From a leadership perspective, I don’t think the challenge is an intellectual one of knowing which disruption is coming. The challenge is how you get the organization to embrace the looming change.

Why didn’t cable companies launch their own version of Netflix? Intellectually, they surely knew what was going to happen. For a long time before they were hit by the new model, even their own customers were moving toward delivery over the Internet. It wasn’t that cable-company executives didn’t see this coming. Their challenge was organizational—“how do we set up the capabilities to make change happen?”

Leading in the digital age

The automation of work and the digital disruption of business models place a premium on leaders who can create a vision of change and frame it positively.