‘Failure is a knowledge level’: Executives say flexibility beats certainty in a turbulent world

“Instead of trying to predict the future, it’s probably better off to really enhance the muscle of adaptability,” Carol Liao, chair of BCG Greater China, said at the Fortune Leaders Forum on Sept. 8. And in an era when AI is commoditizing knowledge, she added, “judgment does have a premium.”

Liao spoke alongside Chanda Beppu, president of Starbucks Asia Pacific, and Feroz Sheikh, chief information and digital officer at Syngenta Group, and all three arrived at the same prescription: Leaders should focus less on forecasting and more on building organizations that can change course quickly.

Today’s executives face several challenges at once, Liao said. “There are a few anxieties Chinese leaders have,” she noted. “Globalization anxiety, AI anxiety, as well as generational shift… It’s quite a lot for leaders to think about.”

“We can’t always create certainty about what’s to come,” said Beppu. “We can create clarity about what matters most to our business and to our teams.”

Sheikh echoed his fellow panelist to suggest that “the way to deal with all of these complexities is to build that muscle of being able to adapt.”

He added that companies must not be afraid to fail when attempting to navigate uncertainties. To fail is a “data point,” said Sheikh. “It’s safe to fail, and it’s not a blip on your career.” He encouraged businesses to create a “culture of experimentation,” and see short term failure as an opportunity to learn for the future.

Syngenta needs to be adaptable this year. Heat stress in Europe wiped out almost 2 billion euros ($2.3 billion) of agricultural production this year, Sheikh said. “These are shocks that companies have to be prepared to absorb.”

Going global

Many Chinese companies are also navigating a generational handover. As the first generation of entrepreneurs adapts to the demands of international business, these companies are moving beyond simply selling products abroad and starting to behave like true multinationals.

Liao pointed to China’s EV sector as an example of this transformation. Car companies like BYD are building factories around the world and knitting together global supply chains, either bringing Chinese suppliers with them or growing local ones. 

“Globalization has been going on for Chinese companies for 20, 30 years. But for a long time, it’s been a trading model. It’s about exporting the products, exporting the capacity to the world,” she said. But now, “globalization, in a way, [has] become localization,” she said, requiring a more flexible approach.

That shift demands a new leadership style, Liao said: from “command and control, symphony-type leadership to a more jazz leadership—more distributed decision making, more experimentation, more tolerance for failure.”

She said that her consultancy firm sees AI being used creatively by companies. “Many of our clients find AI helps even more when they go global … because the intelligence on the market can be gathered quickly. The supply chain can be managed more efficiently,” she added.

But she cautioned that technology is the easy part. “Seventy percent [of AI transformation] is really about people: changing organization, ways of working, incentives, dealing with organizational inertia. That’s a hard problem,” Liao said. 

“Technology often is not the problem. The problem is often how you run this human transformation,” she added.

Beppu, from Starbucks, also sees AI’s value in how it affects people. “Where [AI] enhances our culture and our purpose, where it removes friction for our baristas,it’s valuable to us,” she said.