Welcome to the “New Ab-Normal”: We’re Never Going to Change This Slowly Again
Posted Feb 04, 2026 by Rick
Welcome to 2026—and to what I’ve been calling the New Ab-Normal.
For the past few years, I’ve been telling leaders: Congratulations. You survived the pandemic and adapted to the “New Normal.” But here’s the harder truth: the pace didn’t slow down. It accelerated.
What we are experiencing now isn’t an aberration. It’s a prolonged period of ab-normal levels of disruption, uncertainty, and change—and it’s not going away anytime soon.
The world is not going to stop spinning this fast. So leaders have a choice:either get better at coping with constant change—or become victims of it.
Simply put, we need to change the way we manage change.
Change Management Is No Longer an Event
Traditional “change management” assumes stability punctuated by disruption.
That assumption is now obsolete.
Change can no longer be treated as an event, a rollout, or a temporary initiative. It must become a core organizational capability—embedded in how people think, decide, and act.
That means building change tolerance and agility into the organization’s DNA, not layering it on top through one more framework, tool, or training program.
Agility Is Not Another Pilot Program
Most change initiatives don’t fail loudly.
They fail quietly.
Not because leaders lack commitment—but because we continue to treat change as something to manage, rather than a cultural condition to cultivate.
Agility does not live in pilots, programs, or project plans.
It lives in culture.
That’s why any serious conversation about agility must focus on two things at the same time:
The individual capacity to cope with uncertainty and recover from disruption
The organizational culture that either enables or exhausts that capacity
Culture eats change management for breakfast—for a reason.
Why This Series, and Why Now
Over the next several months, I’ll be writing about leadership in this New Ab-Normal—specifically, how senior leaders and middle managers create (or unintentionally destroy) a culture that can tolerate, and even embrace, change.
Agile organizations don’t just demand adaptability from their workforce.
They protect responsible risk-taking, normalize learning, and align systems and incentives with innovation.
These cultures are shaped at the top—but they most often live or die in middle management.
That’s where we’ll focus.
A Question to Sit With
Take a moment right now and consider this:
What is one rule, structure, or incentive in your organization that actively blocks agility and innovation today?
Next month, I’ll examine the most common leadership behaviors that unintentionally suppress agility—even in organizations that say they value it.
If building a more resilient, change-tolerant culture matters to you, I invite you to follow along.
A year from now, you’ll wish you had started today!