Lead In 30 Podcast

The Annual State of Leadership Report: Three Realities for 2026

• Russ Hill

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The ground keeps moving and the old playbook can’t keep up. We pulled back the curtain on our 2026 Leadership Reality Report and walked through the intel leaders are using to make faster, smarter decisions without perfect visibility—because waiting for certainty is the new risk.

We start with the three realities shaping every org we work with: volatility that scrambles supply chains, policy, and tech; versatility as a non-negotiable demand across roles; and ambiguity that forces choices before the “right answer” even exists. From there, we map the four leadership priorities that actually convert chaos into progress. Adaptive velocity is first: changing at speed and scale, with tighter decision cycles and empowered teams. Human connectivity comes next: building trust, safety, and shared mission so dispersed teams generate real idea collisions and flag issues early. Then ecosystem vision: thinking beyond silos to orchestrate value across functions, partners, and platforms. Finally, efficient execution: eliminating noise, focusing on high-leverage activities, and protecting capacity so priorities ship.

You’ll hear fresh stats, perspective from top executives, and a clear path to brief your org with a ready-to-use deck and upcoming webinar. Use this preview to audit your team: Which skills are strong? Where are the gaps? What will you stop, start, and scale over the next quarter to move faster with less noise and more alignment?

If this conversation helps you think sharper about 2026, follow the show, share it with your team, and leave a review so more leaders can find it. Want the full report and slide deck? Head to LoneRock.io and get on the list.

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About the podcast:
The Lead In 30 Podcast with Russ Hill is for leaders of teams who want to grow and accelerate their results. In each episode, Russ Hill shares what he's learned consulting executives. Subscribe to get two new episodes every week. To connect with Russ message him on LinkedIn!



SPEAKER_01:

We call it the annual Leadership Reality Report. Think of it like the intelligence agencies coming into your office and handing you the briefing book on the reality of the world in which you exist today. So, in this episode, I'm giving you an advanced preview behind the scenes before we publish it. What does it look like to lead an organization or a team in 2026?

SPEAKER_02:

This is the Lead in 30 podcast with Russ Hill. You cannot be serious. Strengthen your ability to lead in less than 30 minutes.

SPEAKER_03:

It's time to end the confusion. Get the new book by the founders of Lone Rock Leadership. See why executives at Lockheed Martin, Signa, Teva, Chili's, and so many other companies are praising Deliver. Why some leaders get results and most don't. You can download the first chapter right now and request two free copies shipped to you at LoneRock.io.

SPEAKER_01:

