A guide for leading through chaos, without losing direction.
Unpredictable. That is the defining condition of the world today. Leaders, especially CEOs, are grappling with the hard truth that the models, forecasts, and strategic assumptions they once relied on no longer apply.
Today’s most urgent leadership challenges are fast-changing, interconnected, and largely shaped by human behavior. Consider the events of the last few years: a global pandemic that forced the reinvention of business models overnight; tariffs and supply-chain breakdowns that rippled across industries; geopolitical shocks such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and escalating U.S.-China tensions; generative AI breakthroughs disrupting how work is done; contentious debates over DEI and corporate values; rising cyberattack risks; extreme weather events linked to climate change; and growing employee and societal distrust of institutions, as underscored by the by the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer. Each of these crises didn’t just test leaders’ strategies; they demanded real-time pivots grounded in values, executed in full view of employees, customers, investors, and the public. We hear the resulting strain across boardrooms and executive retreats: “I feel like I’m navigating without a compass.” “The noise is so loud, I don’t know what signal to follow.” “I’m not sure what the right move is anymore, or even who we are as a company.” These aren’t merely tactical concerns. They are, at their core, about direction, values, and, ultimately, identity. In this new environment, pivoting can no longer be treated as an occasional response to disruption. It must become a daily leadership habit, one that rests on the foundation of clearly articulated and aligned organizational values. Without that clarity, leaders risk pivoting aimlessly or inconsistently; with it, they can adjust swiftly while staying anchored in purpose. This is why a new leadership approach is needed, one that helps executives not just survive complexity, but navigate it with integrity, clarity, and the right mindset. We call it “pivot with purpose”: the capacity to constantly and courageously remain anchored in your values while adjusting to meet new realities. We write not from theory alone, but from our experiences during some of the most defining crises of our time. One of us served as a brigadier general who commanded through 9/11 in Washington, D.C. and later served in Afghanistan. Another led executive education at a global business school during the Covid-19 pandemic, the post-pandemic recovery, and the geopolitical and economic shocks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A third steered a Fortune 50 company through sweeping medical device/medical equipment industry disruption and currently advises CEOs and boards navigating their most complex and paradoxical decisions. Together, we’ve taught authentic leadership to graduate students and senior executives around the world, and helped thousands lead with integrity when the stakes are highest. We’ve seen what enables coherence of purpose and values under pressure, and what causes it to derail and collapse. What distinguishes the best leaders is not just their ability to adapt, but their ability to stay true to who they are while doing it. By anchoring any pivot with purpose, we offer a way for leaders to navigate chaos without losing their way, or themselves. Five Principles for Pivoting with Purpose “To pivot” means to change direction without losing your foundation. In basketball, it’s the planted foot that stays grounded while the rest of the body rotates to assess new options. In military formations, a pivot is a sharp, coordinated turn—anchored, intentional, and aligned. In leadership today, think of your pivot foot as the steady base that keeps you grounded no matter how much the world moves. For a CEO, it’s about knowing who you are, what you believe, and why you lead, and making sure that stays in sync with your company’s purpose and values. For the organization, it’s about shared clarity on what it stands for, how it behaves, and why it exists. Without that clarity, leaders risk pivoting aimlessly or inconsistently; with it, they can adjust swiftly while staying anchored in purpose. This coherence is at the heart of authentic leadership, creating clarity across levels. Leadership today, and even more so in the future, isn’t about making a single pivot. The leaders who will thrive are those who make pivoting a regular discipline rather than a reaction to disruption. This forward-looking practice will keep organizations in motion, grounded in purpose and values, and ready for whatever comes next. To adopt a “pivot with purpose” mindset, start with these five principles. 