For the past two years, organizations have been racing to adopt AI. Teams have experimented with pilots, automated workflows, tested use cases, and launched innovation initiatives at unprecedented speed. But in many companies, these initiatives are disconnected and AI adoption has outpaced governance, operating models, and even clear strategic direction.  

As part of the seventh edition of Prophet’s Catalysts research, we’re exploring whether AI’s next challenge is no longer adoption, but leadership. Through our qualitative research, several early hypotheses are beginning to emerge that we’ll continue to test through our upcoming quantitative research. 

As the initial wave of experimentation matures, a new reality is emerging: AI isn’t just changing how organisations operate; it’s changing the nature of work itself. To make the most of this opportunity, organisations must be structured, aligned, and upskilled enough to harness it. 

In last year’s Catalysts research, we explored the importance of building the human infrastructure around AI, emphasizing that transformation could not simply be technical, but needed to be cultural as well. That idea still holds true. But the conversation has evolved. In other words, the challenge is no longer just adapting to AI. It is fundamentally shifting how we organize and structure our work based on a new AI-enabled paradigm. 

Organizations are now moving beyond questions of readiness and adaptability toward something more fundamental: how strategy, talent, culture, governance, and operations work together as an interconnected system, and how to redesign work, not just layer AI onto outdated processes.  

This demands intentional focus from leadership and points to a broader shift: competitive advantage may increasingly come from an organization’s ability to continuously adapt, rather than simply adopt. We’ll be exploring how organisations can do this across the next four blog posts. 

What we’re seeing from the new research: 

1. AI Leadership is becoming change leadership

To succeed in the age of AI, leaders can no longer rely on certainty, fixed answers, or static transformation maps. As AI evolves rapidly, organizations need leaders who can guide through ambiguity, align teams around moving targets, and create momentum without having complete clarity. 

“You have to take into consideration all the human change management aspects.”

Business Leader, International Food Business

2. Leaders need to set the vision 

The most effective leaders are starting from the business need, not the tool, asking how AI accelerates what the organization is already trying to achieve and seizing the opportunity to innovate on the systems and processes that currently exist. 

“We had to create a visual of all the agents we had in existence to prevent people from building the same solution several times in different parts of the business.”

AI leader, Global Industrial Conglomerate

3. Leaders need to communicate openly

For employees to be engaged and excited around AI, leaders must build trust around it and communicate openly, about what AI can help the organization do, what it means for how people work and their jobs, and what they themselves are still learning or don’t yet know. 

“We’ve had to get everyone over the AI anxiety hump because everyone was talking about AI coming to take their jobs, but what does that really mean and what skillsets and mindsets do we need to develop to keep pace with this change?”

HR Leader, B2B Marketing & Sales 

What’s next for business leaders?

1. Get organized around AI, not just excited about it 

In last year’s Catalysts research, we emphasized the importance of building workforce readiness and fostering human-centered AI adoption. This year, we’re seeing organizations move beyond awareness and experimentation into a new challenge: organizational coordination. 

The companies pulling ahead are not necessarily the ones with the most AI tools; they are the ones creating alignment across strategy, governance, operations, talent, and leadership. The challenge is no longer simply adopting AI; it’s organizing the enterprise around it. 

2. Develop leaders who can operate through uncertainty  

Our 2025 research highlighted the need for leaders to build trust and create human-centered transformation environments. This year, we’re seeing leadership expectations evolve even further. Organizations increasingly need leaders who can navigate “known unknowns” without pretending to have fixed answers. Leaders that are embedding experimentation, iteration, and learning directly into how work happens, rather than treating transformation as a separate initiative running alongside the business.  

3. Normalize experimentation and course correction 

Organizations know they need experimentation, but many are still operating with cultures and systems optimized for predictability and risk reduction. 

In our last research, we emphasized experimentation as an innovation muscle. This year, it is increasingly becoming an operational requirement. Organizations need to create environments where teams can test, learn, adapt, and share insights quickly, while still operating within clear strategic guardrails. The strongest organizations are not eliminating uncertainty. They are building the institutional stamina to move through it faster. 

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As corporate leaders assess company performance, raises and bonus distribution, it’s imperative that they prioritise middle managers. Middle managers are the linchpins of organizational health, translating strategy into execution, culture into action and performance into results. It defies reason why these dogged workhorses climbing corporate ladders don’t get the investments they need to help them soar before they lose their footing.

In a 2024 survey, 75% of millennial middle managers reported feeling overwhelmed, stressed, or burned out — and nearly half said they were considering leaving their roles. These managers are feeling pressure from all sides: 39% cited increased pressure from senior leadership, while 37% pointed to greater demands from their teams.

Same holds true for middle managers. It’s senior leaders who get the shiny new toys. They get up to bat first when there are exclusive training programs and executive coaching sessions to be had. First to get rewarded when performance metrics are met. Front-line workers are also nurtured and groomed, given access to tools and training while they settle in and grow. Not so much for those in the middle. They’re expected to translate, deliver and execute sans the tailored support they so often need.

What a miss.

According to Gallup, 70% of the variance in employee engagement is directly attributed to the manager. McKinsey reports that companies with strong managerial capabilities deliver returns to shareholders that are 21 times greater than those with weaker managers.

So what do middle managers really need — and how can organizations better support and unleash their potential?

1. Make Their Lives Easier

Middle managers are drowning in complexity. Simplify wherever possible: streamline workflows, reduce administrative burdens and equip them with intuitive tools.

And communicate with them. It’s one of their biggest pain points. Establish dedicated manager forums or communities to serve as both peer support and direct communication channels. Make information easy to access, tailored to their needs and rooted in shared experience — not buried in intranets or lost in long email threads.

2. Give Them a Seat at the Table

Managers are uniquely positioned. They have proximity to the front line, insights into customer pain points and an intimate view of what’s working — and what’s not — on the ground. Treat them as strategic partners and reward them as such. Create intentional touchpoints between middle managers and senior leadership to foster transparency, trust and dialogue. Share how decisions are made, invite their input and — critically — close the loop by acknowledging when their feedback influences change. Visibility into impact fuels engagement and retention. And it just feels good.

