The 3 things you’re not doing in performance reviews

A while back I heard a few people talking about public speaking. Person A was talking about their anxiety about making presentations. Trying to make him feel better, Person B said, “Public speaking is just like riding a bike!”

That got my attention.  It seemed to be a comforting little sound bite. The only problem was that it was wrong.  Public speaking is not like riding a bike. But it got me thinking about leadership communication and learning in general.

What does it mean if we say that something is like learning to ride a bike?  We’re saying that it’s a skill that initially may seem pretty difficult to learn… but once we figure it out, we can do it successfully without thinking—even if we don’t do it at all for years at a time. It’s the reassuring idea that you’ve acquired a skill that you will never lose.

There’s no question that we all learn many skills that are like riding a bike. Driving is a good example. Most of us were white-knuckle drivers when we first got behind the wheel, but what about now? On long highway drives, I sometimes snap out of a daydream and realize I have no memory of anything that happened on the road in the last 15 minutes. That’s because I don’t have to think about driving when I do it—not unless there is intense traffic or some other unusual circumstance.

Many other skills are the same—reading, typing, doing simple math in your head, and so on.   But quite a few sophisticated skills are quite unlike riding a bike.  In other words, there are skills that are definitely learnable and where your level of mastery can improve substantially. However, you’ll probably never be really great at these skills without vigilant, ongoing practice, preparation, reflection, and reinforcement.

Some examples that come to mind with leadership communication: Selling, managing change, inspiring your teams, and, yes, public speaking. What’s so different about these areas?  A few things:

• They involve an audience. If you were making your first speech in several months or years, would you find that you could do it almost unconsciously? I couldn’t. You can never be on auto-pilot when you’re delivering any sort of message to an audience. Just as the saying goes that you can never step in the same river twice, no two audiences are ever the same—even if you’re speaking to your internal teams each quarter. All sorts of circumstances change regularly, and you have to consciously adjust your message to address the ever-evolving needs of your audience.

• To maintain performance at a high level, sophisticated skills require ongoing practice. Yo-Yo Ma may be the world’s best cellist, but he estimates that he still puts in roughly 2,000 hours of practice each year. That’s an average of 5.5 hours daily.  If he stopped practicing altogether, he obviously could still play the cello.  But he wouldn’t be the best cellist for much longer.

• Skill mastery typically requires continual learning and reinforcement over time. Practice is critical, but it’s not sufficient. When you think about areas such as selling, motivating, and public speaking, there is always more to learn. There is evidence now that 90% of what we learn at a workshop, for example, dissipates within one year. To ensure the needle keeps moving in the right direction, you need to be a perpetual student. That may involve reading about the subject, hearing about it, going to a workshop, and getting expert advice. Whether you’re a tennis pro, a psychiatrist, or a VP of Sales, having a coach to help you with your real-time challenges can have an enormous impact to give you that reinforcement over time.

As a leader, you’ll no doubt hear from companies that want to offer you “quick-fix” solutions for perpetual leadership development challenges—areas such as executive presence, employee engagement, and public speaking.

But lasting, meaningful mastery is not a quick fix.  Sophisticated skills need reinforcement: A better motto for these skills would be “use it or lose it.” Because some things are quite unlike riding a bike,

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AI is reshaping how work gets done—automating tasks, accelerating decisions, and raising expectations for speed and precision. Strategy is shifting faster than structures can adapt, leaving many leaders operating in systems that weren’t built for what’s being asked of them now. Employees are asking more of their managers—while the business is asking more of them, too. And leaders are stuck navigating it all with development priorities, operating norms, and support systems that weren’t designed for this level of speed, ambiguity, or stretch.

As expectations rise, leadership capability is under scrutiny.

But are development efforts evolving fast enough to meet the moment?

Where priorities and expectations diverge

Most leadership development programs today emphasize foundational strengths:

• Executive presence
• Personal purpose
• A growth mindset
• Empowering others
• Stretching others

In contrast, senior executives in the BTS study identified a different set of capabilities as most critical for leaders right now:

• Accountability
• Transparency
• Enterprise thinking
• Divergent thinking

The contrast reveals a disconnect between what development programs are building—and what executives believe their organizations need most from their leaders today.

