In 1929, just before the Great Depression, Post cereal cut all expenses and advertising.
Their competitor, Kellogg’s, doubled their ad budget. By 1933, Kellogg’s profits had risen almost 30% and they became the industry leader - a position they’ve maintained for 90 years.
Post’s decision, to be sure, is understanding; after all, they just did what most businesses do during economic downturns - cut costs across the board, especially in advertising. Kellogg’s decision doubled its advertising budget and aggressively promoted their then-new cereal, Rice Krispies.
This tale, though dating to some time ago, carries striking parallels to the challenges facing today’s CEOs. With persistent inflation, geopolitical tensions, and technological disruption creating deep uncertainty, business leaders once again find themselves at a crossroads. Cut costs to preserve capital, or invest to capture opportunity? Pull back to weather the storm, or push forward to gain market share?
The stakes couldn’t be higher. Recent surveys show CEOs expressing an increasing levels of concern about economic uncertainty. Many are grappling with difficult decisions about staffing, technology investments, and growth initiatives - all while trying to maintain profitability and shareholder confidence.
Yet history suggests that times of uncertainty, while challenging, can also be periods of extraordinary opportunity for companies with the right strategy and courage to execute it. Leaders face an unprecedented confluence of challenges: rapid technological change, economic instability, and shifting workforce dynamics. While uncertainty has always been part of business, the pace and scale of current disruptions require a fundamentally different approach to leadership.
Risk-taking is consistently reported as the hardest facet for leaders to enact within organizations (Mitchinson and Morris). In fact, according to the Harvard Business Review, 70% of all change initiatives fail. (Courtney et al.). In times like these, the perception of what constitutes an unacceptable risk can shift such that not only are radical changes avoided, but even small changes or improvements. Worse still, as with the example of Post and Kellog at the outset, some organizations actually backslide, eliminating prior positive changes.
The key to bridging this divide lies not in traditional command-and-control leadership, but in developing new capabilities around adaptability, emotional intelligence, and strategic foresight. This series will explore practical frameworks for leading through uncertainty, drawing on real-world examples and cutting-edge research to provide actionable insights for modern leaders.
Adapting to Technical Change
When Adobe announced its ill-fated $20 billion acquisition of Figma in 2022, it wasn’t just (attempting) to buy a design tool - it was acknowledging a fundamental shift in how software is developed and deployed. The deal highlighted how quickly technical change can upend even well-established market leaders.
The landscape for CEOs across industries is being reshaped by this pace of technical change. While technology has long been important to business success, today’s leaders face a more complex challenge: adapting to technical changes that are both faster and more fundamental than ever before.
Technology investment isn’t the key differentiator - it’s how leaders approach technical adaptation itself. Successful companies treat technical change not as a series of discrete projects, but as an ongoing process requiring continuous evaluation and adjustment.
Consider payments processing, where traditional financial institutions watched as companies like Square and Stripe revolutionized merchant services through superior technical architecture. Those banks that recognized and responded to the technical threat early maintained market share. Those that didn’t lost significant ground.
The implications for CEOs are clear: technical adaptation can no longer be delegated entirely to IT departments or chief technology officers. Leaders must develop enough technical fluency to evaluate strategic implications of technical changes and guide their organizations’ responses.
Success in uncertain times increasingly depends on getting these fundamentals right; lets talk about a few details.
Leading with Technical Tenacity
When Salesforce went down in May 2023, thousands of companies lost access to their customer data. The outage lasted hours. Many businesses couldn’t close deals or help clients.
This points to a broader truth about modern software: speed and control still matter. While cloud solutions promise convenience, companies with well-built on-premise systems often see better results. Their systems run faster. Their data stays safer. Their teams work without breaks.
Speed shapes how people use software. A CRM that responds in under half a second sees much more usage than one that takes two seconds. Teams enter more data. They check records more often. They close more deals. Every click counts.
On-premise systems bring other gains. When the internet fails, work continues. When suppliers raise prices, budgets stay stable. When regulations change, data stays where companies put it.
These benefits compound over time. Teams that trust their tools use them more. Better data leads to better choices. Faster systems save time that compounds across hundreds of users.
The math makes sense for large teams. While cloud CRMs cost less to start, high-performing on-premise systems often cost less at scale. They also give companies full control over their most vital asset: customer data.
The choice isn’t always clear cut. Both paths can work. But companies that need speed, stability, and control often find that running their own systems pays off. They trade short-term ease for long-term strength.
Leading Through Supply Chain Issues
When Toyota’s factories ground to a halt in August 2021, the culprit wasn’t a major disaster or strike. It was a single Covid case at a wire harness plant in Vietnam. The shutdown highlighted how brittle modern supply chains had become.
