The pace of technological change shows no sign of slowing, this I think, we all know. Almost every day brings a new announcement, a new feature release, a new capability added to tools many organisations are already using. Technology companies are competing on speed and breadth, selling functionality first and leaving the rest of us to work out how, when, or even whether it should be used.
What strikes me isn’t the volume of innovation, It’s the pace it sets for everything else.
New capability arrives already embedded in workflows, influencing behaviour before there’s time to step back and consider its implications. We’re invited to move quickly, often before we’ve had the chance to reconnect with what we’re actually trying to achieve. At its core, the challenge we’re facing as leaders is that possibility appears faster than, and sometimes at the expense of, meaning.
And that’s the point where leadership begins to feel different. Not because leaders don’t know what they want, but because the pace makes it easier to forget.
I’ve noticed how easily conversations now get shaped by what’s newly available rather than what’s genuinely useful. Meetings drift toward features, tools, and options. Energy gathers around what can be done next, while the key question of what should matter most struggles to keep its place in the room.
In that environment, leadership can begin to drift through loss of orientation, I’ve increasingly seen this in my clients’ board meetings, and other conversations.
If we don’t pause and remember what we’re aiming for, we could end up moving back into reaction rather than leadership.
I’m not calling for a slow down in the integration and application of new technologies. That’s neither realistic nor desirable. This is an invitation to look at how leadership cadence responds when the external tempo is set elsewhere. When daily releases and constant updates become the background noise of organisational life, the risk isn’t speed itself. The risk is rigidity disguised as momentum, or motion mistaken for progress.
I’m seeing more leaders caught in this tension. On the one hand, there’s pressure to move quickly, to adopt, to integrate, to stay current. On the other, there’s a growing sense that long-standing planning rhythms no longer quite fit the environment they’re operating in. Annual strategies still get written, quarterly plans still get reviewed, and yet the context they’re based on often shifts before these cycle complete.
The challenge here isn’t that these methods are wrong. It’s that they were designed for a world where change arrived in larger, slower waves. Technology now moves in smaller, faster increments, stacking capability before understanding has time to settle. This is where speed and rigidity come into conflict.
Speed, when guided by intent, feels fluid. It allows organisations to move, learn, and adjust without losing coherence. Rigidity, even when well-intentioned, struggles to travel at the same pace. Detailed plans and tightly specified routes can become heavy when the ground beneath them keeps moving.
I’ve noticed that the organisations coping best with this aren’t necessarily the fastest adopters. They’re the ones clearest on what they’re trying to protect and progress. Their speed comes from alignment, not urgency. From shared understanding rather than constant instruction.
Which brings us back to vision.
Vision still matters. If anything, it matters more as technological pace increases. But the way it’s held needs to change. Over-specification becomes a liability when features outpace foresight. The more tightly a vision is translated into fixed plans, the harder it is for people to act intelligently when new capability arrives unexpectedly.
What seems to work better is vision held as behaviour and orientation rather than instruction. Clear enough to guide choices, open enough to absorb learning. When intent is well understood, people don’t need to be told what to do with every new tool. They can decide in the moment whether it serves what the organisation is actually here to do.
This is where I see intentional experimentation becoming a key strategic advantage.
Not experimentation as innovation theatre, pilots, or side projects. Experimentation as the natural way organisations learn when clarity trails capability. Small moves, bounded risks. Trying something in context rather than debating it in theory. Letting usefulness reveal itself through use.
In fast-moving technological environments, waiting for certainty often means waiting too long. At the same time, rushing headlong into adoption without reflection creates noise rather than progress. Experimentation offers a middle ground. It allows learning to keep pace with change without committing the organisation to paths it hasn’t fully understood yet.
What’s interesting is how this shifts leadership presence.
Letting go of false certainty doesn’t weaken authority. It changes its shape. Authority becomes less about having the answer early and more about holding the space in which answers can emerge. Leaders remain decisive, but their decisiveness shows up as consistency of intent rather than finality of conclusion.
I see this most clearly in how leaders talk now. Less emphasis on locking things down. More emphasis on staying close. On noticing what’s working, what’s not, and what’s still forming. Reviews feel more like conversations than verdicts. Strategy feels less like a document and more like a living dialogue with reality.
Weekly calibration and alignment conversations are a sign that attention is active. That leaders are staying engaged with what’s actually happening rather than reporting back on assumptions made months earlier. It keeps learning alive while it still has energy.
There’s something more demanding about this way of leading because it asks leaders to resist the comfort of over-specification. To tolerate ambiguity without rushing to close it down. To remember purpose repeatedly as new possibilities crowd the field. It also asks organisations to trust that coherence can come from shared intent rather than detailed control.
New and emerging technologies are exposing this shift.
When features arrive daily and tools evolve continuously, the limits of older rhythms become more visible. Not because they were wrong, but because the environment they were designed for has changed. The pace of technological evolution is revealing how much leadership has relied on certainty arriving before action. And that sequence itself is changing because capability now often arrives first, followed by understanding. Leadership has to sit in that gap without being pulled off course.
This is where remembering becomes the central act. Remembering what the organisation is here to do. Remembering what matters enough to say no to. Remembering that not every new capability deserves equal attention. Remembering that speed in the service of purpose feels very different from speed in the service of novelty.
When leaders hold that principle clearly, the four themes below stop being abstract ideas and start functioning as anchors.
Speed becomes a function of alignment rather than pressure to change.
Vision guides without over-prescribing.
Experimentation becomes a way of staying close to reality.
False certainty is released in favour of attentive leadership.
None of this requires abandoning existing methods, it requires re-weighting them. Using plans to frame attention rather than predict outcomes. Using strategy to maintain orientation rather than enforce routes. Using cadence to stay connected rather than to signal control.
As technology continues to evolve at pace, leadership thinking is being invited to evolve alongside it. Not by chasing every feature, but by remembering what the organisation stands for and allowing that memory to guide how, when, and why new capability is absorbed.
That feels less like reacting to change and more like leading through it.
Mark Jarvis
6x Founder | Interim MD | NED | Coach & Mentor
Author of:
The Very Best Business Handbook You’ll Ever Own
The 63 Point Business Blueprint
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Remember, there are only three types of people – those who make things happen, those who wait for things to happen, and those who talk about why things don’t happen for them. Which one are you?
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