All the information on our newest book, Deliver, why some leaders get results and most don't. All the infos at LoneRock.io or just go to Amazon. If you just want to order one copy, just go grab it. If you want more or you want to dig more into it, um, go to our website. Welcome in to the Lead in 30 podcast. In less than 30 minutes, we give you something to think about in order to upgrade your ability to lead others. Oh my gosh, are we bringing the heat? Are we bringing the value in this episode? You all, this one is one of our most jam-packed, full of data, full of just lots of information. And I'm going to try to deliver it to you in uh in a way that's not too dense, not too condensed, not too um, I don't want to sound like I'm dense. I don't mean it that way. I mean like just not too meaty. You know, we'll we'll talk about it. But uh my name's Russ Hill. I'll make my living coaching consulting senior executive teams and uh and being a part of our leadership training company at uh Lone Rock Leadership. You can find out more about our executive consulting work, and uh, and you can find out more about our off-the-shelf training solutions, whether it's a keynote that you need, you need someone to speak at an upcoming conference or meeting and take a couple of hours, or maybe it's a virtual meeting or a full day, or maybe you've got an off-site or strategic session, and you're thinking, you know, we really need to go outside and and bring in somebody to facilitate this conversation and help us take a more holistic look at how we're how we're doing as a leadership team, or maybe it's we've got all these managers in this particular business unit or that department or across the whole organization that we need help developing. Just go to our website. We'll we'll talk to you. We're not salesy people. I mean, we we've got solutions and ideas and services and they work, but um, we meet you where you're at. LoneRock.io, lone rock.io. Okay. You all, um holy cow. I've got up on one of my screens here on my desk um the uh the the current draft of what we call, at the time I'm recording this, it's the beginning of 2026, right? Still January. Some of you are listening to it in February, maybe some of you and and some of you will listen to this later. Um everything in here is still gonna apply because this isn't gonna change in two months or three months or six months. It's that there if you listen to this in a year or two after we put it out, there's gonna be some adjustments, no doubt, but but the the main principles are gonna still be timely. So I've got on my desk the 2026 Leadership Reality Report. We're about to publish this in the next few weeks. And uh and so we'll make this first available to our clients, then we will um do a webinar and we'll open up registrations and I don't know what how many people will get registered for that, probably 500, 600, I don't know. Then on stage at our next executive summit for LD and HR professionals, we're gonna spend at least a half hour going through this, and we're gonna we're gonna have a published version of this, the full version of it for each of um the folks that we invite there. We only invite 40 executives um to that. And we we do one in the spring in Scottsdale and one in the fall in at the Sundance Mountain Resort up in Utah. They're amazing, they fill up, they're unbelievable, and the organiz anyway. So so in the podcast, you all always get the first exposure to all this stuff because it gives me a chance to talk out loud or to think out loud. I hate when people say that, talk out loud. Of course you're talking out loud. You're talking. That's out loud. But to think out loud and to offer you um or or or to walk myself through some of the talking points. So you get more of the raw version, but you which is, you know, maybe a detriment because you're not getting this as polished as the folks that will hear me and our colleagues um on stage deliver this in in a few weeks, um, or the printed version. You aren't getting it as polished, but you are getting advanced notice and you're getting it in more of a conversational way. So that's uh hopefully you find that a benefit. Um let me tell you kind of how this works and why I think you'll be interested in it. What this report is is what we do each year is we give you we give organizations a uh a look at the the, and it's always three or four, right? This year, it's three realities that every organization we're interacting with is dealing with to one degree or another. And they're all talking about this, they're all confronting it. It's coming up, they're they're struggling with it. It's it's a huge reality. These are huge realities that every leader at every level of the org chart, of course, at the top of the org chart in a major, you know, Fortune 50 organization, this is gonna be more pronounced than it's gonna be in a smaller company. Maybe you've got 20 people or 200 in your organization. You're not gonna feel this quite as much, but you're gonna feel some of this. So, what are those realities? And we have three. I'm about to reveal them to you. We haven't published this, we haven't put it out, we haven't announced it at all. All that's coming in the weeks after this podcast episode. If you subscribe to our newsletter, you're gonna get the printed version. You're gonna be invited to a webinar where we're gonna walk through this and present the findings and have a PowerPoint deck. For those of us at our executive summit, we're gonna give them the print. Anyway, so um, all that's coming. So the three realities that organizations are facing. So this is like the intelligence briefing, right? Hey, here are the conditions out in the world right now. This is what you're up against. And then what we do is after we give you those three realities, we give you the four leadership competencies, skills, abilities that