Name: Pragmatic Change
Author: Mark Winter

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.

Psychology is WEIRD...and that's a problem!

Psychology is WEIRD…and that’s a problem. Not a diversity problem. A validity problem. 96% of the psychological research your change frameworks are built on came from populations representing 12% of the world. Most of it was built on American college students. Then generalised to your manufacturing workforce. Your regional council. Your healthcare organisation. Your university with significant first-generation student populations. And when the frameworks produce mediocre results…we blame resistance. Poor sponsorship. Inadequate resourcing. It might simply be that the framework wasn’t built for these people.

Change, LeadershipMark Winter5 May 2026Change, Leadership, Frameworks, Research, Strategy

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

Does your AI strategy have a coherence problem?

Most leadership teams can’t answer this question…without looking at a slide. Can your leadership team name your 3-6 distinctive capabilities? Then: does your AI investment map to those - or does it map to a desire to look like you’re keeping up? The Coherence Premium isn’t just a strategy concept. It’s the difference between AI that builds momentum and AI that quietly drains it.

Change, LeadershipMark Winter5 April 2026AI, Strategy, Change, Leadership

A leadership fear: Changing the change

"Seeing is believing". And within the organisations we work with, people want to believe. Believe in the purpose, believe in their leaders, believe in their own personal convictions about this place that they've decided to commit the majority of their waking hours towards.

When we illuminate our decision-making process, we make our leadership of change believable. That's because we're not just shedding light on the outcomes; we're spotlighting the rationale, the inclusivity, the rigour, and the alignment with organisational values that underpin those outcomes. We’re demonstrating how decisions align with the change objectives and how they contribute to the broader vision of the organisation.

More importantly and on the flipside...in the absence of being told the story, people will make up their own!

Our Sixth Principle of Change is "Make decisions visibly", so this article spotlights some of our favourite decision making tools and gives pragmatic tips on how to give visibility, for even the most sensitive of changes.

Change, LeadershipMark Winter14 August 2023Change, Failure, StrategyComment