3. Support Them as People Leaders

Many middle managers were promoted for being strong individual contributors but haven’t received the support to evolve into effective people leaders. They’re expected to motivate, coach and lead — but may not have the tools to do so. Invest in them and the dividends will flow.

When a healthcare client was introducing a new, simplified purpose, leadership made the strategic decision to create manager-specific summits that made the content and experience accessible to this critical level of leadership. The content and training were tailored to this audience, focused on equipping managers to bring the new organizational mantra to life through day-to-day coaching and recognition, compared to more strategically for senior leaders. Participants voiced appreciation that middle managers were trusted and engaged to lead the rollout which fuel-injected its success.

4. Empower Their Decision-Making

Managers want to lead — not just follow orders. Give them autonomy, backed by the right guardrails. Allstate introduced a decision-making model where senior leaders took on the role of “navigators,” while middle managers were cast as the “drivers.” This metaphor wasn’t just symbolic — it represented a tangible shift in accountability and empowerment.

With senior leaders as coaches, not bottlenecks, middle managers gained confidence and clarity in their decision-making.

5. Recognise and Develop Them

Middle managers carry immense weight — yet their efforts often go unacknowledged. Recognition doesn’t have to be flashy. Career development opportunities, visible appreciation and meaningful decision-making authority all go a long way.

In fact, McKinsey found that middle managers value empowerment — such as being trusted to make decisions — just as much as financial rewards. So as the year winds down, consider both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators when designing recognition strategies.

​Unilever’s FLEX Experiences, for instance, gave talent the chance to raise their hand for new internal projects across the organization. Expanding the pool for talent beyond typical structures, the AI-powered program helped align individuals on passion projects.

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In times defined by disruption, from market volatility and AI to geopolitical flux, growth must be designed, not assumed. For this installment of Uncommon Growth Leaders, Chiaki Nishino spoke with Beth Wood, Chief Marketing Officer, and Brad Kaufman, Head of Digital Marketing and Marketing Operations at Principal Financial Group, about what it really takes to lead with purpose, clarity and resilience. 

Beth, let’s start at the top. When everything around you is changing, how do you ground leadership? What’s most important to you in those moments of uncertainty? 

Beth: It starts with clarity of strategy, purpose and values. You need a strategy that recognizes the forces outside your walls and gives people something stable to hold onto. Once you’ve got that, you repeat it, over and over. I often say, communicate, communicate, communicate. 

And you can’t drift from your core values. Those have to stay constant no matter how much the world changes. At Principal, we make our values visible, literally. They’re on walls, desktops and in conversations. We measure ourselves against them. If we’re not living up to them, we act. 

The other piece is followership. You want to build an organization full of people who would follow you anywhere, not because they have to, but because they want to. That’s how you build trust. 

Followership isn’t about hierarchy; it’s about belief. People follow leaders who are consistent, transparent, and authentic, leaders who show them the “why” behind the work, not just the “what.” When your team understands the purpose, when they see that you’ll make the hard calls and stand behind them, that’s when loyalty and engagement take root. 

I tell my leaders all the time: your goal is to earn discretionary effort; the effort people give because they believe in you, not because it’s written in their job description. When you’ve built that kind of followership, alignment becomes effortless, communication becomes more direct, and performance accelerates. It’s not about charisma or being liked, it’s about credibility and care. People will follow you through ambiguity if they trust your intent and your direction. 

Brad, how does that show up in your day-to-day leadership? 

Brad: Consistency is everything. The best leaders don’t just communicate clearly once they keep reinforcing the same message until it sticks. Words matter, and how you use them shapes trust. 

Consistency doesn’t mean being rigid; it means being reliable. When people know what to expect from you, even in uncertain times, they can move faster and make better decisions. It builds confidence. If you’re changing direction every week or framing the story differently every time you speak, people lose track of what matters most. 

I remind my team that clarity compounds. Every time you repeat the same vision with the same intent, you’re reinforcing the signal in a world full of noise. Consistency gives your people something to anchor to, and that’s when influence becomes sustainable. 

And when it comes to driving transformation, we always start with the problem. Teams love to jump into solutions, but I bring them back to the core question: what problem are we trying to solve? Once that’s clear, alignment and creativity happen naturally. 

The past few years have been incredibly disruptive. How do you balance short-term performance with long-term vision? 

Beth: You have to think with both sides of your brain. Short-term results matter, but if you only chase the urgent, you’ll never innovate. Our teams understand their role in both horizons: to solve today’s problems and to imagine tomorrow’s opportunities. 

I tell my teams constantly; you have permission to think big. But people need to hear a long-term idea 10 or 20 times before they start to believe it’s real. Repetition turns aspiration into culture. 

Brad: Exactly. I always say it takes a thousand one-on-ones. You can’t just say the vision once and assume people internalize it. I literally pull out our original project decks months later to remind everyone where we started. 

And psychological safety is huge. If people don’t understand something — or disagree — they have to feel safe to say so. That’s how you keep people aligned and engaged for the long haul. 

Beth, how do you make sure your teams stay customer-centered, especially in a large, complex organization? 

Beth: We keep our finger on the pulse. We run monthly “pulse” surveys, maintain multiple customer panels, and manage the long-standing research called the Well-Being Index that tracks optimism and financial health among small and midsize business owners. 

We also co-create with customers. We ask them directly: how would this work for you? They always bring perspectives we’d never think of on our own. That collaboration builds better solutions and a stronger brand. 

Brad: And for people who don’t directly engage with customers, we build the mindset into the culture. Everyone should think like a student of the business, curious about what the customer is doing, and how it impacts their role. That outside-in perspective needs to be automatic, not occasional. 

When budgets tighten, how do you still foster creativity and innovation? 

Brad: It’s about bending the curve. Every team is asked to do more, with more complexity, at higher quality, in less time. That equation doesn’t add up unless you change how the work gets done. 

