Name: Pragmatic Change
Author: Mark Winter

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?

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.

Most change programmes are still built for an organisation that no longer exists.

Most change programmes are built for an organisation that no longer exists.

The 2005 playbook: appoint a sponsor, hire a change manager, “do comms”, run training, go live…play a Kayne West track and declare success.

That model assumed stable hierarchies. Predictable timelines. Clear authority.

That 2005 world is largely gone. And not just because Kanye has lost the plot.

700 change practitioners across the globe just told us what’s actually coming.

In reading about it and writing this article, I realised I’ve been living it for 20 years…