are most critical in order to meet the reality you're up against. That makes sense. So, where does this data come from? It comes from three different places. Number one, it comes from being on the ground, on site, in virtual meetings, on the phone, in emails with a ton of organizations, just or across all different industries. So we're interacting with senior executive teams, business unit leaders, with um the those that are leading multiple organizations. I could, I'm not gonna list off names. Obviously, we have non-disclosure agreements, but there are multiple Fortune 10 companies, there are multiple Fortune 50 companies, there are multiple Fortune 500 companies, there are multiple Fortune 1000, and then there are companies outside that that are smaller, right? And then there's industry groups and all these different things. So we're interacting with, and it's not just one leader in those organizations. It might be the CEO or might be the business unit leader, or might be the head of sales, or it might be the head of whatever, and then his or her direct reports, and so some VPs and some directors, and you're and so at the end of the year, at the beginning of a new year, you step back and you say, What have we heard? What came up over and over and over and over again? And then you look at, well, what are the skills or the competencies that leaders keep telling us that this is critical? We need this. Can you spend time in our meetings on this? Can you train on this? Can you help us hire somebody with this? Oh my gosh, I can't believe Linda or Susie or Mike or Frank don't have these skills. They come up over and over again. So one of the sources is our consulting clients. The second source are our leadership training, the HR and L and D teams that are buying training, that are interacting with us, networking with us, calling us, emailing us, um, direct messaging us, reaching out, going to webinars with us, and industry groups that are saying, can you train on this? Can you talk about this? Do you have something to solve this? And just that just tons and tons of touch points and data points there. And then the last um source is quantitative data that we have access to from clients and from or uh trade groups and from the U.S. government. And uh, and we take all that and we just curate it and and then we look at what comes up, and you can imagine it's mounds of data. And then you look at that and you say, okay, let's, you know, our job, and I think we're we're we're some of the best out there at it. We work really hard at it, taking the complex and making it simple. And so how do you take all that and put it into themes and just put it out in a simple way? So that's where all this came from. Here are the realities. Let's get into the data. The number one, the number one reality that organizations are facing, and I'm just gonna give you one word volatility. Period. Volatility everywhere. What do we mean by that? Well, it's in government, it's in regulation, it's in industry, it's in boundaries, it's in borders, it's in, and what I mean by that, those terms are the the i you can't rely on almost anything you used to be able to rely on. Whether that is regulation, whether that is alliances, whether that is government policies, whether or not that is the way the industry is structured, whether or not that uh whether or not um that has to do with technology, all of these things. Volatility is the biggest, most frequent word. And people use all kinds of different words. They might not use the word volatility, but it all comes back to volatility. Let me give you a few stats. I'm looking at our report here. 42% of CEOs, 42% of this data is not a year old, this data is not three years old, this is fresh data that I'm quoting you. All of this is from within the last uh several months going into, well, and some of it's in the last several days, going into the new year. 42% of CEOs say their company will not be economically viable in 10 years if it continues on its current path. That's stunning. Stunning. And and let me give you let me give you some other information here. I mean, we we have well, I'm looking through this and I don't want to I don't want to give all of it away. Um all you need to know is volatility is enormous and um and waiting for clarity, waiting for visibility, waiting for certainty is a losing strategy. Absolutely. Okay, I got a ton to get to, so I'm gonna go through these fairly quickly and then we'll digest it even more in detail in a few minutes. The sex of volatility is number one. Can you relate to that? Are you are are uh like what percentage of you are raising your hand right now going, I like I'm not even seeing that anywhere in my world? Like none of you, right? Now, some of you are more affected than others on it. It affects supply chain, it affects, I mean, it affects just a gazillion different things. Volatility. Second reality, versatility. You like that? Volatility, versatility, versatility is non-negotiable. So if volatility describes the environment, versatility describes the demand. The skill set that made you successful in 2019 is insufficient in 2026. You agree with that? Do you see that around you? Do you see that in the people that report into you? Um, let's give you a few statistics. 39% of workers' core skills will change by 2030 from now. Who says that? Well, the World Economic Forum. They produce this thing called the Future of Jobs Report. 39, let me say it again. 