
Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis
harvard business review • july–august 2009 page 5
building adaptability. She had an immediate
positive impact on the company’s financial
performance while positioning the organiza-
tion to deploy more of its people to reach
wider markets.
Embrace disequilibrium. Without urgency,
difficult change becomes far less likely. But if
people feel too much distress, they will fight,
flee, or freeze. The art of leadership in today’s
world involves orchestrating the inevitable
conflict, chaos, and confusion of change so
that the disturbance is productive rather than
destructive.
Health care is in some ways a microcosm of
the turbulence ...