Organizational Agility Only Works When Everyone Leads Change

Organizations have been navigating change for decades—launching initiatives, rolling out systems, restructuring teams... What’s different now is the pace, the volume, and the complexity. Change is no longer an occasional large-scale disruption you can plan for—it’s the constant backdrop of work.

What hasn’t changed is people. As Nigel Nicholson notes in Harvard Business Review some years ago, human psychology has been shaped by millions of years of evolution. It hasn’t changed in the last decade, and it won’t change in the next. The principles of effective change management are timeless, grounded in the human need for meaning, clarity, and agency, and remain as relevant today as ever.

So why is it that people are exhausted? Why are projects losing steam? Why do things still feel so hard for leaders—even when they’re managing change by the playbook?

It’s a recurring theme I hear in my work with clients at ExperiencePoint. For almost 30 years, we’ve worked alongside organizations to help employees at all levels drive meaningful change and growth. As the pace of change accelerates, we’re hearing two questions more than ever: “What framework will make us more agile?” and “How do we make our people absorb more change?”

But agility doesn’t come from working faster or pushing harder. It comes from thinking differently. Leading differently. And most of all, from sharing the responsibility for change across the organization. Because in today’s world, agility doesn’t live in a process. It lives in your people. And it starts when everyone sees themselves as a change leader.

The Survival Instinct That Slows Change Down

When pressure builds, people instinctively shift into survival mode. Their focus narrows to tasks, outputs, and results because checking things off a list offers a rare sense of control.

But the more task-oriented the work becomes, the less real progress is made. Meetings grow blunt, collaboration erodes, and resistance builds. Leaders feel stuck, although they’re doing everything “right”—so they push harder, fueling a cycle that Harvard researchers Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer caution against in their book, The Progress Principle. There, they warn that the harder we press forward without attending to people’s needs, the more stuck we become.

The cycle further perpetuates when leaders retain full ownership of the change, often in an attempt to control it, leaving employees to “deal with it.” In those instances, change becomes something done to them, not with them, undermining trust, discouraging engagement, and slowing progress down.

In the drive to survive, the essence of leading change—helping people get to the other side—often gets lost. It’s easier to focus on what’s next than to support a colleague who may be struggling. But in the end, change is only as successful as the people who embrace it.

What Does It Take to Build Agility Into a Culture?

Breaking that cycle isn’t about introducing a new framework or telling people to tough it out. It’s about creating the conditions where agility can take root—and thrive.

That starts with a shift in perspective: change isn’t something to be managed by a few. It’s something to be led by everyone.

But what does it mean to be an everyday change leader? It doesn’t require formal authority or knowledge of change management models. It means showing up, equipped with the power skills that help people move through uncertainty—like listening with empathy, communicating with clarity, and removing barriers. These simple, learnable change skills build the foundation for real agility.

When people at every level practice them, they make thoughtful decisions every day with consideration for the impact on others. When everyone learns to engage with peers and lead in small but meaningful ways, change becomes something people actively embrace rather than passively endure. And they do it because the culture around them makes it possible.

A culture of agility is built on three essential elements:

1. Trust - Where Agility Begins

Study after study shows that “trust” is the single most important factor in helping teams adapt to change. When people trust their leaders and colleagues, they speak up, take risks, and ask for help. Mistakes become moments to learn—not points to score.

Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety backs this up: In trusting environments, people spend less energy on self-protection and more on forward motion. You can feel it in high-trust teams—decisions come faster, support flows naturally, and progress accelerates.

2. Empowerment - Turn Intent Into Action

Trust sets the tone, but empowerment enables movement. People need context, clarity, and permission to act. Empowerment isn’t about letting go of control; it’s about giving people the tools and boundaries to lead with autonomy.

Empowered employees don’t wait to be told what to do. They understand the bigger picture and they know how to contribute to it.

3. Ownership - Make It Stick

Ownership transforms participation into commitment. When people feel accountable for outcomes—not just tasks—they lead with greater care and urgency.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield describes how NASA teams are trained to override the fight or flight response in moments of uncertainty. Their practiced response is “warn, gather, work”—a model of clarity, coordination, and purposeful action. That’s what shared ownership looks like under pressure.

No matter how the world of work evolves, many timeless truths endure: When people help shape change, they’re more resilient, engaged, and committed to seeing it through.

The Result of Everyday Change Leadership

Agility doesn’t come from a new tool or a tighter plan. It comes from people—people who feel trusted, empowered, and responsible for making change happen. And while the instinct in times of pressure is to take control, the real opportunity lies in doing the opposite: in distributing decision making, building capability, and setting the stage for others to step up.

Every organization has the potential to become more agile. But it doesn’t start with a process. It starts with a mindset, a set of behaviors, and a shift in how we show up—for our work and for each other.