39% of workers' core skills will change by 2030. That's stunning. So LinkedIn has research that shows that the skills that are required for jobs today, they've already changed 25% since 2015. As they look at the competencies of job listings, of all these sorts of things, they're seeing massive shifts over time, right? The pace is accelerating. So AI is expected to affect 65% of skills in some way. That means a ton of different things, right? So um we could I could give you so many more stats, so many more statistics. It's versatility is absolutely demanded. It's required of organizations in a way none of us have ever experienced before. We're gonna get down to the individual leader in a minute. I'm just talking to you about what organizations are up against. So, number one, tons of volatility. Number two, oh my gosh, we've got to be more versatile than we've ever been before. Number three, ambiguity. What does that mean? It means visibility is limited. So leaders are facing decisions where the right answer isn't just unknown, it may not even exist yet. Does that make sense? Like we can't with confidence even know what the right answer is because we don't even know what it's gonna look like and what the reality is gonna look like, the market's gonna look like, the workforce is gonna look like the competitive landscape's gonna look like, the regulation's gonna look like the government um uh the the the the um alliances, the the the the international trade, uh all of that. We don't even know what that's gonna look like 12 months from now, not even not to say three years from now, and yet I gotta make all these decisions for our organization based on now. Ambiguity. What are organizations facing? Three things volatility, versatility, and ambiguity. So, what are the most important leadership skills? You got you all, by the way. Well, nah, never mind. Uh well, what I was gonna say is every year this changes a little bit. So we wouldn't have said ambiguity a year ago, right? We wouldn't have said that two years ago. The number one issue would have been what in fact, one of the things a year ago was flexibility. Well, it was more two years ago, really. Flexibility, right? Because people wanted hybrid work and we were dealing with all this return to office stuff and whatever. And so that was one of the big words, especially two, three years ago. Flexibility. Well, that's not one of the two or three words now. Like that's in the past. It still exists, but anyway, okay, let's get to the four leadership priorities. These are the skill sets. I want you to think about this with two different sets of lenses, eyes. Number one, I want you thinking about this in your organization or for your team. Is this a skill I need on my team? Am I looking for this in other people that I'm hiring, whether they're leaders of leaders, if you're a senior executive, or whether they are individual contributors on my team? Is this what I need? Is this what I'm looking for in other leaders? The other lens I want you to look for or look at this uh through is do I have this skill set? Am I really good at this? Is it something I've been focusing on? How much attention have I been putting on it? And so you might also back to that first group, is this a skill set I need in the executives in our organization, the VPs, directors, the managers in our organization? Do I need this in people that I'm hiring? Well then, do you have a framework to build the skill sets? Like how are you building this into leaders? It doesn't just pop up. Anyway, so let's go into the four leadership priorities. Number one, and these terms are more academic, you all you'll see that in the way that this is worded, but you'll get the gist of it. So just kind of think hard uh for a minute on some of these terms. Number one, the first leadership skill, adaptive velocity. Wait, what, Russ? Adaptive velocity? I've never seen that on a form or job application or skill competency anywhere. Yeah, you're right. We call it different things. Ability to lead through change, agility, resiliency, adaptability. We call it all these different things. The academic phrase for that is adaptive velocity. Well, how do those two words go together? Well, just think about it. What do we mean? Adaptive velocity. In other words, it's not just being your ability to be agile. Can you do it at speed, at scale, moving quick? And so this is this is the the number one leadership priority skill competency needed. Period. Adaptive velocity. Forty-two percent of CEOs say that their top concern right now is whether they're transforming fast enough to keep pace with change. Right? Let me look through the report here and see what else I can give you that I'm willing to talk about at this point. Um that I'm gonna save. That I'm gonna save. Let me give you a quote. This is this is so interesting. Uh, Marvin Ellison. You know who Marvin Ellison is? Marvin Ellison is the CEO of Lowe's. Lowe's home improvement, right? Marvin Ellison said this. Um, quote, the pace of change, this is a quote we captured from him that you that he gave us. So um the pace of this is what Marvin said. The pace of change has never been faster. And it's only going to accelerate from here. We've seen, this is Marvin at Lowe's, we've seen surges in demand, strained supply chains, and constant market shifts that force leaders to decide quickly or get left behind. In the future, he's still talking, Marvin. In the future, organizations that don't build resilience into their DNA through empowered teams making fast calls won't survive the waves coming at us. Progress isn't about excuses, it's about looking in the mirror, adapting relentlessly, and refusing to let the environment limit your vision. Ah, it's so good. Marvin Ellison, CEO of Lowe's. It goes back to ambiguity, goes back to all these things we talked about, right? So first leadership priority skill, adaptive velocity, ability to lead through change. How are you doing in that space? Do you know you're good at it? How what are you doing to try to get better at it? How are you building that skill set and those that report up into you? How are you talking about this and prioritizing it on the teams that you're on with your peers? Leadership priority number two, skill number