How Senior Leaders Drive Innovation Amid Disruption

When disruption hits, the pressure to stabilize often overrides the instinct to innovate. Many senior leaders default to protection mode—preserving resources, reducing risk, and sticking with what has worked in the past. But ironically, these moments of volatility are exactly when innovation is most essential. The leaders who navigate uncertainty successfully don’t wait for calm waters. They build the capability to innovate within disruption—not outside or after it.

Research from BCG found that companies that continued to prioritize innovation during downturns outperformed their peers by up to 30% over the long term. But this kind of innovation doesn’t just come from product teams or R&D. It starts at the top. Senior leaders who want their organizations to thrive in changing conditions must personally model the curiosity, adaptability, and decision-making that fuels innovation culture.

Here are three critical ways senior leaders can drive innovation—even when the environment feels uncertain, unstable, or stretched to the limit.

1. Reframe Innovation from Big Idea to Daily Mindset

Many senior executives still carry an outdated view of innovation as something dramatic, high-stakes, or department-specific—reserved for labs, startups, or “innovation hubs.” But today’s most effective leaders recognize that innovation is a way of thinking, not a single event or breakthrough. It’s the daily discipline of noticing what’s changing, asking better questions, and enabling faster, smarter adaptation.

To embed this mindset, executives must normalize small, rapid experiments—especially in areas that haven’t traditionally been seen as “innovative.” Innovation can show up in a customer support script, a pricing model, or a hiring process. It starts with asking: What’s one part of this process that no longer fits our reality? When senior leaders visibly engage in this kind of reflection and improvement, it sets the tone for the entire organization.

At TLI, we help executive teams operationalize innovation by turning it into a daily leadership behavior. Instead of waiting for inspiration, we help leaders identify the constraints, customer signals, and internal patterns that can spark meaningful evolution—one micro-innovation at a time.

2. Lead the Emotional Climate That Innovation Requires

Disruption fuels fear—and fear kills innovation. Neuroscience shows that uncertainty activates the amygdala, shrinking the brain’s problem-solving capacity and creative flexibility. When leaders operate from reactivity or overload, they unintentionally signal that now is not the time for bold ideas. Innovation gets replaced with compliance. Curiosity is replaced with caution.

Senior leaders must take responsibility for the emotional climate they create. That doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine—it means naming the reality while also generating psychological safety. People need to feel not only safe to speak up, but safe to test, to fail, and to try again. That kind of safety doesn’t come from words alone—it comes from consistent behavior. When leaders reward learning over perfection and make space for ambiguity, innovation has room to breathe.

One of the most powerful shifts we see in our coaching work at TLI is when senior executives start leading innovation by shaping energy, not just strategy. They become attuned to tension patterns in their teams, the tone of meetings, and the silent signals of fear or disengagement. That level of awareness becomes a leadership asset—one that builds trust and unlocks new capacity for innovation across the board.

3. Align Innovation to Purpose and Growth—Not Just Activity

During disruption, it’s easy for innovation to become chaotic or misaligned. Teams spin up initiatives that aren’t strategically connected. Innovation becomes an adrenaline-driven escape from ambiguity rather than a grounded commitment to evolution. That’s why the best senior leaders anchor innovation to growth outcomes and organizational purpose.

This means setting clear innovation priorities—not just asking teams to “be creative,” but identifying the spaces where innovation is most needed and most likely to move the needle. It requires saying no to innovation that distracts and yes to what strengthens long-term advantage. Leaders must help their teams discern which ideas are worth investing in—and which are noise.

At TLI, we guide leaders to use purpose as a decision filter: Does this idea help us become more of who we say we are? Does it meet an emerging need that aligns with our values and vision? When innovation is connected to something deeper than performance metrics—when it’s tied to meaning, mission, and momentum—it becomes far more than a survival strategy. It becomes the path to regenerative growth.

Disruption doesn’t wait. And neither should innovation.

The senior leaders who drive real growth in today’s climate aren’t waiting for certainty or perfect conditions. They’re building innovation into the way they think, lead, and decide—especially when things feel unstable. By modeling curiosity, creating the emotional conditions for bold thinking, and aligning experimentation with purpose, they’re not just surviving disruption. They’re using it as a launchpad for what's next.

If you're ready to lead innovation from the top—through complexity, not around it—our Lead Through Disruption program is designed for you.

We work with senior leaders and executive teams to build the strategic, emotional, and behavioral capacity to lead forward when others freeze.

Let’s turn disruption into your next growth chapter. Learn more about the program or book a call with our team.

Leadership Practice: Model the Innovation Mindset

This week, choose one area of your business where things feel stuck or outdated—and lead a small, visible experiment to improve it.

Keep it simple, fast, and low-risk. Share what you’re trying, why it matters, and what you’re learning as you go. When your team sees you experimenting in real time, it normalizes innovation as a leadership behavior—not just a buzzword.

Coaching Reflection:
What’s one part of your leadership or operations that no longer fits the current environment—and what’s one small shift you could test right now?

Author

Athena Williams, Founder and CEO of Tenacious Leadership Institute, has been supporting leaders worldwide to become more tenacious for over 20 years. She has found that tenacity is the key to sustained leadership success in today’s ever-changing world. Through her coaching and leadership development programs, she helps leaders expertly handle change, complexity and other challenges so they can quickly get better results for themselves, their teams and their organizations.

Take the first step to becoming a tenacious leader by scheduling a call with us.