“Bending the curve” means finding leverage, through process improvement, smarter workflows, and, increasingly, technology. You can’t outwork exponential complexity, but you can outthink it. That’s where automation, data and AI come in. 

Our job isn’t to work harder; it’s to work smarter. That means auditing what’s manual and finding opportunities to automate, investing in skill development so the basics become second nature, and then deploying new tools to multiply impact.  

Beth: Our CEO made a commitment to train all 20,000 employees on using AI to improve productivity and customer experience. And it’s working. People are realizing it’s not about replacing work; it’s about freeing up time for higher-value thinking. 

The key is embracing it. The tools are here, but you have to be willing to learn, experiment, and use them to do things differently. 

You’ve both talked about performance and development. How do you manage that “vital middle” of performers — those who aren’t low performers but haven’t yet hit their stride? 

Beth: With clarity and courage. The top performers manage themselves. The middle is where leadership happens. I have regular “Why do you stay?” conversations because I want to understand motivation. 

Once expectations and skills are clear, the question becomes: are you filling the role we need? Half the time, people rise to the occasion. The other half, we talk openly about fit. Direct, transparent conversations are how you build trust. 

Brad: There’s nothing more motivating than the truth. You don’t have to be harsh, just real. People appreciate it when they know exactly where they stand. 

Beth, you’ve been described as a sponsor of talent. How do you think about growing leaders? 

Beth: I hire people for the job I think they’ll grow into, not just the one they’re hired for. With Brad, for instance, he came to me after 20 years at Principal and said, “I want to do something different.” That’s gold to me. I just needed to open the door, provide coaching, and get out of his way. 

I ask one question constantly: how can I help? That’s it. If people need me, I’m there. If not, I move aside. 

I also host something called The Orange Room, a casual, no-agenda session every few weeks where anyone in my organization can ask anything. It builds transparency, trust, and connection. 

Leadership isn’t just about skills, it’s about mindset. How do you build resilience in your teams? 

Brad: For me, resilience starts with perspective. I encourage my team to step outside their own viewpoint, especially in moments of tension or frustration. When conflict happens, I’ll ask, “What’s the other person thinking right now?” or “What do they see that you might not?” 

It sounds simple, but that question resets everything. It slows the reaction, diffuses defensiveness, and shifts people from emotion to curiosity. When you practice that regularly, it becomes a leadership muscle. You stop seeing challenges as personal attacks and start seeing them as opportunities to understand context and improve outcomes. 

Resilience isn’t about being unshakable; it’s about being adaptable. It’s the ability to take feedback, reframe setbacks and move forward with perspective. And when leaders model that it cascades through the team, people start mirroring calm instead of chaos. 

Beth: I completely agree. A big part of resilience is choosing how you interpret what’s happening around you. You have to assume positive intent and that can be hard when you’re under pressure. But most people aren’t out to make your life difficult; they’re simply trying to solve their own set of problems. If you can start from that mindset, conversations become more productive and you stay in control of your own energy. 

Another dimension is discernment. I always remind my leaders that not every battle is worth fighting. Every hill isn’t a hill to die on. Part of resilience is knowing when to engage deeply and when to let something go. Leaders who can focus on what truly matters, who can separate the noise from the signal, move faster and inspire confidence in others. 

I also think resilience grows from community. People are more resilient when they feel seen and supported. When leaders create space for honesty, vulnerability and reflection when they normalize saying, “This week was hard” that’s when resilience becomes collective, not just individual. 

Brad: Yes, and it’s contagious. When you model composure and curiosity under pressure, it gives everyone permission to do the same. That’s how you create a culture that bends without breaking. 

Personally, how do you both stay inspired and balanced as leaders? 

Beth: Watching my daughter play hockey grounds me, its joy, pure and simple. I also read constantly, mostly business books and blogs like Seth Godin and Simon Sinek. I pull one or two takeaways from each and apply them. If they work, I keep them; if not, I move on. 

Brad: I’ve tried to make my job about what I love: technology, data, process. When you align your work with what energizes you, you don’t burn out. 

And I protect my time. Nights and weekends are sacred. I tell my team the same; rest isn’t a luxury, it’s a performance strategy. 

Before we wrap, anything we didn’t cover that feels essential to uncommon leadership? 

Brad: We don’t talk enough about leading humans. There’s no playbook for when someone’s parent is sick or their kid’s struggling. You can’t lead effectively if your relationship is purely transactional. 

Beth: Yes, and that care has to be real. People can tell when it’s performative. Be authentic, be vulnerable and let people see who you are. That’s how you build trust. 

And remember: every person on the team has a role. As John Wooden said, everyone must know their role and trust that others will perform theirs. When you have that trust, everything else flows. 

Chiaki: Beautifully said. Thank you both for sharing so openly. What stands out to me from this conversation is how practical and human great leadership really is. It’s not about having all the answers about building trust, showing care and helping people find clarity in complexity. The way you balance both purpose, performance and empathy is exactly the kind of leadership that fuels uncommon growth. 

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The Illusion of Speed and Simplicity 

We live in an age of AI hype: infinite value, instant transformation, and algorithms that solve all types of problems. But as Paul Hlivko warns in Harvard Business Review, those headlines often mask a much slower, more friction-filled reality: “AI will transform industries … but on enterprise time: longer, slower, and with far more friction than most expect.” According to the article, corporate leaders routinely make six core mistakes, including underestimating the time needed, overestimating adoption, and obsessing over the models instead of the real, sustainable systems.  

This aligns with what we see in practice: many AI transformation programs default to a standard consulting playbook — assess, reengineer, select technology, train, integrate, roll out. That is not wrong — but it’s insufficient. The promise of rapid returns often collides with legacy systems, cultural resistance, risk-averse governance, and organizational inertia. When execution lags, stakeholders grow impatient. Business cases underdeliver. Trust erodes. And the opportunity to capture exponential value slips away. 

