The Great Unraveling
How the old model is collapsing and what institutions must do next.
After working with global organizations across regions and sectors since 2020, I began noticing the same pattern everywhere: reduced funding, strategy fatigue, unstable culture, generational tension, hybrid-work strain, and leadership teams stretched thin. The symptoms looked different from boardroom to boardroom but the underlying condition was the same.
We are witnessing a profound, structural unraveling of the old organizational model.
For decades, institutions relied on systems designed for a different era: hierarchy, centralized authority, long planning cycles, predictable geopolitics, and a workforce that accepted decisions handed down from the top. Those systems were built for stability not volatility, poly-crisis, generational transformation, or the speed of today’s world. Now, leaders are trying to manage 2025 and beyond with structures built for 1985.
This moment is not a post-COVID adjustment or a temporary disruption. It is a generational rupture. Younger talent expects voice, purpose, and transparency. Hybrid work has permanently changed operational norms. Global governance systems like Bretton Woods and the UN are struggling under pressures their founders could not have imagined. Corporations and INGOs cling to outdated hierarchies because hierarchy feels safe even as it stops them from evolving.
Two eras are colliding, and both are incomplete.
Much of today’s dysfunction stems from one reality: legacy systems still hold the reins. Heavy approval layers, rigid governance, office-first mindsets, outdated funding structures, and cultures that avoid risk rather than manage it act as institutional glue, strong enough to hold the old system together, but too brittle to allow transformation.
Meanwhile, the next model is already taking shape: flatter leadership, distributed decision-making, networked influence, short adaptive cycles, and cultures built on clarity and alignment. It wants to emerge but it has not yet been given permission.
Across every global organization I have advised since 2020, the core issue is not funding, turnover, remote work, or culture. The real crisis is holding onto outdated ways of working due to the need to feel safe in what has always worked.
How to overcome this paralysis?
Build Alignment Around Shared Power
Re-focus towards co-creating alignment, not imposing it.
Establish shared priorities and decision norms with your team, not around them.
Develop a unified narrative built on transparency, not messaging.
Address misalignment early, before it fractures trust and culture.
Redesign Decision-Making for Speed and Autonomy
Decision-making must move at the speed the world actually moves, not the speed institutions wish it moved.
Collapse unnecessary approval layers.
Empower the people closest to the work not the people highest in the hierarchy.
Replace risk avoidance with risk navigation
Clarify Direction in Short, Adaptive Cycles
Clear direction reduces friction, anxiety, and drift.
Replace annual plans with shorter, iterative direction-setting.
Communicate direction early, often, and without jargon.
Treat clarity as a strategic asset, not a communications product.
Build Cultures That Support Autonomy, Trust and Accountability
Culture is no longer how we talk about who we are, it is about how we behave when no one is watching.
Build systems rooted in transparency and shared ownership.
Focus on behaviors not slogans, posters, or programs.
Prioritize cross-generational collaboration, not generational assumptions.
Treat Influence as a System Capability
The next era belongs to institutions that influence, not merely communicate.
Build leadership influence internally and externally.
Align teams around purpose, identity, and direction.
Make strategic influence part of how decisions are made not how they are announced.
If your organization is feeling the strain of this moment from the pace of change, the generational tension, the structural weight of outdated systems, you are not alone. The institutions who move ahead in 2026 will be the ones who confront this reality with honesty, align around shared power, and give the emerging model room to take shape. The unraveling is real, but so is the opportunity. Institutions willing to rethink how they lead, decide, communicate, and align will define the next era, not inherit it.
If your leadership team is navigating this transition and needs clarity, alignment, or an external strategic partner, I would welcome a conversation.