Closing the Leadership Gap: A Strategic Imperative for a VUCA World
Across industries and geographies, senior leaders are sensing the same thing: the leadership capability gap is widening.
It’s the gap between the complexity of the world we operate in and the capacity of our leaders to navigate it. It has become a strategic risk, and an opportunity for growth and renewal of a different kind than what we are used to. From where we stand, this is a threshold moment: we can either keep patching yesterday’s model or we can re-architect leadership development for the reality we are living in.
Because we are already living and leading in what is often described as a VUCA world — volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.
The term is not new, but the conditions have evolved. The pace of change is now relentless, outstripping the ability of traditional planning cycles to keep up. Our decisions ripple instantly across markets, supply chains, communities, and ecosystems, creating second- and third-order effects we must anticipate. And many of the most consequential risks and opportunities — from AI ethics to climate tipping points — are largely invisible, unfolding at a systemic level.
McKinsey notes that today’s top teams juggle twice as many critical issues as they did a decade ago. Under these conditions, horizontal skill-building alone is no longer enough. Skills matter — strategy frameworks, negotiation techniques, innovation methods — but in high volatility, they are only part of the picture. Chronic uncertainty activates our biological threat systems, narrowing thinking, reducing creativity, and pushing us toward familiar responses, whether or not they fit the moment. Even the most capable leaders can find themselves caught in patterns that once served them but no longer do.
The missing piece is capacity: the ability to see clearly, hold complexity, and remain grounded under pressure. This is the focus of vertical leadership development — upgrading the leader’s internal operating system so that skills can be applied with greater clarity, discernment, and impact. Leaders who grow in this way develop a broader sense of purpose, an ability to maintain presence in high-stakes situations, a capacity to see interdependencies and long-term consequences, and a readiness to hold tensions such as stability and change or short- and long-term priorities without defaulting to either/or thinking.
While McKinsey’s idea of “leadership factories” highlights the importance of deliberate cultivation, we believe the future calls for something more deeply adaptive: leadership evolution with an ecosystemic focus.
This embeds growth into real business challenges, balances stretch with support, encourages diverse perspectives — especially those that challenge the status quo — and anchors leadership development in organisational purpose and strategic direction. This is not about one-off programs; it is about weaving capacity building into the fabric of the organisation so it becomes part of how the business thinks and acts every day.
The leadership gap is not just an HR issue — it is a strategic business issue. Closing it is about enabling your organisation to execute strategy effectively in a volatile, interconnected, high-stakes environment.
As a leadership team, ask yourselves:
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Are we intentionally developing both skills and capacity?
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Do we have a systematic approach to growing systemic and polarity thinking?
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Are we creating the conditions for leaders to stay calm, clear, and connected under pressure?
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Is leadership development aligned directly to our strategic priorities and purpose?
The organisations that can answer “yes” to these questions will not just survive in a VUCA world — they will be the ones shaping it.
If you are rethinking leadership development to meet the future head-on, we work with senior teams to integrate vertical capacity building into strategy execution and organisational design.
Contact me at elisabet.lagerstedt@future-navigators.com to explore how we can strengthen your leadership capacity and impact for the decade ahead.