The Two Risks That Leaders Rarely Face Head-on 

1. Underperformance: The Gap Between Expectation and Delivery 

Even with strong investment, many AI programs will land somewhere in the “incremental improvement” zone rather than delivering dramatic transformation. According to KMPG’s 2025 Global CEO Outlook, leaders are betting big on AI — but they’re acutely aware that culture, adoption, and trust are real constraints:  

• 71% of CEOs say AI is a top investment priority. 
• 69% plan to allocate 10–20% of budgets to AI.  
• Yet 63% of CEOs express concern about AI’s impact on culture.
• 33% see employee resistance to change as a serious barrier. 

To HBR’s point: the world believes in rapid adoption, but in reality, enterprise adoption is often slow, uneven, and delayed by legacy constraints.  

The result? Many organizations operate under a “speed illusion” thinking they’re moving fast, but really lagging in impact, adoption, and value captured. While CEOs are aware of the issues, they are not necessarily addressing them head on. 

2. Cultural Erosion: The Risk of Becoming Soulless 

Even when AI “works,” it can hollow out what makes organizations human.  

HBR refers to fact that “We are automating work without really understanding it.” Many tasks involve “connective labor”, the human act of seeing others and reflecting understanding; something no algorithm can replicate. When machines take over more of what people used to do, employees start questioning their role and relevance. What remains if your unique ideas, judgment, or moral instincts are replaced by algorithmic suggestions? 

Worse still, cutting out swathes of humans to be replaced by machines, like recent Amazon and UPS announcements to lay off 14,000 and 48,000 people respectively, spreads fear like wildfire. Remaining employees will be looking over their shoulder every day while they try to learn new processes/tools all while silently second guessing their own identity/worth/value as knowledge workers and experiencing survivor guilt over their departed peers. 

Organizations are inherently social and human. Unchecked, AI transformation can erode purpose, identity, and distinctiveness—leaving behind a high-efficiency shell that feels no different from any other. In the worst case, leaders may wake up in a faster, but hollow firm, bleeding any talent that remains. 

The Leadership Challenge: Balancing Technology with Humanity 

The paradox is stark: you need both speed and soul. You need technology execution and human-centered change. Too much reliance on process and systems, ignoring identity, narrative and belief, and you risk cultural collapse. Too much focus on people without execution rigor, and you risk underwhelming returns. 

The leaders who win in this era embrace a third path: integrative transformation, where machines and humans are co-designers of the future. 

What does that require? 

• A change narrative that connects AI to purpose, identity, and meaning — not just efficiency. 
• Leadership that can manage emotional truth, change fatigue, and scepticism, not just process rollout. 
• Investment in a culture of experimentation, trust, and iteration — so AI adapts with you, not against you. 

What it Looks Like in Practice 

• Start small, learn fast: Use early AI pilots to test the interplay of tech and culture before scaling. 
• Layer on change ignition: Don’t just train — it matters how you engage, narrate, and embed belief in your people. 
• Protect the “connective labor” parts: Recognize where human judgment, empathy, and identity still matter (and always will). 
• Design for endurance, not demos: Move beyond one-off AI initiatives to sustained systems, governance, and cultural habits. 

At Prophet, our core offer sits here: we amplify AI transformations by ensuring that it is not just delivered — but believed, felt and owned by the organization. This is human-centered change. We don’t just help change processes. We help you become the transformed organization. 

Read our report, Human-Centered AI: Culture as the Catalyst for AI-enabled Growth, for more recommendations to prepare your organization for AI transformation here  

There Has Never Been a More Important Time for Organizations to be Human 

AI transformation is no longer optional — it’s happening, whether you lead it or are swept up by it. But most will not achieve it in the way that they imagine it. The most likely scenario is that change will be executed slowly, overbudget, and without meaning. You have choices; deliver speed but lose your identity, protect your culture but lag behind in impact or integrate both — becoming faster, more distinct, more human. 

In a world racing toward automation, the greatest prize isn’t just efficiency — it’s being more human than ever. 

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Innovation may spark growth, but credibility sustains it—and that credibility comes when brand and culture are working as one. Once treated as separate, brand—the external articulation of promise—and culture—the internal reality of behavior—are now inseparable. Their integration is essential for authenticity, differentiation, and long-term resilience. At their intersection lies the potential for uncommon growth—growth that is faster, more sustainable, and deeply human. Organizations that recognize this interdependence are better positioned to deliver consistent experiences, inspire trust, and achieve sustainable success. 

Defining the Relationship

A brand is more than a logo or tagline; it is the collective perception people hold of an organization, shaped by every interaction and experience. Culture refers to the shared values, beliefs, and behaviors that guide how employees work and interact. Brand answers, ‘Who are we to the world?’ while culture answers, ‘Who are we to each other?’ When they reinforce one another, employees live the values and customers experience them authentically. This alignment strengthens trust, attracts talent, and enhances reputation.

Example: Salesforce promises to be a trusted digital transformation partner. Its *Ohana* culture emphasizes trust, customer success, innovation, and equality—making the brand’s promise credible in every client interaction. This alignment not only fuels customer loyalty but also attracts talent seeking purpose-driven work.

Executing the Promise

Brand shows up in expression—design, messaging, voice. Culture shows up in behaviors—leadership choices, systems, daily interactions. When they diverge, credibility is lost, and the promise risks becoming superficial. Employees are often the first to sense these gaps; if they do not feel empowered to deliver, customers inevitably see through the disconnect. When alignment is achieved, however, it becomes a multiplier of uncommon growth, ensuring that ambition translates into performance and perception into loyalty.

Example: Siemens’ brand, *Ingenuity for life*, is supported by cultural initiatives that encourage collaboration, agility, and digital skills. This ensures employees can deliver credibly on its transformation narrative and maintain trust with both industrial clients and public stakeholders.

Culture as Competitive Advantage

Organizations today are not only evaluated on what they sell, but on how they operate and what they stand for. As markets shift toward values, experiences, and purpose, culture becomes a decisive differentiator. A hospitality brand, for example, can only deliver on its promise of warmth and empathy if those values are embedded in the internal environment. Employees who experience alignment between external promise and internal culture are better positioned to embody and extend those qualities to customers, strengthening both reputation and performance.