1. Face reality. Leading through complexity begins with acknowledging uncomfortable truths. When conditions shift or strategies falter, the first step is not to defend the past but to confront it. Many leaders fall prey to the sunk-cost effect, holding on to decisions, projects, or beliefs simply because they’ve invested in them. Yet clinging to what once worked blinds you to what must change. Facing reality may mean accepting that a beloved product has lost relevance, that a long-trusted executive is no longer the right fit, or that a geopolitical shift has made an entire market unsustainable. It requires examining what’s not working, questioning assumptions you’ve built success on, and accepting that progress may require deconstructing what you’ve created. Only by seeing the present clearly, however painful, can you begin the process of pivoting toward a stronger future. Clarity, not comfort, is what unlocks the capacity to pivot. For example, in May 2025, Apple CEO Tim Cook and his leadership team publicly acknowledged the long-term risk of overreliance on a single manufacturing base in China, especially as geopolitical tensions rose and supply chains grew fragile. As Cook explained, “we learned some time ago that having everything in one location had too much risk with it and so we have opened up new sources of supply over time.” Rather than waiting for crisis, Apple had already begun diversifying production to India and Vietnam, a move initiated well before many peers publicly acted, challenging its own cost and efficiency assumptions. This pivot wasn’t just operational; it reflected a broader truth-telling habit: facing reality early, admitting prior overdependence, and aligning future strategy with the company’s core value of resilience. Leaders who face reality early, especially when it challenges their own assumptions, build credibility and trust. The first step in pivoting with purpose is not deciding what to change, but admitting why change is needed. Pivot question: What hard truth, about myself and/or our business, once faced, would clear the path to a necessary pivot? 2. Stay true to your purpose and values. In turbulent times, it’s tempting for leaders to retreat, posture, make reactive choices, or chase the loudest voice. Leaders who haven’t clarified their purpose and values, for themselves or for their organizations, risk being steered by external pressures rather than guided by internal conviction. Sometimes the pressure to bend your values can be relentless. But once leaders compromise what they stand for, the cost is immediate and compounding. Trust fractures, coherence fades, and people begin to question not just decisions but direction. Research from Harvard Business School shows that companies that acted consistently with their stated commitments to employees, customers, and communities during the Covid-19 crisis suffered smaller market declines and recovered faster. Other studies find that when leaders’ words and actions align, employees perceive integrity, strengthening trust, performance, and long-term engagement. Conversely, inconsistency breeds cynicism. Research on corporate hypocrisy shows that saying one thing and doing another triggers emotional backlash, erodes reputation, and fuels disengagement. Why? Because consistency signals credibility, and credibility signals trust. When values shift with the wind, purpose and leadership lose their meaning. The real danger in turbulence isn’t external chaos; it’s internal drift. In January 2025, for example, Target announced the company would conclude its diversity, equity and inclusion goals, wind down its Racial Equity Action and Change initiative, rebrand “Supplier Diversity” as “Supplier Engagement,” The reaction was swift: Civil-rights activists launched a boycott and state authorities in Florida filed shareholder suits, claiming that Target had misled investors about the risks of its DEI programs. By contrast, Costco held fast to its core values: obeying the law, taking care of its members, taking care of its employees, and respecting their suppliers. In January 2025, shareholders overwhelmingly supported that alignment when more than 98% rejected a proposal to reassess the risks of its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. CEO Ron Vachris and the board also reaffirmed the company’s commitment to inclusion as a core reflection of those values. Meanwhile, Costco continued to deliver strong operational and financial performance through mid-2025, further strengthening trust among employees, customers and investors. One Fortune 50 CEO later told one of us that when employees asked, “Are we going to be like Target or Costco?” he replied, “Neither, we’re going to be who we are.” His answer captures the essence of purpose-driven leadership: A company’s values must remain steadfast amid external pressure. When they waver, trust, and performance, quickly follow. Pivot question: Does this pivot reaffirm our core purpose and values, or compromise them? 3. Adapt your strategies and tactics to changing conditions. Agility is essential, as long as it is tethered to purpose and values. With their pivot foot solidly planted