Are You Developing Leaders for the Business You Have – or the One You Will Need?

Many organizations develop leaders to execute a set-in-stone strategy. How can leadership development prepare them not only to run today’s business model, but to recognize when it needs to change and help shape what comes next?

A high-performing executive knows how to grow revenue, improve margins, manage a function and deliver against an agreed strategy. Those achievements make them an obvious candidate for greater responsibility. Yet they may never have been asked to question who the organization’s future customers will be, what those customers will value, how technology could alter the economics of the business, or whether the current model is approaching its limits. 

This creates an uncomfortable contradiction. Organizations often identify leadership potential through performance within the current business model. Yet reinvention requires leaders to question the very model in which they’ve succeeded.  

PwC’s 28th Annual Global CEO Survey found that four in ten CEOs believed their companies would no longer be viable in ten years if they continued on their current path. Yet new business strategies added over the previous five years accounted for only 7% of revenue on average. Many leaders recognize the need for reinvention, but few companies are turning it into meaningful new sources of value.  

Banu Beste Başol, Managing Partner at Signium in Istanbul, advises organizations to begin developing leaders for reinvention long before the existing business model comes under pressure. She says,

“Reinvention is becoming a much bigger part of the leadership role, so we need to prepare leaders for it. That means helping them look beyond what’s working today and think about what the business may need next. It needs to be a deliberate priority, not something we hope leaders will learn once they reach the top.”  

Why today’s top performers may not be ready for tomorrow 

Organizations naturally notice people who deliver reliably, improve existing processes, achieve established targets, and manage risk within known parameters. “These leadership qualities will always be important,” says Başol. “The existing business still needs to perform while its future is being considered. Reinvention without discipline can quickly turn into expensive experimentation.” 

However, success within a known model doesn’t always show whether a leader can: 

• Recognize when what customers value is changing 

• Question the commercial assumptions the business has relied on 

• Weigh different possible futures without defaulting to the most familiar option 

A leader may be very good at deciding how to use people, time, and money to deliver an agreed strategy, but have little experience deciding whether the company should keep investing in that strategy at all.  

Execution and reinvention ask different things of a leader. Execution usually begins with a destination: the organization has decided what it wants to achieve, and the leader is responsible for getting there. Reinvention begins much earlier. The destination itself is uncertain, and leaders must help establish which problem is worth solving, what evidence should guide the choice, and what the business may need to become. 

“Many leadership pipelines prepare people thoroughly for execution, but expose them only occasionally to the demands of reinvention,” notes Başol. “The result isn’t a shortage of capable leaders. It’s a shortage of leaders who have had the opportunity to develop what we call commercial judgment. They may struggle to recognize when the current direction no longer reflects business reality or identify what should come next.”  

Bold ideas must still make business sense 

Business-model reinvention is sometimes reduced to creativity, digital fluency, or the confidence to propose bold ideas. These qualities may contribute, but reinvention is ultimately commercial work. It asks three connected questions: 

• Customers value 

Who does the business serve, what do those customers need, and how are their needs changing? 

• Delivery capability 

What can the organization realistically provide through its people, capabilities, technology, and partners? 

• Economic value 

How could a new approach generate revenue, lower costs, or strengthen the company’s position?  

Answering these questions requires leaders to connect information that organizations often divide across functions. They must understand what’s changing in the market, what data reveals about customer behavior, what technology makes possible, and what the organization can realistically deliver. 

This is commercial fluency in a broader sense. It doesn’t require every leader to become an expert in every discipline. It means understanding how the different parts of the business fit together – and recognizing when a change in one may require changes in the others, too. 

Başol sees this broader commercial view as particularly important when organizations consider new technology. She explains, “AI can help a business do the same thing faster or more efficiently, but that isn’t necessarily reinvention. Leaders also need to ask whether technology could allow the business to solve a different customer problem, enter a new market, or make money in a new way.”  

How do leaders develop the ability to reinvent? 

Reinvention capability is difficult to develop through a leadership program or functional role alone. It’s often more effectively developed through a hands-on approach. 

1. Expose leaders to the wider commercial picture 

Functional depth gives leaders expertise and credibility, but no single function sees the whole commercial picture. For example:  

• A product leader may recognize an opportunity that operations considers impractical.  

• A technology leader may know what can be built without knowing whether customers will pay for it. 

•  A finance leader may understand the risk but struggle to value an opportunity that doesn’t fit the company’s usual measures. 