How did we get here?

The expectations placed on leaders—especially at the middle—have always evolved alongside the business landscape.

In the 1990s, leadership development focused on emotional intelligence and team empowerment. The 2000s brought globalization and lean operating models, with a sharper focus on efficiency and agility. Then came digital transformation, agile ways of working, and flatter, more matrixed structures.

Each wave expanded the leadership mandate—asking leaders to become connectors, coaches, and change agents.

What’s different now is the pace and proximity of change. Strategy no longer shifts annually—it flexes monthly. And mid-level leaders are no longer simply executing someone else’s vision. They’re expected to interpret it, shape it, and deliver results through others—in real time.

At the same time, the psychological contract of work has changed. Employees want more meaning, flexibility, and support—and they often look to their managers to provide it. Add in the rise of AI and the frequency of disruption, and the expectations placed on leaders have outpaced what many development efforts were designed to support.

What’s driving the disconnect?

What we’re seeing isn’t disagreement—it’s a difference in vantage point, shaped by the distinct challenges each group is solving for. This isn’t about misaligned intent—it reflects different priorities and pressures.

Talent and learning teams often prioritize foundational capabilities because they’re proven, scalable, and critical to developing confident, human-centered leaders. These programs are designed to grow potential over time.

Executives, meanwhile, are focused on the immediacy of execution—strategy under strain, shifting priorities, and the need for alignment at speed. Their focus reflects where progress is stalling now.

Both perspectives matter. But when they remain disconnected, development risks falling out of sync with business reality—and the gap is most visible at the middle, where expectations are rising fastest.

What’s the takeaway for talent leaders now?

This moment offers more than a gap to close—it offers insight into how leadership needs are evolving.

What if the differences between these two capability lists aren’t in conflict, but in sequence? Foundational strengths help leaders show up with purpose and empathy. Enterprise capabilities help them lead across systems and ambiguity. The opportunity isn’t to choose between them—it’s to connect them more intentionally.

What’s uniquely now is the acceleration. The stretch. The pressure to reduce friction and support faster alignment. Talent leaders aren’t just being asked to build capability—they’re being asked to build momentum. That means designing development experiences that reflect complexity, enable cross-functional thinking, and help leaders decide and adapt in real time.

It also means listening more closely. The capabilities executives are calling for aren’t just wish lists—they’re signals. Signals of where transformation slows, and where leadership must evolve for strategy to move forward.

This isn’t about shifting away from what works—it’s about expanding it. To connect what leaders already do well with what the business needs next—and to do it in ways that are grounded, human, and built for today’s pace.

Shifting momentum

Leadership development isn’t just a pipeline priority. It’s a strategic lever for how your organization adapts, aligns, and accelerates through change.

This research doesn’t just reveal a skills gap—it surfaces a systems opportunity. The disconnect between talent priorities and executive expectations highlights where momentum gets lost, and how leadership development can close the space between vision and execution.

Talent leaders are uniquely positioned to reconnect the dots—between individual growth and enterprise outcomes, between what leaders learn and how they lead, between what the business says it needs and how that shows up in behavior.

So the next question isn’t just: What should we build?

It’s: How do we enable leaders to build it into the business—faster?

Every organization is navigating this differently. If you’re revisiting your development priorities or rethinking what leadership looks like in your context, let’s connect. We’re happy to share what we’re seeing—and learning—with others facing the same questions.

In late 2023, we set out to answer a question we kept hearing from clients:

How do you prepare for what’s next—when “next” keeps changing?

That question has only become more urgent in 2025. Today’s leaders are navigating rapid shifts—from AI’s integration into nearly every role to volatile markets and a growing disconnect between employee expectations and organizational readiness. Planning feels harder than ever—because the future keeps accelerating while our tools and assumptions stay anchored in the past.

Too often, strategic planning is built on outdated logic: start with what’s already in motion, layer on incremental improvements, and forecast trends forward. But in today’s environment, that approach isn’t just ineffective—it’s risky. It reinforces legacy thinking. It prioritizes what’s easy over what’s essential. And it creates strategies built for a version of the world that no longer exists.

That’s why we took a different approach. We gathered a team of I/O psychologists, academics, and senior talent leaders—not to react to trends, but to reimagine what the future of talent, leadership, and learning might truly demand.

