Transition
Passenger or driver? Reclaiming agency in the transition economy
2 April 2026 · 5 min read
Too many of us are being asked to navigate vast change while being treated as passengers. The work — for leaders and for ourselves — is to put people back in the driving seat.
Change at work has stopped being a project and started being the weather. Restructures, AI, hybrid working, generational shifts, retirement curves — most people are managing several transitions at once.
And yet, when I listen to people in organisations, the recurring feeling is one of being done to. Decisions land. New systems arrive. New language is introduced. Capacity for actual thought shrinks.
Leadership in the transition economy is, in large part, the work of returning agency: making the why visible, inviting people into the design, naming what is fixed and what is genuinely open, and protecting the conditions in which people can think.
The phrase I keep coming back to is simple: passenger or driver? It is a useful question for any leader to ask of their team — and any of us to ask of our own working lives.