two, human connectivity. Here's uh I'm gonna read. You see, you're getting a little bit of the report. The uh, and this is not the final version yet, so that some of the language will be changed as it goes through edit uh iterations. Um here's what it says right now the math on innovation is simple. The best ideas come from collision. People with different perspectives connecting, debating, and building on each other's thinking. In a dispersed work environment, those collisions don't happen by accident anymore. The business case is unambiguous. It goes on. I'm not gonna read from it too much. So, what is human connectivity? Russ, what the crap does that phrase mean? It's a leader's ability to build genuine relationships that create trust, psychological safety, and a sense of shared mission. It's not about being liked, it's about building the conditions where people bring their best thinking. They flag problems early, they take accountability for outcomes. In a world where AI can analyze data, generate content, and automate workflows, the ability to connect and inspire is a differentiator. MIT Sloan research confirms it. The work tasks that AI is least likely to replace are those dependent on uniquely human capabilities or capacities, empathy, judgment, presence, the ability to build trust. Jess Elmquist, the chief people officer at Dutch Bros, oversees this workforce of you know more than 20,000 people, over 900 locations, company that's built on frontline workers serving customers. And that this is the perspective from Jess. In 2026, this is a direct quote. In 2026, human connection becomes the real performance driver. Teams want to feel seen and supported, and companies that invest in genuine relationships will unlock resilience and loyalty. No technology can match. Do you believe that? Does this all feel soft and fluffy to you? Like, seriously, Russ? Number two is human connectivity. Yep. I like I put just take it to the bank. I promise you, a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, as AI increases in your organization, the ability to connect with those that are overseeing where machine and technologies, where machines and technology are bringing value is huge. It can't replace that. It can replace all these other things, but human connectivity is an enormously important leadership competency and skill. I'm not going to go into more about it. We'll talk more about it in the webinars and the meetings and different things where we dig into this later. Number three, leadership priority number three, ecosystem vision. What? We're giving you these academic terms you got to process. Ecosystem vision. What does that mean? It addresses, I'm going to read a part of the report again. Ecosystem vision addresses how leaders see the whole organization and beyond it. In a world where customer demands shift monthly, technology options multiply weekly, and competitive threats emerge from industries that didn't exist five years ago, functional expertise alone is not enough. The leader who understands marketing but not supply chain, who masters finance but ignores technology, who optimizes their department while the organization fragments, that leader is already falling behind. The premium is on leaders who can see across boundaries and orchestrate value across a network of teams, functions, partners, and platforms. Do you agree with this? What are you doing about it? How do you address it? This is the world we live in. Like if I could take you into our conversations, into the courses and the competencies and the models and the frameworks and the conversations, and this is it. This is like this is the world we live in. This is none of this in this report surprises us. Of course, we put it together, but it's the collection of all of this data, all of these inputs, like, yep, that's exactly what we're seeing. Do you want me to tell you 14 different stories right off the top of my mind, right now, of different organizations, leaders, executives, directors who are calling us, talking to us about that, bringing that. I could give you all kinds. You could too. You see it in your organization. Ecosystem vision. You cannot be just the specialist. Doesn't work. Your market value is declining. It's not about knowing everything, it's about seeing how everything connects. It's the discipline of asking second-order questions. What happens downstream if we make this decision? Who else needs to be in this room? What are we not seeing? Because of where we sit in the organization. In a networked world, the leader who's the leaders who are going to thrive are those who think in systems, not silos. Think about network team. Mary Barra, CEO of General, I shouldn't give you all these quotes. I'm digging into all of these stuff. But Mary Barra, General Motors, CEO. She says this quote, in our industry, it's so complex. You can't be an expert on every piece of it. If you think you can make every call, I think it's potentially going to go down. So let me read this again. If you think you can make every call, I think it's potentially going to go down some bad paths. It's getting the right people with the different experiences together so you can debate issues and put the direction forward for the company. Skill set number four, leadership priority number four. I told you, like, there's so much in this episode. I only got a few minutes left. Are you getting value out of this? Is value? Wait till we get you the printed version of this. We've got our team working on a deck, a PowerPoint deck. You want to take this to the executive team and show them this? Wait till you see the other data that I'm not even going to get to. Like, for instance, how engaged are hybrid workers versus those fully in office versus those that are fully remote? What is the amount of time that it takes to replace people at different levels of the