Stability And Agility: Why Modern Leaders Must Master Both

I am not one for buzzwords. Most fade fast. Some linger. “Stagility” is one of the latest—used to capture the balance of stability and agility. At first glance stagile feels like another empty label. But if you strip away the gloss, there’s something useful here. For leadership, stagility is not only about how companies move. It’s about how leaders take shape. Anchored in purpose, agile in action.

Anchored in Purpose, Not Stuck in It

For leaders who master stability and agility, purpose isn’t a framed slogan on the wall. It steadies but doesn’t lock them in place. Purpose should not block motion. It should illuminate it.

Many legacy organizations mistake constancy for immobility. They hide behind purpose when they need to adapt. A stagile leader knows purpose should guide change, not resist it.

Picture a hospital leader who inherited a faith-based system. The old phrase “compassionate care” could have been retired to sound modern. Instead, she redefined it for the age of data and algorithms: compassion meant bedside empathy, but also making sure diagnostic tools were fair and transparent. The phrase stayed. Its meaning expanded.

Values That Evolve Without Losing Roots

Too often values get treated like relics. They should move with the times. “Innovation” once meant pouring money into R&D labs. Today it can mean experimenting with AI in ways that protect people as much as profits. The spirit continues, the form changes.

Updating values is part of the work of leadership—carrying forward what still matters while letting go of what no longer serves. Leaders who confuse preservation with strength end up dragging their culture backward.

Sears is a cautionary story. It once stood for the idea of a dependable neighborhood retailer, and that promise carried it for generations. But when shopping shifted toward convenience and digital access, Sears treated those shifts as threats instead of extensions of its own promise. The result was a slow unraveling. The very values that built its success became anchors that weighed it down.

Contrast that with a retailer that built its reputation on service. For years that meant attentive clerks in clean aisles. When shopping moved online, the company didn’t toss the value. It reframed service as a frictionless digital experience. Customers still felt cared for even though the interaction shifted.

Purpose without agility hardens into rigidity. Agility without purpose scatters attention. Values are the hinge between the two—the place where leadership either steadies or fractures.

The Agility Core

Agility that floats free from purpose wears people down—leaders chasing whatever trend dominates the week, shifting priorities without pause, exhausting teams. Agility tethered to purpose creates speed with direction.

You see it when a leader introduces automation to cut repetitive tasks, but instead of using it as a headcount lever, shifts managers toward coaching and developing their people. The work moves faster, but development deepens too.

Stagile leaders move quickly on what matters while keeping their non-negotiables intact. They treat technology as a tool to advance purpose, not as a threat. They design routines that flex during shocks but still give people something to rely on.

The best metaphor may be simple: anchor and sail. One grounds, the other moves.

In a conversation with Dave Ulrich, we talked about how much of leadership now comes down to living with paradox. Stability and agility sit in constant tension. Lean too far into stability and you risk calcifying. Lean too far into agility and you create chaos.

The stagile leader doesn’t try to solve this paradox. They learn to work inside it—offering steadiness through purpose and culture while inviting change through experimentation and speed. The paradox isn’t a problem to fix. It’s the condition of leadership today.

The Illusion of Stagility

Declaring agility as a core value can be powerful. Yet this is often where leaders stumble. They latch onto the word without committing to the work. What once gave the organization its rhythm gets dismantled too quickly. Titles are flattened, but hidden approval chains multiply. Fresh “agile values” are announced while old rituals are discarded with little thought. Dashboards replace huddles, managers lose their role as coaches, and the steadiness people once relied on quietly disappears. In a conversation with me, management thinker Gary Hamel put it plainly: systems built on control eventually suffocate curiosity. And that is what too many so-called agile transformations become—control in disguise.

Where Stability Lives—and Gets Undermined

To lead stagile, leaders need to ask hard questions in three places: culture, systems, and structures. These are also the places where stagility collapses most often.

1. Culture: Renewal vs Replacement

Leaders sometimes declare a shiny new culture modeled on startups, as if reinvention itself proves progress. What they get instead is rupture.

The stagile leader asks: what from our legacy culture still inspires, and how do we give it new relevance?

Action: Keep rituals that embody purpose—recognition practices, founding stories, annual events—but reinterpret them for current challenges. Renewal beats replacement.

2. Systems: Connection vs Erasure

Systems are the daily glue of work. Too often they’re discarded wholesale in the name of speed, and what’s lost is the sense of belonging.

The stagile leader asks: which systems still create connection, and which need reimagining?

Action: Retain the rhythm of team huddles or all-hands but modernize their format. One manufacturer kept its daily shift gathering but added digital prompts and AI-driven safety notes. The ritual stayed human while the function evolved.

3. Structures: Freedom vs Hollowing Out

Structure is the most common stagility trap. In the rush to flatten, companies strip out the very roles that give people clarity and coaching.

The stagile leader asks: how can structure free managers to lead, not bury them in more administration?

Action: Simplify reporting lines and approvals but preserve the manager role as the central node for coaching and clarity.

In the name of agility, leaders sometimes cut out layers they see as redundant. On paper it looks cost-effective. In practice, engagement might sink—and the hidden cost of disengagement can outweigh the savings. Reinstating frontline managers, freed from heavy administration, might restore steadiness. This isn’t to suggest restructuring or broader spans of control don’t have value. The point is that they should be evaluated not only for efficiency gains but also for whether they limit potential and risk triggering active disengagement.

Why Stagility Matters to Followers

Gallup’s global research shows that followers look for four things from leaders: hope, stability, compassion, and trust. These are more than abstract ideals. They’re the emotional anchors people need most in times of disruption.

• Hope points people toward a better future when agility introduces uncertainty. Leaders who connect pivots to a vision create energy instead of fatigue.
• Stability reassures people that even as change accelerates, certain roles and rituals remain dependable.
• Compassion is how people experience agility at a human level. Reorganizations and new tools are felt personally before they are understood strategically.
• Trust forms when leaders stay true to purpose and values while moving quickly. Without trust, agility feels reckless.

Stagile leadership delivers on these needs. Hope is the sail that pulls people forward. Stability is the anchor that steadies them. Compassion and trust are the conditions that make both possible.

Developing Stagile Leaders Early

This isn’t a style to bolt on late in a career. It has to be cultivated early. Push agility too hard and leaders risk trading away integrity. Hold too tightly to purpose and they calcify.

Future development should teach leaders to tell anchor from sail. Without both, the voyage is either adrift without clarity or locked in place.

Stagile leadership means:

• Holding purpose as a constant that doesn’t shift with the weather
• Redrawing values to reflect new realities without erasing history
• Reviewing culture, systems and structures for traps and adjusting them with care
• Meeting followers’ need for hope, stability, compassion and trust in every change
• Building organizations that grow not because they are stable, and not because they are fast, but because they are both

Most conversations about stagility frame it at the organizational level. The sharper challenge is personal.

Leaders of the future won’t fail for being too stable or too agile. They’ll fail for never learning how to hold both at once—the anchor, the sail, and the trust of those they lead.