They were not alone. According to research, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed most companies were unprepared for global health emergencies. (Kraus et al. 214)
Software companies face similar risks. Their supply chains may be digital, but the dependencies run just as deep. One critical package update or API change can ripple through an entire system. The growing mesh of third-party services, open source libraries, and cloud providers creates hidden weaknesses.
Recent data shows that over 80% of software projects depend on code they don’t control. The average web application pulls from over 100 external sources and, no doubt, climbing rapidly. Each connection adds risk.
Smart leaders are rethinking these bonds. They map their dependencies and rank them by risk. They build slack into their systems. Some keep copies of critical code. Others spread work across providers. The goal isn’t to cut ties, but to make them stronger.
Netflix learned this lesson early. They built tools to break their own systems on purpose. Their “chaos engineering” approach finds weak spots before real outages hit. When Amazon’s cloud went down in 2011, Netflix kept running.
The same thinking applies to talent pipelines. Teams that rely on rare skills or single experts run risks. Cross-training helps. So does picking technology that more developers know. The best leaders build deep benches.
Supply chains work best when you can see them clearly. Good tools track dependencies automatically. They warn about risks early. They help teams respond fast when things break.
The future belongs to companies that build strong, clear chains. They don’t just react to breaks - they prevent them. They turn supply chain thinking from a weakness into strength.
Leading Through Generational Changes
When a hypothetical software engineer John D. Boomer started coding in the 1980s, he wrote software on a mainframe using COBOL. Last week, he watched his new hire, Jonny Gen Z, generate Python code using ChatGPT. This ficitional incident hilights a very real truth - the gap between these two moments spans more than time, but is a very real gap in attitudes, skills, and worldview.
Tech firms now often employ four generations of workers, from Boomers to Gen Z. Each group brings its own views about work, communication, and technology. These differences create both tension and opportunity.
Consider how teams share knowledge. Older workers might write detailed documentation, drawing on years of experience with complex systems. Younger developers often prefer to learn through video tutorials or by asking AI tools for help. Both approaches work. Neither is wrong.
The clash shows up in code reviews too. Senior developers who learned to husband computing resources still look for performance bottlenecks. New graduates who grew up with cheap cloud services focus more on readability and maintainability. The best teams find ways to value both perspectives.
Money matters differ too. Veterans who remember the dot-com crash often push for careful spending and stable architecture. Recent grads who’ve only known the startup boom may prefer to move fast and fix things later. Smart leaders help these groups understand each other’s fears and hopes.
Communication styles vary with age. Older workers tend to write longer emails and expect formal meetings. Younger ones use chat and quick video calls. Good teams learn to mix these approaches based on the task at hand.
The key lies in building bridges, not walls. Teams that blend experience with fresh thinking tend to build better software. They match careful planning with quick experiments. They balance proven methods against new tools.
Success requires giving each group room to shine. Let senior developers mentor others in system design. Let younger ones lead exploration of new technologies. Create chances for everyone to both teach and learn.
The future belongs to teams that turn generational differences into strength. The best software comes from mixing old wisdom with new ideas. That takes work, but the results are worth it.
Leading Through Uncertainty: The Path Forward
When Kellogg’s doubled down during the Depression, they proved that uncertainty breeds opportunity. That has not changed.
Recent market shifts have exposed weak spots in how we build and run software companies. Supply chains break. Teams drift apart. Technology changes faster than plans.
Yet some companies thrive in this mess; they turn breaks into bridges, gaps into bonds, and challenges into changes. Breaks in the supply chain become chances to build stronger infrastructure. Gaps between departments, between generations, and between teams become chances for learning and growth. Instead of letting technical change shape their future, they choose to shape the future of technical change.
The path forward lies in seeing uncertainty not as a threat, but as a force for growth. Companies that learn to bend with change last longer than those that try to stand rigid. Their systems are not stagnant, but shift and grow. They have teams that blend wisdom of age and the innovation of youth.
Like Kellogg’s did with cereal, smart software companies now grab space their rivals leave empty. They hire when others cut back. They build when others wait. There may now be a storm; but the choices made during storms shape decades ahead… and storms always pass.
The future belongs to those who face uncertainty head-on. They don’t just hope to survive it. They use it to grow stronger.
Mitchinson, Adam and Robert Morris. “Learning About Learning Agility.” Center for Creative Leadership, 2014.
Kraus, S.; Clauss, T.; Breier, M.; Gast, J.; Zardini, A.; Tiberius, V. The economics of COVID-19: Initial empirical evidence on how family firms in five European countries cope with the corona crisis. Int. J. Entrep. Behav. Res. 2020, 214, 26.