Leaders need opportunities to work across these perspectives. That includes direct contact with customers, exposure to unfamiliar markets, access to commercial and customer-behavior data, and responsibility that spans functional boundaries. The goal is to help leaders understand how decisions about customers, pricing, investment, technology, operations, and talent affect one another. 

2. Give leaders a real business question to solve 

Leaders may attend programs or receive coaching, but decisions about the business’s future remain with a small group at the top. They’re taught how to carry out the strategy, without learning how to help shape it. 

Organizations can change this by giving developing leaders a real business question to explore. For example: 

• Are customers beginning to want something different? 

• Could an existing strength help the company enter a new market? 

• Is there another way to deliver the service or generate revenue? 

These questions must be real, with no predetermined answer. Leaders need access to customers, relevant information, and colleagues from across the business. They also need permission to challenge existing thinking and explore options that senior leaders may not have considered. 

Başol emphasizes that the process must lead somewhere. She says, “The organization should allow the leaders to decide whether to stop, change direction, run a small test, or invest further. When leaders see their work inform a real decision, they learn that shaping the business’s future is part of their role. It nurtures a sense of ownership, pride, and responsibility.”  

3. Actively support the leader’s learning experience 

Giving a leader a strategic project doesn’t automatically make it developmental. Experience becomes more valuable when leaders have structured opportunities to examine how they approached the problem and what the evidence changed. 

Research into leadership-development impact suggests that development works best through a combination of learning, experience, feedback and organizational support, rather than through isolated interventions. In a live reinvention challenge, that support might include coaching, expert input, peer challenge or facilitated reviews. 

These conversations help leaders identify areas of improvement, such as:  

• Assumptions they accepted too readily 

• Valid possibilities they dismissed 

• How well they worked across competing interests 

• Whether they changed direction when the evidence required it 

“Strategic challenges give leaders the experience,” says Başol. “But reflection helps them carry what they have learned into the next one.”  

How C.P. Group develops leaders through live reinvention challenges 

C.P. Group, a Thai conglomerate operating across several industries, uses real business challenges to develop leaders. In one of its Senior Leaders Development Programs, executives from different businesses worked together to rethink the role of a network of traditional community stores. 

The initiative involved: 

• Reconsidering what the stores could offer their communities 

• Introducing delivery and pre-ordering services 

• Helping local retailers gain access to finance 

• Exploring new revenue streams while reducing inventory costs and risks 

The work produced more than 1,000 orders a month and helped over 1,200 community retailers access financing. Following the initial regional pilot, C.P. Group began expanding the model nationally. 

The leaders weren’t implementing an answer handed down from the top. They were working across business boundaries to explore, test, and develop a new commercial model – with real customers and real consequences. In doing so, the organization developed its leaders and its business at the same time. 

Succession planning: Develop reinvention skills before leaders reach the top 

C.P. Group doesn’t reserve this kind of development for senior executives. Its programs begin with young talent and progress through emerging, operational and senior leadership levels. The expectations also evolve – from building core skills and entrepreneurial thinking to improving business systems and helping shape the group’s future direction.  

“This offers an important lesson for succession planning,” says Başol. “Don’t wait until someone is being considered for a senior role to assess whether they can help the organization change. Organizations must give people more challenging opportunities as they progress through their careers.” 

Companies can give leadership candidates room to test their skills, while providing the support and guardrails they need. For example:  

• Use their expertise to solve broader business problems 

• Turn a new idea into something the organization can test 

• Make difficult decisions about customers, investment, and the future 

“Give potential leaders real business challenges and you quickly see where they’re ready to step up, and where they still need more experience,” says Başol. “That gives organizations far better evidence for promotion and succession decisions than performance history alone.” 

Develop the leaders that the future needs 

Social writer and philosopher Eric Hoffer once wrote, “In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”   

Many leadership pipelines risk doing exactly that: preparing capable people thoroughly for the business of today, without giving them the experience to help shape what comes next. The first signs that a business model is losing relevance may appear in customer conversations, operating data, or a new use of technology – not in the strategy room.  

Organizations need leaders across the business who can recognize those signals and understand what they might mean. Başol concludes:

“Companies can’t wait until the business model is under serious pressure to find out whether their leaders know how to rethink it. By then, both the decisions and the learning carry much higher stakes.” 

Reinvention capability is built earlier: when emerging leaders are allowed to work beyond their functions, investigate unresolved questions and make decisions with real commercial consequences. Although the future is likely to remain uncertain, a business leadership pipeline doesn’t have to be.