To guide the process, we used a method we often apply with clients: future-back thinking.

What is future-back thinking?

Future-back thinking flips traditional strategy. Rather than starting with today’s constraints, it begins with a bold vision of future success—and works backward to define what it will take to get there.

This approach helped us look past short-term pressures and surface deeper signals. It made the future feel more actionable—and more human.

It also reminded us why innovation is so rare: Most organizations are wired to protect what’s familiar. We prioritize feasibility, optimize what exists, and assume continuity. In uncertain times, we tweak around the edges instead of reimagining what’s possible.

Future-back thinking breaks that cycle. It turns ambiguity into alignment—and strategy into design.

It starts with a better question:

What will the future demand—and what will we wish we’d done sooner?

Because it’s not about being right. It’s about being ready.

Five bold predictions—and how they became reality

When we applied future-back thinking to the future of talent and learning, five provocative themes emerged. Each was grounded in signals we were already starting to see—but at the time, they felt ambitious.

We captured them in our original blog, Navigating the New Dawn of Talent Strategy—a look at what might shape how organizations attract, develop, and lead talent over the next 3–5 years.

Now, just two years later, those signals have become strategy. Here’s how the predictions stack up against today’s reality:

1. Skills × jobs (the remix)

Then: We predicted that rigid job architectures would give way to more fluid, capability-based models—ones that reflect how people actually grow and how business needs evolve.

Now: That shift is well underway. Many organizations have begun redesigning roles around transferable skills and capabilities, creating more dynamic paths for growth, mobility, and performance.

2. AI-powered learning

Then: We anticipated GenAI would unlock personalized, real-time learning at scale, integrated into the flow of work.

Now: GenAI is now embedded in many organizations’ learning ecosystems—powering smart coaching, adaptive learning paths, and knowledge retrieval in the flow of work.

3. Diversity as differentiation

Then: We forecasted a shift from DEI as a compliance mandate to DEI as a core driver of innovation, adaptability, and growth.

Now: High-performing organizations are building cognitive and cultural diversity into teams, treating it as a strategic advantage—not a checkbox.

4. AI as a leadership partner

Then: We imagined a future where AI would augment—not replace—leaders, supporting better decisions, planning, and communication.

Now: That’s exactly what’s happening. Leaders are using AI to model scenarios, synthesize insights, and communicate with more speed and clarity.

5. Decentralized, human-centric leadership

Then: We projected leadership would decentralize, moving closer to the front line and defined by mindset more than title.

Now: Leading organizations are scaling leadership behaviors across levels and embedding psychological safety, inclusion, and empowerment into day-to-day work.

These predictions weren’t about chasing trends. They were about imagining what the future might require—and preparing for it before it arrived.

That’s the power of future-back thinking: it doesn’t just forecast change. It helps leaders design for it.

Start thinking differently now

Most strategic plans start by looking around—at what exists, what’s already in motion, what feels feasible. But the brain doesn’t just collect data. It builds habits. It channels information into familiar paths. And it reinforces what it already knows.

That’s good for speed. But bad for imagination.

Future-back thinking challenges that. It deliberately disrupts those neural paths. Instead of adjusting today’s structures, it starts at the endpoint: a bold future state. Then it reverse-engineers the shifts required to get there.

This shift—from refining the familiar to reimagining what’s possible—is what organizations need now.

Here are three provocations to help you start:

1. What assumptions are we treating as facts? The most dangerous limits are the ones we no longer see.
2. What would someone from a completely different world do? (A customer, a child, Beyoncé?) Try role-storming to unlock new angles.
3. What if we had no legacy systems to maintain—what would we build from scratch? Imagine a blank slate.

These questions aren’t just creative warm-ups. They help you unstick your strategy from old grooves—and build what’s essential.

Because in a world that’s constantly changing, the biggest risk isn’t getting it wrong. It’s staying stuck.

How BTS helps leaders and teams think beyond today

Our brains—even at their most capable—get stuck in “rivers of thinking,” defaulting to what feels safe instead of what the future demands.

At BTS, we help organizations break that cycle.

