What leaders get wrong about control

Why pressure reveals more about decision-making than planning ever could. File photo by Ryan Francoz for Digital Journal

People like to believe their plans will hold. The trouble is, plans often fall apart the moment things get messy. 

A meeting moves, the market changes, or a strategy that looks steady on paper starts to wobble when people try to use it. Managers usually respond by tightening the reins. More rules. More direction. More structure.

All of this raises a basic question. If plans can fall apart easily in normal conditions, what does it take to stay clear-headed when the stakes are much higher?

Chris Hadfield has spent his life training for situations where a single wrong move could end a mission. As a former commander of the International Space Station, he understands how quickly the ground can drop out from under you and how preparation shapes what happens next.

“The greatest antidote for fear is competence,” he told a Calgary audience during the Leadership at the Speed of Science conference earlier this fall. “A rocket ship is just a complicated bicycle. Running a business is just a complicated bicycle. You have to learn how the pedals work and learn how you can fall off and decide what protective equipment you need.”

He was highlighting how preparation shapes a leader’s response when conditions move faster than expected. The clearer the risks, the more space (no pun intended) leaders have to adjust when they show up.

Months after the summit hosted by Cortical Consulting & Coaching, that message still hangs over many of the conversations happening inside Calgary’s business community. 

A volatile economy, trade barriers, tariffs and rapid swings in supply chains all have decision makers rethinking what control means when the systems around them keep changing.

Cortical sees this kind of thing all the time. 

“Clarity under pressure doesn’t mean certainty,” said founder Tammy Arseneau. “It comes from building systems that help people work through complexity instead of reacting to it.”

Recent research points in the same direction.

Cambridge’s 2023 work on organizational change found that most teams don’t stumble because the strategy is bad. They stumble because people are trying to make sense of moving targets while juggling their regular jobs, inboxes, and whatever surprise change slipped in overnight.

A global study from Capgemini that same year hinted at the issue, but with more charts. 

It found that organizations with stronger data practices were far more likely to see their change efforts stick. When communication slipped and people felt shut out, teams went quiet and progress slowed.

This matters because constant change has become the new norm for most organizations.

Sensemaking, not certainty

Executives often reach for control when they feel conditions slipping, but a different pattern emerges in practice. 

MIT analysis shows that large transformations fall apart when people don’t share a clear understanding of what the change is trying to achieve. 

Dr. Matt Hill sees the same pattern in his work as a neuroscientist at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute where he studies how people interpret stress. 

“Stress is not objective,” he said. “It’s an incredibly subjective experience. Stress is in the eye of the beholder.”

Hill’s comments line up with what change-management researchers have been pointing to for years. Prosci’s analysis shows that people rarely resist change because they dislike the idea. 

They resist when they feel left out of the process or unsure how change will impact their work.

“If you think you have control over [stress], that gives you some agency,” Hill said. “It doesn’t hit you the same way.”

Arseneau says this shows up inside companies every day, and clear routines that help people understand what is changing give them room to adapt.

“Stress shows us what’s working and what’s overloaded,” she said. “When leaders learn to read those signals, they stop chasing certainty and start guiding change.”

Preparation as shared understanding

Hadfield’s comment about competence touches the heart of adaptive leadership. 

Astronauts rehearse failure so that their responses become coordinated and steady. They build shared mental models long before anything goes wrong.

Research from MIT Sloan points to something similar. Adaptive capacity is less about perfect plans and more about how clearly people understand their roles, how they communicate, and how they prepare together. 

Those habits shape how quickly teams can adjust their behaviour in changing environments.

Arseneau’s work often begins with helping leadership teams surface these patterns. How do people respond when the environment changes? Where do decisions bottleneck? What information moves quickly and what stalls?

These questions can determine how quickly a team can reorient during uncertainty.

“Good stress tends to fall into the category of things that might be challenging but that we are able to muster ourselves through,” Hill said. “Toxic stress is almost always defined by unpredictability and uncontrollability.”

A recent Frontiers in Psychology study found that when people cannot make sense of shifting conditions, psychological safety falls and teams slow down. 

The loss of understanding affects momentum more than the pressure itself.

The key is helping people see what they can influence and how their work connects to the bigger picture.

Why safety shapes clarity

Research shows that when people feel safe to speak up and learn together, they navigate uncertainty more effectively. 

As Amy Edmondson and her colleagues argue, creating the space for open dialogue is a foundational act of change leadership. Leaders who create that environment get better information and make better decisions, especially when pressure rises.

“When we talk about control, what we’re really talking about is the need to feel safe,” Arseneau said. “When you build systems where people feel safe to think, to disagree, to adapt, you start seeing the kind of clarity that holds up when things get hard.”

Her team’s work focuses on the structures that support that safety. 

Regular sensemaking routines. Decision pathways that reduce bottlenecks. Clear communication during transitions. Pauses for reflection that help teams understand what is changing and why.

When the number of initiatives outpaces an organization’s capacity to absorb them, saturation sets in. Change fatigue is characterized by burnout, declining trust, and even turnover. 

Rather than add more control, organizations benefit from looking at all initiatives together, understanding their combined impact, and pacing them so people can actually absorb them.

Leaders who create space for teams to digest change give them the capacity to adapt rather than defend.

The work ahead

As Arseneau’s summit captured, leaders should forget about making perfect plans. That’s not how anything works out. The key is to help people think clearly when conditions move.

“Leaders are facing faster change and more pressure than ever,” Arseneau said. “Understanding how people function under uncertainty helps them lead with steadiness and humanity. That’s what keeps organizations clear and connected.”

More Canadian organizations are beginning to recognize that instability is not an interruption to performance. It is the environment in which they operate. 

Success comes to the organizations where people feel seen, heard, and able to act.

Final shots

• Clarity is the foundation that holds during change.
• Teams adapt faster when leaders make space for sensemaking.
• Preparation is a shared responsibility, not a plan on a page.

Digital Journal is the official media partner of the Leadership at the Speed of Science summit.