Executive Summary

Agility fails not because movement is slow, but because the clarity required to direct it is missing. Most leaders mistake constant motion for leadership, failing to see that rapid reaction often thickens the fog rather than clearing the path. Durable leadership requires moving beyond the “sprint to nowhere” to re-anchor organizations to their core identity and long-term mission. When leadership provides a deliberate pause, trading frantic activity for disciplined foresight, they convert noise into strategic momentum. Success in a disrupted world isn’t about the speed of the pivot; it’s about the intent of the movement.

Key Takeaways

  1. Prioritize Foresight Over Agility

    Institutions do not suffer from a lack of effort, but from too much motion without enough direction. When agility becomes a reflex rather than a choice, it creates a façade of progress that erodes institutional trust and coherence.

    • What to do next: Slow down false urgency by separating short-term signals from long-term trajectories before committing to new initiatives.

  2. Lead with Intentional Adaptability

    There is a fundamental difference between reacting to obstacles and designing the path before you arrive. Credibility is earned by making fewer, more deliberate moves that carry systemic weight and reflect the organization’s purpose.

    • What to do next: Implement a Consequence Audit to examine the trajectory of major decisions, ensuring they build for the decade rather than just the month.

  3. Use Tools to Sharpen, Not Replace, Judgment

    AI has intensified the pressure to react, but it must be used to create space for better decisions, not to set the pace of leadership. Visionary leaders hold judgment themselves rather than outsourcing it to trends or tools.

    • What to do next: Audit your AI integration to ensure it is used for signal detection and scenario exploration that sharpens human judgment.

Leading In 2026

I’ve spent time with leaders who are extraordinarily intelligent — and overwhelmed.
What they’re missing isn’t information. It’s clarity.

Leaders of bedrock organizations are surrounded by data. Dashboards refresh constantly. Signals arrive from every direction. Stakeholders watch closely. Decisions are visible, questioned, and measured in real time.

Now, artificial intelligence has intensified everything.

AI promises foresight. It generates scenarios, summaries, predictions, and recommendations at a pace no human team can match. It accelerates insight — or at least the appearance of it. Outputs arrive with urgency. Every signal feels actionable. You type a prompt and receive an answer.

But I’ve watched this acceleration do something subtle and dangerous.

It doesn’t clear the path forward.
It thickens the fog.

In that fog, I’ve seen leaders face a quiet but consequential temptation: move faster — not because it’s right, but because slowing down feels irresponsible. When pressure is high and scrutiny is constant, motion becomes a proxy for leadership.

Agility becomes the reflex.

Sprints multiply. Initiatives stack. Teams are rewarded for responsiveness and visible activity. AI reinforces the instinct by making constant reaction feel not only possible, but expected. Responsible, even.

From the outside, this looks like leadership in action.
Inside, it often feels very different.

The Fog of “More”

Most institutions are not suffering from a lack of effort. They are suffering from too much motion without enough direction.

  • More data.
  • More tools.
  • More pilots.
  • More pivots.

Each choice makes sense on its own. Together, they create noise.

For leaders carrying systemic responsibility, this noise is dangerous. It consumes attention and erodes judgment. These leaders are not just managing performance — they are stewards of institutions that serve communities, constituencies, and often the country itself. Their decisions shape trust, continuity, and resilience over decades.

In that context, speed can be misleading.

Fast responses feel decisive. Rapid iteration signals competence. Agility is praised as a virtue. Motion becomes evidence of leadership.

But I’ve seen agility without foresight create something else entirely.

It creates a façade of progress.

Over time, that façade erodes the very things bedrock institutions depend on: coherence, trust, and the ability to build for the long term.

When Agility Becomes the Problem

There is a difference between moving quickly and moving with intent.

One creates activity.
The other creates advantage.

History offers a clear example.

For more than a century, Nokia was a master of reinvention. Paper mills. Rubber boots. Mobile phones. Each evolution demonstrated adaptability. By the early 2000s, it stood as the undisputed leader in global handsets. Scale. Brand equity. Distribution dominance.

It owned the category.

Then the smartphone era redefined the category itself.

The iPhone reframed the device. Android accelerated the ecosystem shift. Software began to compound faster than hardware could differentiate. The center of gravity moved.

Nokia responded with urgency. New operating systems. Strategic partnerships. Hardware bets. Organizational restructurings.

From the outside, it looked decisive.

Inside, coherence was eroding.

The company was reacting to disruption faster than it was redefining its role within it. Strategy became a series of pivots. Each decision, rational on its own. Collectively, absent a unifying thesis about Nokia’s place in a software-defined world.

By the mid-2010s, the handset business was gone.

Agility had not restored momentum.
It extended ambiguity.

The Turnaround Was Not About Speed

Nokia’s renewal did not come from accelerating reaction time.

It came from clarifying identity.

Under Pekka Lundmark’s leadership, the company stabilized its mobile networks business and rebuilt technical credibility in 5G. That mattered. But the deeper shift was structural.

