agreements and structures that protect deep work.
Priorities and simple ways of
collaborating more important than ever.
Make direction simple
Communicate like in the beginning of the pandemic
In the pandemic management teams were visible, acted fast and communicated often and with care. They set a clear direction, explained decisions, were open about what they did not know and showed that they cared about how people were doing. Trust in management went up. Today change pressure is still high but there is no single crisis to point to. Figures from Kantar show that trust varies more and continues to decline in several organisations and that many have returned to less frequent communication and a more distant tone. The lesson remains. Communicate often and with care. Be accessible, be clear on direction and priorities and explain the choices you make.
Decide with courage before the picture is complete
Uncertainty now comes from many directions at once. Tariffs, AI, political shifts and war make it tempting to wait for more reports and better forecasts. If you postpone decisions until the picture feels complete you risk standing still while others move. Decide with enough insight, not with perfect information. Be clear about what you know, what you assume and what you are testing. Take a step, look at the effects and adjust as you learn. It is easier to correct a course than to start moving from a standstill.
Build shared understanding through ongoing dialogue
Before you jump into solutions pause and check that you share the same picture of the challenge you are trying to solve together. Put into words what the problem is, why it matters and what would be different if you succeed. As you work and learn, keep coming back to these questions. Has your understanding changed. Is this still the right problem. Do people still share the same picture of what you are trying to achieve.
A common narrative helps but one big town hall is not enough. In many organisations there is a growing gap in dialogue between management and the rest of the organisation. Leaders think they have been clear while employees experience shifting or competing priorities. Treat direction and priorities as an ongoing conversation. Make room for these dialogues close to the work, not only in the management team. Ask what people see, what gets in the way and what needs to change so that strategy becomes shared understanding and movement. As psychologist Kajsa Asplund points out, you then make your strategy your strongest tool for engagement.
Work together by design
Structure built for yesterday slows today
Many organisations still try to handle new challenges with tools built for a more stable world. Annual budgets that lock resources. Planning that assumes we can predict a whole year ahead. Large reorganisations that drain energy instead of building the ability to adjust structure as we learn. In listed companies some of this is necessary. Markets expect clear yearly budgets and accounting rules require that restructurings are defined in advance in order to set aside provisions. The challenge is not to remove structure but to keep what is required and at the same time build simple flexible ways for people to work together across functions so that collective intelligence becomes part of everyday work.
Let your teams decide how
Leaders remove obstacles and give teams clear direction then trust them to decide how to solve the work. According to Mattias Axelson, researcher at Stockholm School of Economics, innovation and improvement happen when teams have real mandate, can test ideas and see learning as part of the job. Make it easy to run small experiments without long internal approval chains. For questions that cut across functions bring the right leaders together, decide quickly and clear the way so teams can move from talk to action.
Build team capability with AI
Most organisations are already decent at one person plus AI. The big potential lies in teams plus AI. Use AI and automation to tidy the factory, simplify processes and remove low value tasks so you free time for work that creates value. Make data available and workflows transparent enough for teams to experiment in their real work. Let them run short trials, learn and then scale the solutions that work.
Work together across functions by design
Many of the most important challenges cut across units. No single function holds the full picture. If collaboration is left to goodwill and ad hoc initiatives gaps, handovers and friction grow. Some organisations now build stable cross functional teams with most of the needed competence in one place. Others organise around clear challenges and use internal AI talent platforms to match people and assignments. Done well this reduces managers tendency to hoard talent and gives more people chances to grow without leaving the organisation.
Beyond Talking is closely connected to the academic world, and our methods are grounded in modern research. By making insights accessible and applicable, we aim to support leaders, teams and organizations in navigating complexity, growing their collective intelligence and building sustainable ways of working.of working.
Read more
Jennifer Garvey Berger: The Power of Hope, Direction and a Sense of Belonging
Kajsa Asplund: Let Your Strategy Become Your Strongest Tool for Engagement
Learning in the flow of work: The key to handle rapid change with Mattias Axelson
Webinar
At Beyond Talking, we regularly invite researchers and practitioners to share insights and experiences on how to bridge research and organisational life.
Join our next session
Contact us
If any of these insights resonate with your situation and you would like to talk more, you are welcome to contact us.