Example: Patagonia empowers employees to live its sustainability values through activism and company-supported programs. This alignment strengthens its purpose-led brand and builds loyalty among customers. Employees are not just ambassadors of the brand—they are co-creators of its meaning.

Evolving Together

Brand without culture is superficial. Culture without brand risks insularity. The strongest organizations treat the two as a feedback loop: culture informs the brand promise, and the brand promise reinforces cultural behaviors. This dynamic relationship must evolve as markets, technologies, and stakeholder expectations shift. Leaders who intentionally nurture this cycle ensure their organizations remain relevant and credible over time, even as conditions change. 

Example: American Express promises premium service and trust. Its culture empowers employees to solve problems with a customer-first mindset. This loop sustains both loyalty and pride, allowing the company to consistently deliver on its positioning as a relationship-driven brand. 

The Leadership Imperative

Alignment is not accidental—it requires leadership. Executives must act as the bridge between brand and culture, embedding values into governance, incentives, communications, and daily practice. Leaders are uniquely positioned to signal priorities and reinforce behaviors that make the brand real. When leadership embodies the connection, alignment cascades across teams and functions, creating momentum that drives both internal engagement and external performance. In many organizations, this leadership accountability has become the single most important factor in sustaining relevance and unlocking value. 

Example: At Target, CEO Brian Cornell linked the brand promise of affordability with style to cultural renewal. He raised wages, invested in engagement, and embedded inclusivity—ensuring the external promise of helping families discover everyday joy was fully supported internally. 

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CEOs Are on the Hook for Growth—So We Studied What Makes It Happen 

CEOs are under immense pressure to deliver sustainable, industry-beating growth. At Prophet, we’ve studied what drives this kind of Uncommon Growth in these uncommon times—the kind that’s smarter, faster, and more resilient. While several elements contribute, one fundamental stood out in service of the others—culture.  

Culture Isn’t the Only Ingredient in the Growth Formula—but it’s the Bedrock  

Culture underpins all other factors. It’s the connective tissue between your organization’s purpose, people and performance. Without the right cultural conditions, customer obsession and innovation—the other pillars of uncommon growth—don’t stick. It is not a myth that culture eats strategy for breakfast. Take the AI revolution. It is Human-centered AI—the combination of tech with the human and cultural elements—that will drive competitive advantage. Not AI on its own. 

Culture Drives Business Impact—But it Requires Systemic Work 

Creating a culture that catalyses your growth isn’t accidental. It stems from your organizational system—how decisions are made, how people collaborate and what gets rewarded. Leaders who intentionally align culture with their brand and strategy accelerate execution and achieve faster impact. Those who neglect it, fall behind. Culture is dynamic. It needs nurturing and shaping over time to provide the stability, energy and speed required to fuel growth. 

The Good News: Unlocking Growth Doesn’t Mean Wholesale Change 

You don’t need to overhaul your organization. Typically, it’s a matter of identifying and shifting a few critical behaviours that are holding your strategy back—then aligning leadership and systems to reinforce them. Here are a few steps to make that happen. 

Five CEO-Level Culture Moves That Drive Growth 

To unleash your culture’s potential, focus on five pivotal actions: 

1. Set your organizational ambition 

Define a compelling, shared ambition for the organization, aligning purpose, strategy and culture—enabled by the right behaviors. Co-create this with your executive team to build a powerful, unified force that’s laser-focused on enabling growth together. 

2. Activate your leadership 

Culture change starts at the top. Leaders must model and promote the behaviors you need to win. Clarify what is expected of leaders, provide them with the skills and tools to drive adoption with their teams. Incentivise them and make them accountable for change. 

3. Inspire your employees 

Create an environment where people feel safe, empowered, and excited to contribute. Spark employee interest, passion and accountability by showing them what great looks like and celebrating their attempts to progress towards it.  

4. Align your organization system 

From incentives to structures, ensure every mechanism supports your desired culture. Unlock people and work through systematic change in service of delivery against set objectives. Alignment can take time but insist on a roadmap for change. 

5. Measure and celebrate progress 

Resource culture as a permanent strategic imperative, aligned to strategy and performance. Track what matters. Adapt to business priorities as you go. Celebrate progress and examples of change that support your direction.  

Start by Identifying the one Cultural Shift That Will Unlock Growth 

Iconic CEOs have driven phenomenal growth through cultural focus. Satya Nadella transformed Microsoft by shifting from a “know-it-all” to a “learn-it-all” culture. Alan Mulally turned Ford around by eliminating internal competition and rallying the organization around transparency and a relentless focus on the plan. Ynon Kreiz led Mattel’s transformation to an entertainment company by focusing heavily on shifting internal behaviors from product-centric execution to brand-building, creative risk taking and storytelling-led innovation. Rolls-Royce CEO Tufan Erginbilgiç drove the company’s dramatic profit turnaround with a shift from complacency and bureaucracy to customer focus and having employees act as business owners.  

While they required specific business changes, each change was underpinned with a systemic culture focus, making a few critical behavioral shifts to support their growth strategy.  

They didn’t attempt to fix everything—they focused on shifting the right thing. 

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Chin Yau Seng is the Chief Executive Officer of SIA Engineering Company (SIAEC). He joined SIAEC as Chief Executive Officer-Designate in June of 2023 before taking over as the Chief Executive Officer in October 2023. 

In our conversation with Mr. Chin, we explored how the company is future-proofing its business through strategic capability building. As the aviation industry continues to evolve, SIAEC is expanding its technical capabilities, investing in workforce development and fostering a culture of continuous improvement. By aligning internal culture with long-term growth ambitions and embracing innovation, SIAEC is positioning itself to stay resilient, relevant and competitive in a fast-changing global landscape. 

How would you define growth in your organization? 