on the ground, leaders need to rapidly adapt to external shifts in the environment by changing strategies and tactics to meet stakeholder needs. If they do not move swiftly, they may find themselves outflanked by faster moving competitors. But moving fast without a clear anchor leads to drift. Moving fast with values as a guide creates direction. Decathlon’s digital and circular-model transformation, begun in 2022 under then-CEO Barbara Martin Coppola and continued under the 2025 appointment of Javier López, was driven by a convergence of external pressures: rising consumer demand for sustainable products, tightening European regulations on waste and repairability, and the rapid shift toward digital retail. In response, the global sports retailer, known for designing, manufacturing, and selling affordable, high-quality sporting goods across more than 70 countries, moved beyond one-off sustainability gestures and instead made tactical adaptations in sourcing, logistics, product design, and customer engagement to redefine how it grows. By 2024, Decathlon reported repairing nearly 3 million products across 1,730 workshops, embedding repairability into product design, and increasing its circular-sales revenue by about 10%, which now represents just over 3% of global sales. At the same time, the company continued streamlining its portfolio, consolidating its numerous in-house labels into 12 specialist brands to strengthen focus and coherence. It also launched Decathlon Pulse, a €300 million innovation fund to accelerate circular and sustainable product innovation. Local initiatives such as India’s Second Life Bazaar further advanced this effort by reselling refurbished equipment and extending product life. Building on that foundation, López has accelerated Decathlon’s strategic pivot toward circular business models, embedding sustainability not as a compliance exercise but as a catalyst for reinvention. The company expanded its buyback program, first piloted in the UK for bicycles to include fitness, water-sports, and camping gear, while scaling rental and repair services across more than 20 countries. This purposeful pivot turned external regulatory pressure into innovation, reinforcing Decathlon’s long-term competitiveness, credibility, and sustainability leadership. In today’s environment, where market and societal shifts can unfold in months, two to three years represent a fast yet sustainable pace of transformation. The organizations that thrive are those that adapt strategy quickly while staying grounded in their core values, using those values not as limits, but as a space for creativity and coherent adaptation. The key is to distinguish what changes from what never does. As research shows, a true pivot isn’t merely a quick shift, it’s a deliberate, values-aligned decision to redirect resources toward a more promising path without losing the company’s core identity, what researchers Jim Collins and Jerry Porras describe as “preserving the core while stimulating progress.” Pivot question: What strategic or tactical pivots are needed right now, and how can our values anchor those moves so we adapt fast without losing alignment? 4. Rely on your teammates to create innovative ideas and creative solutions. Far too frequently, CEOs faced with complex problems try to solve them on their own, rather than engaging the best minds on their teams to come up with creative ideas and new ways of coping with emerging challenges. Today’s problems require that they engage with team members not just to implement their decisions but to foster innovation and original ways of thinking. As Bill George learned from conversations with Best Buy’s leadership, when the impact of Covid-19 became clear in March 2020, Best Buy CEO Corie Barry immediately convened her executive team to reimagine how to serve customers amid store shutdowns and public anxiety. Within days, the company closed more than 1,000 stores and furloughed roughly 51,000 hourly employees. Rather than retreat, by cutting back operations or waiting out the crisis, Barry asked her team a simple but catalytic question: How they could continue to serve customers safely? The answer was bold: Turn every store into a fulfillment hub, shift to online sales, and introduce nationwide curbside pickup, allowing customers to collect electronics and appliances without leaving their cars. Barry delegated authority to store leaders to tailor implementation for local markets and gave teams full decision rights to execute quickly, trusting those closest to customers to adapt the model in real time. This distributed decision-making, which became her signature leadership move during the pandemic, enabled rapid experimentation and learning across hundreds of communities. Best Buy rolled out the curbside and fulfillment transformation in just 48 hours, converting its sales model almost overnight. The result: Sales rebounded faster than key competitors such as Walmart and Target in comparable product categories as the company met surging pandemic-driven demand for home offices, digital learning, and home entertainment. Your teams are best positioned to solve difficult problems and come up with creative solutions. Don’t try to do it all yourself. Rather, challenge your teams to take the lead and move with agility. Pivot question: How can I lead in a way that empowers my team to create the innovative ideas and creative solutions this pivot demands? 