Leadership is synonymous with change, but most of the playbook is written for change that leaders choose to initiate. What about change that is forced on the organization from the outside? Drawing on Baumgartner and Jones's Punctuated Equilibrium theory, Woodward and Hendry's coping framework, Thurlow and Mills on sense-making, and Frederic Nortier's distinction between change and transition, this article offers a checklist for leaders navigating disruption they did not ask f

Ready for things to get back to normal? You're not alone, but the leaders who force a full return to the office may create the very "Turnover Tsunami" they fear. With Wollard and Shuck's antecedents of engagement, GM's "Work Appropriately" policy under Mary Barra, and Bob Dylan's reminder that the times they are a-changin', this article makes the research case for remote-work flexibility and the leadership posture required to retain talent on the other side of the pandemic.

Every decision is different. A supply chain problem, a staffing call, and a crisis response each require different thinking, different tools, and different tolerances for speed versus deliberation. The Cynefin framework, developed by David Snowden and Mary Boone in Harvard Business Review, gives leaders a way to sort any decision into one of five categories (simple, complicated, complex, chaotic, or disordered) and match the response to the reality. In a pandemic, that match

Conventional wisdom says set high expectations. Research says it's more complicated than that. University of Pennsylvania scholar Samir Nurmohamed found that the effect of high or low expectations depends almst entirely on credibility. Credible sources create self-fulfilling prophecies. Non-credible sources create underdogs who work harder to prove them wrong. In a pandemic, your leadership credibility is the single most valuable asset you have.