Mr. Chin: As an MRO, we provide airlines with maintenance, repair and overhaul services. To succeed, our business must adapt to the evolving commercial aviation space across the globe and, especially over the past few years, be nimble enough to navigate emerging supply chain issues. For us at SIAEC, growth means expanding our capabilities to stay relevant and scaling up to remain competitive. In pursuing growth, we not only invest in technical capabilities and infrastructure but also aim to add value to our ventures through our “software”—that is, our people, our processes and our uncompromising focus on quality and safety. 

Aircraft and engine technologies will continue to evolve, driven by high fuel prices and sustainability considerations among other factors. By constantly looking for opportunities to expand our capabilities vis-à-vis new generation platforms (i.e. new generation aircraft and engines, as well as their components), we are able to create new growth opportunities for our business and in the process, help to future-proof it. At the same time, we do not ignore opportunities to grow the business volume associated with older platforms, as aircraft and engine types typically have long lifetimes. 

Investing in our people and ensuring that they have the skills and tools to effectively leverage new technologies, including AI, are also essential to achieving sustainable growth.  

Could you tell me more about investing in people and why it’s important? 

Mr. Chin: Some companies would think about growth mainly in terms of expansion of the customer base, revenue and income streams. While those are fundamental components, we should also not ignore the need to grow our capabilities and develop our people. How our people see their roles, and how they approach work and business in general, are critical factors in determining the health of the organization and success of the business. 

Besides supporting and encouraging them to embrace digital solutions to derive deeper insights from data, it is also important that we nurture a culture of learning, collaboration and innovation, and even entrepreneurship, and allow it to flourish within the organization. 

In one of our initiatives, we are partnering with Prophet to develop and implement a Continuous Improvement (CI) Culture program to energize and unite our employees towards our shared CI goals, as well as to unlock their full potential, imbue a “test and learn” mindset, and bring the right CI behaviors, habits and actions to life at SIAEC. In our business, if we do not invest in our people, we will be left behind. 

Navigating through complexity, how do you address disruption? 

Mr. Chin: With the demand for our services broadly linked to the performance of the aviation sector, we are already naturally exposed to economic and geopolitical risks, among other things. Many of these macro risks are beyond our control, but we should not be caught unprepared when faced with disruptions. We must look at what we can control and assess how we can apply levers to make us more resilient in the face of the various risks. 

For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in supply chains, prompting us to be more agile and adaptable. Post-pandemic, the supply chains for various aircraft components have also been disrupted, and if we do not adapt well to such disruptions, the business impact can be significant. For example, without agile planning and supply chain management, the absence of certain aircraft  parts, that are used during the maintenance visit of an aircraft, can significantly lengthen the aircraft’s stay in the hangar, resulting in opportunity cost, sub-optimal manpower deployment and customer dissatisfaction. To further improve our control over such situations, we are now in the midst of rolling out a new Enterprise Operating System (EOS) that enhances flexibility, data leverage and process efficiency.   

We are also diversifying geographically beyond the Singapore shores and expanding our portfolio of capabilities to reduce over-dependence on specific aircraft or engine platforms. 

On the people front, we are promoting collaboration and a “test and learn” mindset, where we encourage and empower our staff to take  initiative, find effective solutions or improvements in their daily work, and continuously look for opportunities to learn and grow. This is part of our effort to build an agile workforce that can adapt to new challenges and seek opportunities for our business amid changes in the landscape. 

Other than external disruptions, how do you adapt your growth strategy to increasingly demanding customers? 

Mr. Chin: Despite global headwinds, aviation remains on an upward trajectory. A growing middle class continues to fuel travel demand, making Line Maintenance¹ a key growth area. Beyond Southeast Asia, we see long-term growth potential for line maintenance services in markets such as China and India, and even mature aviation markets like the U.S. and Japan due to a high concentration of aircraft flights. 

We are actively diversifying our investments geographically to expand our business scope and customer base. In our Base Maintenance² business, for example, we are working on operationalizing two large aircraft hangars in Malaysia and are actively growing our customer base at our hangars in Clark in the Philippines. 

As previously mentioned, we are also growing new capabilities vis-à-vis new generation platforms. For us, embracing new technologies and innovations is a no-regrets move that serves the needs of both our customers and ourselves. Another avenue of growth we are pursuing is inorganic growth through acquisitions and forming greenfield Joint Ventures (JVs) with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), along with other partners, to introduce new capabilities and/or MRO capacity, allowing us to better meet evolving customer requirements and maintain a competitive edge.  

We are expanding engine MRO capacity and capabilities through our JVs with Rolls-Royce and Pratt & Whitney while cross-selling to deepen customer relationships and broaden our network. This drives both breadth and depth in our service offerings, helping us to continue to offer value and remain relevant to our customers. 

Across these growth levers, how do you see AI as part of your strategy today at SIAEC? Do you foresee a progression in AI usage and adoption? 

Mr. Chin: AI is an evolving space for us, particularly Generative AI. It’s a natural next step in enhancing operational efficiency and customer experience. But success requires structure. We need a disciplined approach to AI integration and an upskilled workforce that is ready to adapt. Ultimately, it’s about evolving our capabilities and tailoring them to meet business challenges and serve our customers better.  

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He has also held positions as the Chief Executive SilkAir and Tiger Airways Holdings. Prior to his move to SIA Cargo, he held the position of Senior Vice President Sales & Marketing in SIA. 

Mr. Chin has a Bachelor of Science (Economics) in Accounting & Finance and a Master of Science (Distinction) in Operational Research, both from the London School of Economics & Political Science, University of London, UK. 

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Glossary

¹ Line Maintenance’s work primarily involves regular inspections, repairs, and maintenance of aircraft, including aircraft washing and cabin cleaning while they are on the ground and between flights, as well as technical ramp handling including pushback, towing, and ground support equipment. SIAEC Line Maintenance has a global footprint of over 30 airports, including Singapore. 