organization based on base, what, well, like to get them fully up to speed? Does that make sense? So the tax, the cost you have when you get rid of someone in a different uh various uh position in your organization? Um what industries grew revenue the most in 2025 collectively? Which industries hired the most people? What does it look like from a college education standpoint? What does it look like with gender distribution in different industries? Like what percentage of leadership in different industries is female compared to male? Super interesting to look at all this sort of stuff. Let me just flip over here. Do I have that open? I want to look at a couple of the other slides just so I can give you this. You all, it's just so stinking good. I love it. Um can I even pull that up? Let me pull this up because I don't have it on my, yep, here it is. Uh, this report. Hang with me. This is a raw podcast. We don't edit this stuff out. Okay, industries grew the most. I'm looking at the actual slide deck. So we're making these available. Like you can take this deck and you can put it into your HR business meeting. You can take it to the executive team. You can show it at a town hall with whomever you want to show it to. We got the slides all made for it. So projected employment growth for the next five years based on industry. How does our industry compare to others? I just talked about gender composite uh composition. The average number of direct reports. Did you know that varies a little bit by industry to industry? Education doesn't really matter a ton. I mean, it's interesting, but whatever. Um, monthly turnover rates by industry. That's interesting. Average time spent in a role in leadership roles before movement. Be interesting for you to compare about um employee engagement by industry. Uh that one. How often are most executives holding town halls and all-hands meetings? You want to know what that looks like across industries? We'll show it to you. Um, how often are executives holding off sites? We'll give you that. We've got all these statistics looking at all these different organizations, right, that we have access to. Um, percentage of leadership training that's delivered virtually now compared to a few years ago. Executive, the percentage of executives who are hiring uh coaches or executive team consultants. That's super interesting. Um, manager mobility, what does that mean? Oh, um the tenure before uh they move to a different role. Um, this is interesting. Workforce demographic breakdown. What percentage of the workforce right now, going into the new year, um, is Generation X versus millennials versus baby boomers? Um what percentage of um industries are remote versus hybrid versus on-site? That's super interesting. Um, job shortage. This is so interesting. What industry, there the on the left side of this chart, I'm looking at this PowerPoint slide, is an industry that's having a massive shortage of talent right now. They can't get enough applicants. On the right side of this slide is an industry where um there are too many, there are too many people with degrees, too many people, they're not enough jobs. Do you know what? Can you guess what industry that is? Um, this is really interesting. This slide shows what percentage of um leaders are hired from within versus externally, and how does that how did that differ in 2025 compared to 2021, the last five years? Um job postings, undergraduate, workforce growth rate. Um, yeah. Okay. So um really interesting. So all this stuff, all the slides are already made, and um and we'll give you access to it. If you're not in our database, you'll go to LoneRock.io and you'll see, just go through the menu, look for a newsletter or a subscribe or something, find that, click on it if you're not one of our clients. Um and uh and that way you'll make sure you get our emails, and then this will pop into your inbox probably sometime in the next three to four weeks at the time I'm recording this. Okay, leadership skill number four. So let's go through, well, I'll just go through number four and then we'll sum up and I'll go back through all of this. Oh crap, I'm out of time. Okay, number four, efficient execution. I'm not sure we're gonna leave that wording that exact way. Um, we might change the the way that's worded a little, but I don't love it. But here's what it means. If we keep it that way, here's the here's the spirit of it. Um, in fact, I'm gonna read. It'll be faster to read it to you. The first three leadership priorities mean nothing without this one. Adaptive velocity, human connectivity, and ecosystem vision are capabilities. Focused execution or efficient execution is where they convert to results. Leaders have never faced more demands on their attention or more pressure to say yes to all of it. The data on organizational noise is alarming, goes in a bunch of different statistics that you'll find interesting. The cause of this noise, or excuse me, next paragraph, the cost of this noise isn't frustration, it's failed execution. Organizations that reduced meetings by 40% the data you all hear, I'm not even getting into it, and it's so fascinating. Organizations that reduced meetings by 40% saw a 71% increase in employee productivity. But the meeting problem is a symptom of a deeper issue. Too many priorities competing for finite capacity. When everything is urgent, nothing gets the focus that it needs to succeed. Da-da-da-da-da. That goes on. Um, this is about a leader's ability to protect priorities, eliminate noise, I'd say reduce noise, and ensure that effort converts to outcomes. We talk about this um under the category of high-leverage activities. Why did we create that category, HLAs? Why did we go to market with that within the last 12 years? Because of this. Because it kept coming up everywhere. Over and over and over. We don't make