When the Familiar Stops Working, Great Leaders Twist

In a world where the familiar shifts faster than we can react, standing still is the most expensive move. It’s not about doing more — it’s about twisting what no longer works, or no longer works as well as it once did.

Leaders today — at every level and in organizations of all sizes — are being hit by a tidal wave of converging forces. The explosion of AI, global instability (and the economic uncertainty that follows), the acceleration of technology, information overload, and a slew of other white‑water dynamics are all crashing at once.

And as any leader knows, these challenges don’t arrive in a neat, orderly fashion. They don’t line up like people inching forward in a predictable amusement‑park line. They explode, implode, and collide with total unpredictability.

The result? Our ability to predict outcomes based on past performance or “the good old days” is shakier than ever. It can be unsettling to realize we no longer influence outcomes the way we used to.

That’s exactly why twisting the familiar isn’t optional anymore — it’s survival. Whether we like it or not, the world has already twisted what we once knew to be familiar.

As the brash kid in the schoolyard used to say: “So, whaddya gonna do about it?”

Many leaders freeze when their traditional predictors stop working. They become more reactive, more cautious, less willing to explore new ideas, methods, or revenue streams. They’re too busy putting out fires to plan how to prevent them. And when that happens, blind spots appear.

Teams can suffocate on the smoke of the status quo.

Doing nothing is not a mode of success. Outstanding leaders rarely got where they are by riding on soft pillows and moonbeams. They almost always have setbacks or crises on their résumé — moments where they showed their moxie, marshaled their resources, and overcame real adversity. Status quo was not a viable option.

I’m one of those people who believe the term “leader” is over‑used today. Plenty of folks on LinkedIn trot out the phrase “a leader with a proven track record” (a wildly over‑used line), knowing no one is going to ask them to prove it. So what really qualifies someone as a leader? Have they navigated the conflicting waves described here? Have they led their team through a crisis or pressure‑cooker situation? Have they led by example and equipped their people to succeed — or merely issued orders and directives? Do they actually lead anyone, or just have the title?

Teams often reflect the spirit and mood of their leaders. Studies show that teams absorb, inherit, and mirror their leadership — whether that is uncertainty, optimism, discouragement, esprit de corps, or a confident “we got this.”

I’ve written before about what I call shifting‑sand leadership — the idea that outstanding leaders stay true to their core spirit but remain flexible enough to navigate when the sands shift beneath their feet, like a spent wave receding back into the ocean. Flexibility today requires admitting you don’t know it all — not in this world, not by a long shot.

Yet how many people list flexibility as a true leadership skill? And that adaptability must translate into learning how and when to twist the familiar. In real terms, that means getting your team coached up, better prepared, and more willing to shed comfort zones and embrace an idea I recently developed:

The familiar lives in the ordinary.

The twist lives in creativity.

Wisdom lives in the twist.

A well‑known hospitality company with a proud heritage approached me not long ago. Economic cycles, workplace demands, new competition, limited staffing, and shifting customer expectations had left them treading water. The management team was stuck in constant firefighting mode.

The VP told me, “Gary came in and calmed us down — we were running a bit crazy. He started by putting things in order for us, and we used the lessons from his book as the basis for our action steps.”

We turned things around by improving communication among team leaders, strengthening coordination across business units through my Alliance Partners blueprint, and raising accountability so that getting things done — on time and done right — truly mattered again.

Together, we aligned the organization on its true north by identifying strengths and weaknesses and by having frank discussions about the twists needed to produce measurable results. The shift from reactive to proactive leadership became the catalyst for renewed performance and momentum.

With the uncertainty of our times — and the accelerating feeling that if we’re not getting better, we’re getting worse — leaders and decision‑makers should lean in, gather their teams, and start twisting their familiar… and their customers’ familiar, too. In other words, innovate.

So how do we do that?

It starts with making the executive decision to get your team some strength and conditioning help. Here’s what we can accomplish:

• Unlock creativity — you’d be surprised what emerges when people feel safe to explore

• Address real‑world concerns, trends, obstacles, and solutions they face every day

• Learn, practice, fail, flex, and understand what to do when shift happens

• Embrace a bend‑don’t‑break mindset in sales, service, teamwork, and deliverables

• Shred outdated playbooks and build new pathways and actions

• Bring your team together in person — not on Zoom — where they can feel the growth, share ideas, overcome obstacles, and embrace curiosity with the spirit of breaking molds as a tour de force

The Bottom Line

Wisdom lives in the twist — so stop worrying about “How much will it cost?” and start getting uncomfortable answering this: “How much will it cost us if we don’t do this?”