Nokia stopped trying to reclaim consumer relevance. It named its durable advantage.

It builds the infrastructure the world runs on.

  • Optical networks.
  • IP routing.
  • Subsea cables.
  • Mission-critical communications.

The architecture behind hyperscalers, governments, and enterprises.

As global AI demand accelerated, the signal strengthened. The Network Infrastructure division, serving data centers and hyperscalers, began to outpace Mobile Networks in revenue. Growth was no longer tethered to devices or traditional telecom expansion. It was tied to AI workloads, cloud traffic, and the scale of modern data centers.

The implication was clear.

The next era will not be defined by what sits in someone’s hand.
It will be defined by what intelligence flows through.

A Leadership Signal

The appointment of Justin Hotard as CEO, beginning April 2025, formalizes that direction.

Hotard’s background is not rooted in legacy telecom. He led Intel’s Data Center and AI Group. Before that, high-performance computing and AI at HPE. His career has centered on the systems powering artificial intelligence, not the endpoints delivering it.

That decision is structural.

It signals that Nokia no longer defines itself as a telecom equipment provider. It is positioning as critical infrastructure for the AI era.

At the same time, the company is simplifying its operating model into two focused segments: Network Infrastructure and Mobile Infrastructure. Sharper accountability. Distinct growth engines. Clearer capital allocation.

This is not reactive agility.

It is strategic narrowing.

  • Clarity about where value compounds.
  • Clarity about which markets warrant focus.
  • Clarity about what will not be pursued.

Why This Matters for Leaders

Nokia’s story is not about failure.

It is about tempo.

The initial disruption revealed the risk of reacting faster than redefining your role. The current evolution demonstrates the discipline required to step back, identify where structural advantage intersects with structural demand, and align accordingly.

AI has intensified pressure across industries.

Boards demand growth.
Markets demand narrative.
Analysts demand momentum.

Speed, absent thesis, is expensive.

Nokia’s repositioning toward becoming the AI-driven backbone of global infrastructure is not a sprint. It is a long-horizon alignment of leadership, structure, and capital toward where demand is compounding.

That is adaptability.

Not reacting to the obstacle in front of you.
Designing toward where the system is going.

Seeing Further, Not Running Faster

You don’t survive the fog by sprinting into it.

I’ve seen companies saved (and others quietly diminished) by whether leaders slowed down just enough to see further before committing to motion.

This is where foresight matters. Not as prediction, but as discipline.

Foresight is the practice of slowing false urgency. It’s the work of separating signal from noise, trend from trajectory, reaction from intention.

AI can support this work, but only if it’s used to sharpen judgment, not replace it.

Used well, AI creates space for better decisions.
Used poorly, it multiplies noise exponentially.

The difference isn’t technical.

It’s leadership.

From Agility to Adaptability

Agility reacts to the obstacle in front of you.

Adaptability designs the path before you arrive.

Reactive organizations are always busy. Adaptive organizations are deliberate. They make fewer moves, but each move carries more weight. Momentum compounds only when direction holds.

In practice, adaptability looks like this:

  • Decisions are paced, not rushed.
  • Trade-offs are named explicitly.
  • Short-term wins are evaluated against long-term trust.

Adaptability isn’t slower. It’s stronger. It replaces pivoting in place with strategic movement grounded in values and foresight.

An Optional Pause: The Consequence Audit

In some rooms, this discipline shows up as a deliberate pause — what we at Saxum sometimes call a Consequence Audit — but the name matters less than the moment it creates.

Before a major initiative moves forward, leaders pause not to debate execution, but to examine trajectory.

They ask:

  • Does this decision solve for the month, or build the decade?
  • Does it reflect who we are, or trade identity for speed?
  • Are we responding to noise, or designing for a real signal?

I’ve watched that pause interrupt momentum just long enough to prevent years of rework, mistrust, or institutional drift.

The value isn’t in the answers alone.
It’s in what the pause communicates.

Speed is not the standard here.
Consequence is.

A Final Thought

Agility has its place. But when agility becomes the answer to every form of uncertainty, it stops being a strength. It becomes a liability.

You pivot in place. Motion replaces momentum.

In a world that won’t wait, the most dangerous thing a leader can do is run blind.

Speed doesn’t create direction.
Activity doesn’t equal progress.

Clarity — earned through judgment, restraint, and responsibility — is the only velocity that holds.

Author Bio:

As CEO of Saxum, Peter Farrell partners with leaders of bedrock organizations to convert systemic complexity into Clarity and Vision, ensuring strategic decisions hold up under high-stakes scrutiny. He specializes in driving Consequential Momentum by aligning institutional culture with performance, moving partners from stagnation to measurable, system-wide outcomes. Through the integration of foresight and the Momentum Stack, Peter empowers visionary leaders to navigate transformation with precision and achieve a durable competitive advantage.