The Myth of Stability: Why “Getting Back to Normal” is a Trap
Third in The Pivot Mind “How to Thrive in a Changing World” Series
In early 2007, Kodak executives confidently projected strong growth in their film business. Three years later, the company was on the verge of bankruptcy. They saw the shift to digital photography—but they believed stability would return. They were wrong.
Leaders tell themselves a comforting story. Markets recover. Supply chains settle. The political landscape calms. They exhale and say, “We’ve made it. Things are getting back to normal.”
But they are not.
In our earlier discussion on thriving in change, we saw that wisdom in action requires seeing deeply, committing meaningfully, and moving decisively—even in flux. But nothing pulls leaders out of this posture faster than the belief that stability is returning. Stability thinking lures us away from wisdom and back into drift. It is one of the most common forces that stops leaders from creating the future.
Stability thinking lures us away from wisdom and back into drift.
The desire for stability—the longing for normal—runs deep in business and life. It offers comfort. It gives us a sense that the storm has passed and we can rebuild on steady ground. It is also an illusion. Clinging to it blinds leaders to what is happening beneath the surface. It lulls businesses into preservation when the work of creating the future is what is required.
The world has not stopped changing. It will not. Stability is not coming back because it was never here to begin with.
We often talk about change as if it is an event, something that happens at certain moments and then resolves. But change is not an event. It is the condition of our existence.
What we experience as change is simply our awareness catching up to what was already shifting beneath the surface. The world is not static, occasionally interrupted by disruption. It is always in motion.
Once we recognize this, we stop treating change as something to react to and start learning how to move within flux as the natural state of reality.
This misunderstanding—this myth—sits at the heart of many leadership failures. We are not returning to normal. We are always already in motion, living in flux. The desire to restore stability is often the desire to restore control, to recover what we knew. But thriving does not come from reclaiming what was. It comes from accepting that we are moving forward into what is not yet fully known.
What is lost is not just opportunity. What is lost is the capacity to see.
When leaders assume that stability is the baseline, they begin to build for preservation, not creation. They optimize systems for efficiency. They create controls to limit variability. They treat unexpected shifts as interruptions rather than signals of what is emerging.
This is the trap. By focusing on protecting what exists, they become blind to what is becoming.
While leaders are protecting the present, the future is being shaped by others who are moving while they wait.
Stability is not the baseline. Flux is.
Why This Myth Persists
History gives us endless examples. Kodak was not blindsided by digital photography. Blockbuster did not fail because it didn’t see Netflix. Taxi companies did not miss Uber because they lacked market data.
These businesses saw the shifts coming, but they filtered them through the desire to preserve what they had. They saw the risks. They feared losing their current position. So they waited. They hesitated. They refined their current models rather than building new ones.
"Stability is a story we tell ourselves. We cling to it most tightly when we are closest to being displaced."
When stability is the goal, risk is seen only as danger, not as possibility.
The same pattern repeats across industries and leadership teams today. Leaders often appear most confident just before disruption—not because the future is clear, but because they are most attached to the past.
Thriving leaders operate from a different understanding. They accept that flux is the baseline condition of life and business. They do not see stability as the goal. They see movement as the norm.
Because they see flux as normal, they build differently. They are not just optimizing for today’s efficiency; they are creating for tomorrow’s emergence. They do not wait for the future to arrive fully formed; they begin moving toward it while it is still unclear.
From Prediction to Anticipation
This requires something more than agility. It requires the capacity to see the future not as a risk but as a field of possibility—even when it is unfinished. It requires a different kind of seeing.
As Amy Webb observes in her work on signals and emerging trends, the future often whispers before it shouts. Leaders who move while others are still waiting to confirm what is next position themselves to shape what emerges, rather than merely respond to it.
Most leaders are trained to believe that predicting the future is part of their job. Strategic plans, market forecasts, and risk models all rest on the assumption that with enough data and expertise, we can know what lies ahead. But prediction is often a disguise for control. It feeds the hope that stability will return, and the future can be made certain.
It cannot.
The future does not arrive fully formed; it reveals itself to those who move toward it.
Margaret Heffernan, in her work on uncertainty, argues that the future is not a puzzle to solve—it is something we must meet with imagination and preparation. In her conversation with the BCG Henderson Institute, she warns that prediction often lulls leaders into a false sense of security, when what they need is the capacity to move forward without knowing exactly what is coming. She calls for scenario planning, experimentation, and the development of organizational imagination—not to foresee the future, but to be ready for whatever emerges.
This is the difference between predicting the future and anticipating it.
Leaders who cling to prediction wait too long. They look for confirmation that the future will be what they expect. They seek stability before acting. But those who anticipate move earlier. They begin building while the future is still unclear.
"Prediction seeks control. Anticipation seeks readiness. Or, as Rita McGrath has argued, leaders must abandon the comfort of static advantage and embrace transient opportunities—because in flux, advantage is not held, it is revealed through action."
Prediction seeks control. Anticipation seeks readiness.
Seeing in flux is not simply about scanning trends or gathering better data. It is a way of being in the world.
Leaders who thrive do not stand apart from change; they are immersed in it. They are attuned to the weak signals at the edges, the subtle shifts in conversations, the emerging tensions in supply chains or customer behavior.
This kind of seeing is not driven by fear. It is driven by a commitment to what is becoming. These leaders are not waiting to see what will happen. They are acting from what they care about, even before the path is certain.
"The future is not waiting for us to return to normal. It is already being made by those who are willing to move forward while others are waiting for the ground to settle."
What are you building while others wait?
Next Up: From Managing Change to Designing Reality – The Leader’s Work in Flux
If stability is an illusion, and change is constant, what then is the work of leadership? It is not merely to manage change, but to structure the space in which the future can unfold. This next essay explores how leaders move beyond reacting to disruption and begin designing reality—through what they see, what they speak into existence, and the conditions they create for others to step into possibility.
Deeper Dive: Suggested Readings
Margaret Heffernan, Uncharted: How to Map the Future Together (2020)
Amy Webb, The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream (2016)
Rita McGrath, The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business (2013)
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With gratitude and anticipation,
John Henderson
Founder, The Pivot Mind
