Business models once lasted 75 years; now they last just 5-8 years.
One in five companies reinvents itself faster than every year. Which means our real challenge isn’t strategy – it’s the speed at which we must adapt.
I recently sat down with Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva, one of the world’s foremost experts on organisational reinvention, and her research makes one thing clear: most organisations are running obsolete tools in a real-time world.
Nadya founded the Reinvention Academy, co-founded the Reinvention Summit, and wrote The Chief Reinvention Officer Handbook: How to Thrive in Chaos. And, she has an extensive career in academia working alongside people such as Henry Mintzberg (the father of emergent strategy) and as a consultant to many global corporations.
She is also an expert contributor to Innovation in Action, and what she brings to the book is exactly what she brought to our conversation: research-backed, field-tested thinking that cuts through the noise and actually helps people thrive in disruption.
The world your toolkit was built for no longer exists
Nadya shared that since growing up in Kazakhstan and experiencing the collapse of the Soviet Union, she has been exploring two main things:
- Why do systems fail? – A country, a company, an individual career.
- How do people deal with disruption differently and what can allow them to use disruption to propel forward rather than be destroyed?
I asked Nadya why so many capable organisations keep falling behind despite genuine effort and serious resources.
Her answer reframed the entire problem. “We are using tools that were designed for a very low-volatility world. Take budgeting – we take months and months to develop and approve rounds and rounds of precise budgets. And then most organisations say it becomes irrelevant already in the first quarter. As often as the end of January.”
Pointing to the work of Rita McGrath, whose research introduced the concept of transient advantage – the idea that every competitive advantage is inherently short-lived. “Neither technology, nor product, nor operational excellence – anything that used to be a source of competitive advantage in the past – can’t be a safe haven for any organisation for an extended period of time. That means it will give you a couple of months or a couple of years of shelf life, but that’s the most you can ask for.”
What this means is that you need to bet on a “diversified portfolio of reinvention from incremental to radical and everything in-between.”
To do that, we need to shift from current systems, tools and mindsets which protect advantages that don’t last. And to a set of enabling tools that help organisations thrive in perpetual turbulence and capitalise on disruption.
Three things you can do to start reinventing
Here are three practical actions drawn directly from my conversation with Nadya – each one is something you can pick up and use this week.
1. Run a reinvention portfolio audit
Most organisations don’t fail because they have stopped innovating. They fail because they concentrated all their bets in one or two places, leaving entire categories of reinvention unaddressed.
Start by mapping initiatives. Then ask: Where are we over-concentrated? What’s missing? Once you map your portfolio, you’ll see if you’re diversified or missing key types – and if you’re doing too much or too little.
That single audit has saved companies by making the invisible visible.
2. Build a reinvention rhythm into your calendar
Reinvention doesn’t happen in annual planning cycles anymore. Nadya’s recommendation is very simple – and one of the most immediately actionable you can do.
Schedule a quarterly “coffee with yourself.”
Reflect: “What will I let go, keep, or add?” That simple exercise, just at a regular pace, will save you countless headaches. That will allow you to notice trends before they hit you. That will give you a sense of freedom and opportunity rather than fear and being chased by disruption.”
Put it in the calendar now.
3. Run an IQ, EQ, and PQ audit before every major change initiative
Before your next significant initiative, stop treating stakeholder management solely as a communication exercise but use it as a system of value creation rather than interactions feeling like a zero-sum game.
Nadya’s IQ/EQ/PQ model turns it into a diagnostic.
IQ – Have key stakeholders genuinely accepted the intellectual argument? Not nodding politely in the room, but actually bought it?
EQ – What emotions are in play? Who is energised? Who is anxious? Who is already change-fatigued before you’ve even started?
PQ Who stands to lose power – real or perceived – as a result of this change? And what would a genuine win look like for them?
Value creation requires delivering positive emotions, quality ideas, and leaving everyone empowered – not making it a zero-sum game.
Initiatives can stall not because the idea was wrong, but because the PQ dimension was ignored entirely.
If you want to explore these topics further, here’s more:
These three insights are drawn from a rich 45-minute conversation with Nadya, now live on my YouTube channel.
The full interview shares Nadya’s deeper thinking, stories, and applications. This is one of those conversations you’ll want to watch with a notebook open. We cover additional insights like:
- Why people are not naturally bad at change, but often conditioned to resist it
- Why today’s business environment demands continual reinvention
- Why mindset matters as much as tools and skills
- How to create more buy-in by speaking the language of different stakeholders
- Why finding your own pace of reinvention matters in work and life
Thank you Nadya for contributing the week’s Innovation in Action edition and sharing your insights.
I hope you enjoyed this edition and see you next week,
Vaughan