² Base Maintenance’s work refers to the comprehensive maintenance work carried out on aircraft which requires more extensive repairs and overhauls than those performed by Line Maintenance. This includes detailed inspections, repairs, modifications, and refurbishment of aircraft structures and components. This occurs at SIAEC’s maintenance hangars – 6 hangars in Singapore, 3 in Philippines, and 2 to be completed in Malaysia. 

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Oscillating between extremes is a familiar pattern for organizations and the concept of the cultural pendulum illustrates how workplace values shift over time. These shifts often swing between opposing ends before eventually finding a balanced middle ground. In recent years, however, disruptions like the pandemic, technological acceleration, social movements and evolving work expectations have significantly amplified these swings. We’ve witnessed organizations shift from hierarchical to flat structures, traditional workplaces to fully remote setups, hustle culture to well-being focus, uniformity to hyper-personalization and stability to relentless innovation.   

Cultural oscillations don’t just disrupt workflows. They drive disengagement and attrition. Reports indicate that 90% of UK employees feel disengaged, with many opting for ‘quiet quitting’ a term used to describe doing only the bare minimum at work in order to prioritize life outside of it. Global turnover climbed to 20% in 2024, while the average tenure has dropped to 4.2 years.   

While change is inevitable, constant pendulum swings are exhausting, disruptive and rarely optimize the return on human capital investments. For organizations to achieve sustainable success, cultural balance is essential, leveraging the best of extremes while aligning with internal and external factors. This is not just a CHRO concern, but a critical agenda for CEOs and business leaders striving for uncommon growth. By fostering stable and resilient cultures organizations create the conditions for innovation, engagement and long-term competitive advantage.   

What Companies are Getting Wrong   

As the cultural pendulum swings again, organizations must take heed of the extremes shaping today’s workplace. 2025 presents a pivotal opportunity to find equilibrium and thrive, but the examples we’re seeing from major companies serve as cautionary tales. 

The Cost of Retreating from DEI   

Recent headlines have revealed unsettling shifts. Companies like Ford, Walmart and McDonald’s have scaled back their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) commitments, a move criticized for prioritizing short-term savings over long-term growth, equity and engagement. These retrenchments risk derailing progress and eroding trust.   

Action is critical: Rather than retreating from these crucial values, focus on ways to embed inclusivity at every level, from recruitment to performance management and leadership development. If you can no longer set goals for achieving diversity at senior levels, review consistency of career development plans, promotions and performance ratings across diverse groups as well as attrition rates. Equip your leaders with these insights to ensure DEI is at the core of all decisions to deepen engagement and create an environment where diverse voices shape the future of the business.  

The Return to Office Dilemma   

Another tension point is the resistance to strict in-office mandates being enforced by Amazon, JPMorgan, PwC and others. After years of remote work, many employees expect flexibility, yet in-person collaboration remains vital for building trust and sparking creativity.   

Here’s the way forward: Rather than forcing employees back into full-time office environments, listen to your employees’ perspective on when and how they feel most productive layered on top of the needs of teams, functions and ultimately the business. There’s not a one-size-fits-all as there may be cyclical needs for teams to come together in person. Employees who are just starting off their careers, or those new to a business, may feel a greater need to spend more time amongst colleagues in-person learning how things work. Flexibility often in the shape of a hybrid-first approach balances autonomy with intentional in-person interactions is increasingly a requirement top talent are looking for from employers. Thoughtfully designed on-site events, such as brainstorming sessions and team-building activities, can create meaningful connections while preserving the flexibility employees value.   

Breaking the Cycle of Cultural Extremes   

The pendulum effect isn’t new. It impacts multiple facets of organizational culture.  Decision-making for instance, often swings between rigid top-down control to decentralized autonomy or vice-versa, sometimes losing clear direction in the process. Uber’s shift from centralized to decentralized, and then back again, illustrates the risks of extremes.   

The key to a balanced culture lies in anchoring your organization in its core values. Values-led organizations are uniquely equipped to navigate change, maintain consistency and are perceived more authentically even in the most turbulent times. The results speak for themselves. Costco’s unwavering commitment to its values has led to industry-leading retention rates, while IKEA’s steady growth is fuelled by value-driven decisions in areas like product innovation and sustainable supply chains. By prioritizing long-term impact over reactive trends, these organizations demonstrate the power of living their values.  

Unfortunately, for many organizations, values remain little more than words on a page. That’s why we work hand-in-hand with our clients to ensure values are not just defined but embedded into the fabric of the organization, influencing everyday behaviors, rituals and processes. Using our Human-Centered Transformation Model, we align every aspect of an organization with its core values, helping clients like Chick-fil-A and Encompass Health turn their values into actionable practices that drive sustainable growth and engagement.

Make 2025 Your Year of Culture Balance   

A balanced approach to culture creates stability and a much-needed foundation for businesses, especially those navigating change, growth and transformation. Let’s face it, this is something most businesses are grappling with most of the time. Creating a clearly understood and communicated view brings greater trust, tolerance and engagement that supports business performance during the most turbulent times.    

Here are our top 5 strategies to support cultural balance for the long term:  

1. Keep culture front and center on the executive agenda: Being intentional about measuring employee sentiment, both internally and externally, is critical for understanding emerging expectations and how to respond to them. By making culture a regular agenda item, you’re more likely to make ongoing adjustments, reducing the need for major overhauls.  
2. Stay anchored in values: Use your core values as a guide for decision-making and clearly communicate how they impact decisions that are taken. Consistently integrate these values across the employee eco-system from attraction and recruitment and performance management to rewards, recognition, promotions and development.     
3. Prioritize employee listening: Regularly seek and act on employee feedback to create policies that reflect their evolving needs and expectations. A culture of listening builds trust, strengthens engagement and ensures employees feel valued and connected.  
4. Develop leadership for balance: Equip leaders with the tools and skills to navigate tensions, balance autonomy with collaboration and adaptability with accountability. Strong, values-aligned leadership is the foundation for stability and engagement.   
5. Make incremental changes: Introduce small, manageable adjustments to build change resilience and ensure long-term impact, rather than relying on one-off initiatives. This measured approach ensures resilience, reduces resistance and drives sustained impact.   

