The Conference Board just released their 2026 C-Suite Outlook, and there’s one finding that should fundamentally change how we think about organizational transformation. When asked about their top external challenges, 42.9% of US CEOs ranked “uncertainty” as their number one concern. Not recession, tariffs, or even AI disruption. Just pure, unadulterated not knowing what’s coming next.
Let that sink in for a moment. Nearly half of the leaders steering America’s largest organizations are saying their biggest challenge isn’t a thing they need to navigate around or through. It’s the absence of the stable ground they thought they were standing on.
And if you’re a change practitioner, consultant, or internal leader trying to guide transformation right now, you’re probably nodding your head so hard it hurts. Because while CEOs are admitting uncertainty keeps them up at night, they’re still asking you to deliver change initiatives built on assumptions that no longer exist.
The certainty trap we’re all stuck in
The reality is that most change management frameworks, the ones we’ve been trained on and certified in and built our careers around, were designed for a world that assumed a baseline of predictability. Think about what Kotter’s 8-step process or ADKAR or even agile transformation models require you to know upfront. You need a clear vision of the future state. You need to identify your stakeholders and their concerns. You need a timeline, a resource allocation plan, a communication strategy mapped to milestones. You need to know what resistance will look like so you can preemptively address it.
But when the CEOs themselves can’t tell you what the future state should be, when they’re watching the ground shift under regulatory environments and geopolitical tensions and technological disruption all at once, what exactly are you managing change toward?
The Conference Board data shows this isn’t just vague anxiety. It’s compound uncertainty across every dimension that matters. Economic uncertainty around recession, tariffs, and inflation. Geopolitical instability from cyberattacks to armed conflicts. AI-driven disruption that no one fully understands yet. Political polarization that’s fragmenting markets and workforces. These aren’t separate challenges you can tackle sequentially. They’re interconnected, they’re accelerating, and they’re fundamentally incompatible with frameworks that require you to lock in your plan at step one.
What happens when we keep using the wrong tools
We’ve watched too many smart, dedicated practitioners build the business case, get executive sponsorship, launch the communication cascade, and then six weeks later the market shifts or a new regulation drops or the CEO pivots strategy, and suddenly they’re back at square one. Except now they’re also dealing with change fatigue from their stakeholders who are rightfully asking why they’re being asked to commit to something that keeps getting redefined.
The problem isn’t the practitioners. It’s not even the leaders, most of the time. The problem is we’re operating with mental models designed for stability and predictability in a world that is offering us neither. And the more we try to force certainty, the more brittle our initiatives become. We build detailed project plans that become obsolete before the first milestone. We create communication strategies that feel tone-deaf by the time they roll out. We design training programs for roles that might not exist in six months.
When we keep failing with these approaches, we start to believe that change itself is the problem. That people are too resistant, that organizations are too complex, and that transformation is just inherently difficult. But what if the real issue is that we’re using frameworks that were never designed for the world we’re actually living in?
What it takes to lead change in uncertainty
The CEOs surveyed aren’t just wringing their hands about uncertainty. They’re telling us exactly what they’re prioritizing in response. Business model changes. AI and technology investment. Strategic planning that’s focused on agility, not five-year roadmaps. Revenue growth strategies that can pivot as markets shift. They’re essentially saying they need organizations that can sense, adapt, and transform continuously, not organizations that can execute one big change initiative and then return to stability.
So what does that require from those of us leading transformation? It requires us to stop pretending we can predict and control our way through change. It requires capabilities in foresight, not just project management. Systems thinking, not just stakeholder management. Internal capacity building that makes the organization itself more adaptive, not just better at following the current change plan. It requires us to design for emergence and iteration, not for compliance and completion.
We don’t need to abandon structure or rigor, but rather build different structures, ones that flex rather than fracture when conditions shift. We should be better at sensing what’s happening and adapt our approach, not stick to a plan that’s already obsolete.
A different way forward
We built SHIFT because we see this gap. Leaders tell us they needed transformation capabilities for an uncertain world, and practitioners telling us their existing frameworks weren’t designed for it. We needed something that started from a fundamentally different assumption, that change isn’t a project with a beginning and an end, but an ongoing organizational capacity that can be strengthened and directed.
SHIFT is built on five interdependent elements: Systems thinking that helps you see the whole picture instead of optimizing parts in isolation. Understanding Human Dynamics so you’re working with how change actually happens for people. Building Internal Capacity that makes your organization more resilient and adaptive over time. Using Foresight to explore possibilities and prepare for multiple futures, not predict one outcome. And designing for Transformation that’s continuous and embedded, not episodic and extractive.
The framework assumes uncertainty. It’s designed for it. And it gives practitioners a way to lead transformation that doesn’t require them to pretend they have answers they don’t have or make promises they can’t keep.If you’re reading this and thinking “yes, this is exactly what I’ve been experiencing,” you’re not alone. The world has shifted, and our approaches need to shift with it. Learn more about how SHIFT can help you lead transformation in uncertainty by connecting with us. Because when nearly half of CEOs say uncertainty is their top concern, we can’t keep offering them certainty-based solutions.