Name: Pragmatic Change
Author: Mark Winter

It's tough at the top of a 115 year old machine; mostly because no one will tell you it's tough

It's tough at the top of a 115 year old machine; mostly because no one will tell you it's tough.

You are the best-briefed person in the building and the worst-informed person on your own change.

You can feel the sanitisation even when you can't see it. And the standard response is to blame culture, the consultants (it's fine, we're used to it...) or a lack of courage — why won't people just tell me the truth?

Most leaders fail to see that the machine is working exactly as designed; it's just that it was designed in 1911.

So in an era of folding iPhones, what are the mechanisms for getting your best and brightest to speak up?

Change, LeadershipMark Winter15 September 2026Change, Leadership, Psychology, Culture, Decision-Making, Transformation

Don't squeeze harder. Free people up to move where they need to be.

I love the National Basketball Association (NBA) playoffs.

The best coaches know: at this point in the season, you can't squeeze your players any more. But what is our temptation as leaders, when the pressure is on and all eyes are on us?

I'm sad one of my all time heroes LeBron James is out. But I'm intrigued by what Mike Brown is building in New York. From being fired four times, to (in his first year with the team) making the Finals!

And now, on the cusp of success in a city with notoriously high expectations...he's making it all about the players.

I'm in my own 'playoff series' right now on a project. I just hope I've positioned us right for success.

What does it mean to lead complex change in 2026?

You know how I'm supposed to open a LinkedIn article. Especially one published on a Monday...who does that?!

Recognisable caricutures from the Boardroom. A leadership vignette. A clever mixture of intruige and just enough panic to make you keep reading...

Instead, I'm compelled to share a gem from my Evernote files, saved during my Masters at the University of Sydney in 2012.

It's from a British physicist named Mark McKergow. He coined a word using Japanese roots because English didn't have one for the concept he needed. It's 2026 and I keep coming back to it.

Because the way most organisations are approaching complex change right now lacks the substance that McKergow was writing about fourteen years ago.

So what does it actually mean to lead complex change in 2026?

Stay inside your budget by going outside your own boardroom.

The Planning Fallacy is the diagnosis. Reference Class Forecasting is the discipline. Why looking outside your own boardroom — at what actually happened to comparable projects — is the single best corrective to inside-view optimism.

Your transformation will be remembered for two moments. Are you designing them?

What two moments will your transformation be remembered for?

Not the months of stakeholder engagement. Not the training rollout. Not the governance forums. Not even that beautiful documentation you’ve laboured over.

Over the long run: The emotional peak. And how it ended.

That’s what the research says. And if you’ve led (or been lead into…) a major change, I’d wager it matches your own memory too.

This is called the Peak End rule and applying it deliberately is one of the most underused lenses in change leadership.

There's a risk in your change programme that rarely makes it onto the risk register.

There's a risk in your change programme that rarely makes it onto the risk register. And if you've been watching the AI conversation lately...I can guarantee you've seen it! It's not a toxic leader, hostile stakeholder or external 'threat'.... It's someone capable and well-intentioned...but whose confidence has quietly outrun their calibration. It has a name. David Dunning and Justin Kruger documented it in 1999. Most importantly: before you look around the table and start spotting it in others, there's a quick game worth playing first.

Change, LeadershipMark Winter21 April 2026Change, Leadership, Decision-Making, AI, Strategy, AI Strategy