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As a CMO, you’re under growing pressure to deliver measurable growth and revenue from your brand investments, especially if you’re (re)launching the brand. 

The challenge is that while you’re being asked to do more with fewer resources, traditional Marketing functions often only control a fraction of the levers needed to maximize brand impact. In today’s complex environment, operating in such a silo is no longer viable – the entire organization must align and work together to deliver on the brand promise. Leading CMOs are connectors and orchestrators, working with multiple departments and the executive teams to point all the elements of your organizational DNA – strategy, purpose, values, behaviors, employer brand, CX and more – in the same direction. While this sounds straightforward, the reality is far from simple. You’re navigating a maze of existing frameworks, competing priorities and political agendas that must be simplified and negotiated – meaning you rarely start with a blank slate or direct path forward.  

So, how do you ensure your organization is aligned to deliver maximum brand impact?  

Design to Align 

Alignment is the critical foundation. When the core elements of your strategic framework are aligned with your brand strategy – or designed into it – everyone in the organization can drive in the same direction. This cohesion not only sets the stage for delivering on brand and customer promises but also fuels sustainable growth. Our latest Brand and Demand research underscores this, revealing that 89% of leading marketing organizations have a clear growth and brand strategy. These organizations know where they are going and share a common vision of how to get there, proving that alignment is essential for long-term success and partnership. 

Start Early with Other Functions 

The best CMOs focus on cross-functional relationships, with 84% of marketing leaders viewing themselves as organizational orchestrators who enable a modern, connected organization. To set the stage for success, it’s crucial to begin the alignment journey as early as possible by involving all functional and business unit stakeholders in the strategic brand exercise. Invite them to provide input upfront, ensuring the strategic components of their domains contribute meaningfully to shaping the brand strategy. This collaborative approach not only strengthens the brand’s foundation but also balances the tension between leveraging existing organizational strengths and adapting to market opportunities uncovered by the revised brand strategy. 

Stay Close Throughout  

Maintain close engagement with stakeholders throughout the brand strategy development and activation processes. Regular collaboration ensures the core functions and business units co-create activities that they need to own on their own roadmaps to reinforce and deliver against the brand values within their spheres of influence. This sustained alignment keeps momentum moving in the right direction across the organization. 

Select Priority Paths for Organizational Activation 

You have choices to make. Aligning an organization requires prioritization. The specific paths you take will depend on your brand ambitions and the current level of organizational alignment with your brand strategy. For example, if your brand stands for ‘innovation and speed,’ are your customer processes designed to deliver on those values accordingly? Is HR recruiting talent that embodies this mission? Is Finance easy to work with? Are Operations and R&D living up to the promise your advertising claims?  

From our client work, we see that typically, there are five paths to consider as you activate the organization and drive an aligned growth effort behind a new brand. Depending on your context and ambition, you may choose to focus on one as a priority or a combination of these:  

1. Functional Alignment

Equipping leaders across functions and business units with the tools needed to align on strategies and plans is essential for supporting brand strategy and driving growth. For instance, Vistra, a global corporate services firm, successfully aligned leadership across the entire C-suite and business units to embed a new brand strategy. This included defining associated values and behaviors within a newly merged global organization, ensuring alignment across all functions – from front office to back office. 

2. Employee Ignition (EX → CX)

Activating the brand internally is crucial for inspiring and enabling employees to live up to the brand promise, especially by reinforcing customer-facing behaviors. Embracing an always-on change management mindset is key to this effort – acknowledging and leaning into the challenges of transforming internal culture to align with the brand’s external vision. By focusing on customer and consumer centricity, organizations can ensure that their employees are not just aligned with the brand promise but are deeply committed to delivering it in every interaction. Nike provides a strong example of this approach. The company conducted extensive research into global Employee Experience (EX) best practices and experience design for retail store employees to help create the best environment where employees consistently deliver the brand promise directly to customers. 

3. Employer Brand

A well-defined employer brand and employer value proposition (EVP) can help retain and attract top talent who resonate with your brand’s promise. UBS exemplified this by bringing their global brand campaign, ’Craftmakers,’ to life internally. By aligning their EVP with the campaign, they not only strengthened their talent attraction efforts but also ensured alignment between their corporate and consumer brand strategies.  

4. Signature Moves and Change Management

Bold actions can reinforce a revised brand strategy to external audiences, but their success hinges on effective change management within the organization. T-Mobile demonstrated this through their game-changing move to eliminate customer contracts, embodying their ‘Uncarrier’ brand promise, disrupting and redefining the entire industry and underscoring their commitment to a customer-first approach.  

5. Culture Transformation

Sometimes, a revised brand strategy calls for a deep cultural shift across the organization. Kia’s brand transformation, driven by their pivot to electronic vehicles (EVs), is a prime example. Competing with premium brands like Audi and BMW required a closer focus on customer needs, sparking a fundamental shift in their organizational mindset and culture to prioritize innovation and customer-centricity. 

Figure 1: Potential organizational alignment pathways mapped to CMO’s brand ambition 

Hopefully, paths 1 and 2 are foundational when launching any brand repositioning aimed at creating significant impact. The remaining paths depend on the nature of your strategy. Are you looking to make bold changes that disrupt your industry that demand deeper organizational and cultural change? Or are you focused on refining your brand positioning to attract more customers? Perhaps it’s more about attracting the right front-line talent to bring your brand to life, or evaluating how your employee experience shapes the customer experience. There’s no need to tackle all five paths at once. The key is to be strategic and intentional about which areas to prioritize to drive real, tangible impact through a unified brand vision.  

To help you navigate this journey, we offer tailored discovery workshops for executive teams, designed to guide decision-making and foster collaboration, co-creation and alignment from the outset. By integrating this approach into your brand development, you can accelerate brand efforts and ensure the rest of the organization works in harmony and isn’t competing with or stifling the brand impact you could be making. It requires some focused effort along the way, but the old adage holds true here: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” 

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