5. Go on offense and focus on winning with new business models. A purposeful pivot is not just a defensive move; it’s a launchpad for strategic change, innovation, and new ideas. When faced with complex external pressures, many leaders default to retrenchment, cutting costs, delaying capital projects, and waiting for clarity. In a recent survey, 54% of CEOs say they’ve postponed planned investments because of policy and trade uncertainty, and 98% cite tariffs as a major operational concern. Under U.S. tariff uncertainty, thousands of firms, including nearly 30% of German companies, have already postponed investment plans. That wait-and-see posture can give rivals room to act. Because major capital and acquisition moves take years to materialize, it’s often wiser to invest earlier and be ready for the next wave of opportunity. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella backed generative AI in 2019, ultimately committing more than $13 billion to OpenAI over multiple funding rounds—even as investors and regulators questioned the profitability, safety, and control of emerging AI models, and as the company faced intense competitive and reputational pressure from both Google’s rapid AI integration and antitrust scrutiny over its dominant market position. When OpenAI’s board ousted Sam Altman in November 2023, Nadella moved swiftly, announcing Microsoft would hire Altman and key colleagues, helping stabilize the situation and preserve Microsoft’s AI momentum. In parallel, Microsoft rolled out Copilot across its ecosystem, bringing generative AI to Microsoft 365 apps and beyond. In 2024 and 2025, Nadella paired software bets with hard infrastructure: Microsoft announced €3.2 billion for AI and cloud capacity in Germany, $2.1 billion in Spain, and $2.2 billion in Malaysia. Microsoft also joined BlackRock, Global Infrastructure Partners, and MGX to launch the Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership, targeting $30 billion in initial equity and up to $100 billion with project debt to build data centers and enabling energy systems; Nvidia and xAI later joined the effort. These moves, undertaken amid intensifying geopolitical, regulatory, and energy-supply uncertainty, advanced Microsoft’s mission “to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.” The best time to invest in future growth isn’t only when conditions are favorable, it’s especially important during periods of uncertainty and downturn. The most effective CEOs do this by looking for shifts in technology, customer behavior, and regulation that can open new pathways for value creation. Anchored in their values, which act not only as a stabilizing pivot foot but also as a creative engine that expands strategic options, these CEOs can go on offense by reallocating resources toward innovation, talent, and long-term capabilities while others pull back. By exploring new opportunities, backing strategic bets, and developing long-term capabilities, they’re positioned to surge ahead when markets rebound. Rather than managing to short-term targets, they focus on decisions that will mature into advantage over time. When the upturn arrives, they’re already ready, with new products, services, and momentum. Pivot question: What bold pivot am I ready to lead now to turn uncertainty into our next advantage? A New Standard of Leadership In times of chaos, many leaders retreat, pausing innovation, delaying bold moves, waiting for clarity or following the loudest voice. But this is not the time to hold back; instead, it is the time to pivot forward with purpose and values, demonstrating courage and wisdom. Leadership today demands more than decisiveness. It demands depth. The most effective leaders and organizations are not static, but they are anchored. They know who they are, what they stand for, and why they lead. That clarity allows them to move fast without losing their footing. As Peter Drucker warned, “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence, it is to act with yesterday’s logic.” Turbulence, then, is not the threat; it’s the test. The challenge is the opportunity. The chaos is the proving ground. Pivoting with purpose is not just a tactic. It is a way of leading, with coherence, with character, and with conviction. It’s the mindset that keeps leaders grounded in purpose and values while moving forward with hope. And in a world that won’t stop shifting, it remains the clearest, and strongest, path forward.
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