this crap up. You think we made up TKRs and team key results? You think we made up clarity alignment movement? Like, that sounds good. We ought to talk about that. You think we made up a decision-making framework we call Decide OS? You know, you need to define the decision maker, and then you need to, you know, um do you need to make sure that everyone feels heard in the discussion. Then you've got to make the decision, and then you've got to have this process where people own the decision and they don't keep second guessing. You think we made Decide OS just because, you know what, it kind of feels like that would be a fun thing to make up? No, it's because that's what the market kept saying. We need help in this. This is a leadership capability. So efficient execution, high-leverage activities. We didn't make that up because, oh, you know what'd be fun just to go to the market with something around HLAs or high. No, it's because organization after organization after organization said this is a critical need. We don't have enough leaders doing it. It's we're we're falling behind because we're not seeing this happen. We're seeing people drowned by noise. The meeting invites are overtaking the productivity in our organization. We're doing things that made us successful five years ago, but they're not moving the needle today. That's where it is. Okay, I gotta wrap up. The three realities volatility, versatility, we need it, and ambiguity. There's so much fog and it's not going away. The four leadership priorities, we could go through 14, but you can't work on 14 things at once. You can work on four. I want you thinking about your strength, your ability to demonstrate these day in and day out, what you're doing to build these capabilities and skills in this area, and what you're doing to help your leaders in it. Leadership skill number one, adaptive velocity. Gotta lead through change. You got to lean into change, innovation, and adapting rather than protecting the status quo, defending it. Number two, human connectivity. You gotta be able to connect networked teams. That's critically important. Some organizations we work with call it end-to-end leadership. It's where most of the people involved in this project or this priority or helping deliver that result. Don't report to me. They're across the organization. Number three, ecosystem vision. Are you still a specialist or are you a generalist? Do you are you really good at sales or marketing or product research and development? You're good at finance, you're good at whatever the area is, but you've got line of sight to that, or are you still living in your department or functional bubble and you don't have ecosystem vision, you've got siloed vision. Not gonna, your value is diminishing. The fourth area is efficient execution or focused execution. All right, the report's coming out. The leadership reality report. I hope that's you all, as you listen to this, if you think, you know what, not only do I need a copy of this, Russ, can you or your team jump on a virtual meeting with our executive team into a town hall with us with 400 leaders or with 800 or whatever it looks like. Can you fly out and spend two hours in our next offsite or what somebody on your team, can you can you do that and walk us through some of this and then facilitate a conversation? Or maybe you want us to focus on specific areas of this and you don't want us to go through all the slides, but you want us to give an overview and then and then help your team through it. Well, you got to contact us. Like, that's what we do. LoneRock.io. Go to it, find out some form, fill it out. If if you you and I have connected in the past and it's been a while and you're listening to this, or you're even one of our current clients, you're like, Russ, like, get that to me. Just reach out. And um, and so all of this is built, all of it's ready to go, and um I hope it brings value to you. So much of the value we bring, the organizations that we work with, that we we are in, we are part of, is helping them navigate the moment, helping them rise to the moment rather than shrink to it. How do we do that? Well, we consume content so we know what's going on out there. We've got our radar system to be able to detect which way the wind's moving, where the storms are, how we're doing, the state of our the health of our team, what our resources look like, and then we're facilitating the right conversations. We're pushing and poking on the organization in an appropriate way to lead it into the future. We're looking at the leaders that we're developing and making sure that we're adjusting in order to help them rise to the moment rather than leaning into the same toolbox or same set of tools or topics that we were talking about five, ten years ago. It doesn't work. Five years ago, I was talking to organizations about shifting their organizational culture. Are you kidding? That like that doesn't even that, yeah. I mean, you if if you're into that, awesome, great, keep going into it. But the reality is today we got to move faster. This is about network teamed rather network teams and about everything we've just talked about, rather than this big project of for the next six months or 12 months we're gonna dive into this priority of shifting. You know what I mean? Like the the my point is the conditions change. So the value you bring to the organization is being up to date, facilitating the right conversation, making sure that leaders are talking about it, making sure you're adjusting it, and then going out and thriving in this environment that we're in. I've never been more optimistic, I've never been more excited, I've never been more bullish than I am right now. I hope you feel the same way. That is what's on my mind in this episode of the Lead in 30 podcast.

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