When noticing comes too late

If you’ve ever sat in a leadership conversation where everyone agrees that something is changing, yet nothing quite shifts in how decisions are made, you’re in familiar territory. Most leaders recognise that moment. You can sense the ground moving. You talk about it openly. And still, the organisation carries on as if there will be more time later to deal with it properly.

That doesn’t happen because people are blind to change. Most of the time, they feel it coming. What gets organisations into trouble is not ignorance, but timing. They notice too late.

Long before something becomes a strategic issue, it’s already present in the everyday life of the organisation. It shows up informally. In small frictions that don’t seem important enough to escalate. In questions that keep coming back without ever quite being resolved. In conversations that circle the same topics and leave a faint sense that something hasn’t been named yet.

Nothing is obviously wrong at that stage. And because nothing is clearly broken, those signals are easy to explain away. A temporary issue. A communication gap. A matter of priorities. Most leaders have seen these moments many times. They’re familiar, and familiarity has a way of making things feel manageable.

The signals we’re not designed to hear

The challenge is that most leadership systems aren’t designed to work with this kind of information. They are built for clarity. For confidence. For decisions that can be articulated, justified, and acted upon. They reward resolution more than sensing, and movement more than reflection.

Early signals don’t fit that logic. They are vague by nature. They raise questions rather than answers. They require attention before they can be turned into action. So the system does what it has learned to do. It smooths them over.

What feels unclear is postponed in favour of what feels solid. What can’t yet be named is set aside until it becomes easier to manage. This isn’t avoidance. It’s efficiency, operating exactly as designed.

What happens when clarity arrives too late

Meanwhile, the environment doesn’t wait. Customer expectations shift again. Technology opens new possibilities. Competitors adjust their position. By the time change becomes clear enough to demand action, the organisation is already responding from inside constraints it didn’t consciously choose. Options have narrowed. Trade-offs have hardened. What could have been shaped earlier now needs to be handled.

At that point, adaptability tends to get framed as execution. How fast can we respond. How well can we align. How efficiently can we deliver. Those questions matter, but they arrive late in the story.

Why adaptability is decided earlier than we think

In my experience, adaptability is rarely won there. It’s won earlier, in how long leaders are willing to stay with what hasn’t fully formed yet. In whether early discomfort is treated as noise to eliminate or information worth paying attention to.

This isn’t about slowing down for the sake of it. It’s about timing. There is a window where change is still fluid. Where direction hasn’t settled. Where small shifts in attention can make a real difference to what comes next. That window doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t come with language or urgency. It simply shows up as a slight tension, a sense that something no longer fits the way it used to.

Staying with that tension can feel uncomfortable. In many leadership cultures, pausing is easily mistaken for indecision. Not knowing can feel exposed. Moving on feels safer. But learning to notice early isn’t hesitation. It’s preparation.

Staying with what hasn’t formed yet

It preserves choice. It allows leaders to work with change while there is still room to influence it, rather than reacting once it has already taken shape. It keeps the future open a little longer.

If you want something practical to take into the next conversation, here are a few questions worth holding:

• What are we seeing repeatedly that we keep explaining away
• Where do conversations feel unresolved, yet keep returning
• What feels slightly harder than it used to, even though nothing is broken
• If we didn’t have to decide today, what would be worth understanding better first

These questions don’t slow progress. They change its quality.

If this pattern feels familiar, it doesn’t mean you or your organisation are behind. It usually means your systems were built for a different pace, a different environment. Noticing that mismatch isn’t a problem. It’s an opportunity.

Because once you start seeing change earlier, you’re no longer just responding to what happens. You’re shaping what’s possible.

And that work starts quietly. With attention.

This piece is part of an ongoing line of thought I’ve been sitting with for a while. If it resonates, you’re not alone. Many leaders I talk to recognise the same moments and the same tensions. What matters isn’t having the answer right away, but noticing early enough to have a real choice about what comes next.