Future-back thinking is more than a framework—it’s a provocation. A way to disrupt habitual planning, reframe challenges, and design from a place of possibility.

We work with leaders and teams to:

• Break from old patterns by surfacing the assumptions quietly guiding decisions
• Align around vivid, future-state scenarios that challenge status-quo thinking
• Role-storm bold ideas into strategic options that unlock creativity
• Simulate future decisions to build confidence and agility
• Build the mindsets and capabilities your strategy requires

Because the real risk isn’t change. It’s standing still.

Too often, organizations invest time and energy planning for a version of the world that no longer exists. They reinforce legacy mindsets, delay bold moves, and miss the moment.

Future-back thinking offers a way out. It gives leaders a structured way to reimagine what’s possible, align teams around the future, and start building toward it—now.

Let’s build what’s next—together. Learn how we help organizations prepare for the future.

En todos los sectores, la seguridad está experimentando un cambio estructural. Lo que antes se gestionaba principalmente como una función de cumplimiento o una métrica de desempeño se entiende cada vez más como un reflejo de cómo las organizaciones están diseñadas, lideradas y mejoradas de forma continua.

En entornos complejos y de alto riesgo, la seguridad no se logra únicamente mediante un mayor control o programas adicionales. Surge de la interacción entre el comportamiento del liderazgo, el diseño operativo, los entornos de decisión y la capacidad de la organización para aprender y adaptarse.

Basándonos en la ciencia global de la seguridad, el enfoque de Human & Organizational Performance (HOP), la investigación sobre seguridad psicológica y nuestra experiencia en transformación en múltiples industrias, identificamos ocho cambios clave que están definiendo la próxima evolución de la cultura de seguridad.  

1. La seguridad como valor organizacional central

La seguridad está dejando de tratarse como una prioridad cambiante. Las prioridades compiten. Los valores guían.

Cuando la seguridad se convierte en un valor central, influye en la toma de decisiones, en los compromisos bajo presión, en la planificación operativa y en la asignación de recursos. La seguridad pasa a ser una consecuencia natural de cómo funciona el sistema, en lugar de una iniciativa añadida a la producción.

Este cambio también redefine el rol de las funciones de seguridad: de supervisar el cumplimiento a habilitar un desempeño seguro y sostenible.

2. El aprendizaje como disciplina operativa

Las organizaciones están integrando el aprendizaje continuo en las operaciones diarias. En lugar de centrarse solo en lo que falló, exploran señales débiles, casi accidentes, fricciones operativas y adaptaciones exitosas.

El aprendizaje se convierte en una capacidad clave que acelera la generación de insights, fortalece la resiliencia y mejora la calidad de las decisiones.

3. Responsabilidad del liderazgo en todos los niveles

La cultura de seguridad se reconoce cada vez más como una capacidad de liderazgo, no solo como responsabilidad del área de HSE.

• Los directivos marcan la dirección y el tono.

• Los mandos intermedios traducen las expectativas en decisiones operativas.

• Los supervisores configuran el entorno de decisiones del día a día.

Las organizaciones exitosas convierten las expectativas de seguridad en comportamientos concretos de liderazgo y rutinas diarias, generando claridad y alineación entre niveles.

4. La seguridad psicológica como infraestructura

Una cultura de seguridad sólida depende de entornos donde las personas se sientan seguras para hablar.

Cuando los empleados perciben seguridad psicológica, las señales débiles emergen antes, los riesgos se discuten abiertamente y el aprendizaje se acelera.

La seguridad psicológica es una infraestructura operativa, no un tema “blando”.

5. Amplificar lo que funciona

Existe un reconocimiento creciente de que la mayor parte del trabajo se realiza de forma segura, a menudo en condiciones variables.

Estudiar el éxito revela la capacidad adaptativa y fortalece la resiliencia. Esto complementa el análisis tradicional de incidentes al reforzar la experiencia y la confianza.

6. Alinear el trabajo “imaginado” con el trabajo “real”

Los procedimientos y planes rara vez capturan perfectamente la complejidad operativa.

Las organizaciones líderes reducen la brecha entre políticas y realidad operativa incorporando la perspectiva del personal de primera línea y empoderando la autoridad para detener el trabajo.

El objetivo es una mejor alineación entre diseño y ejecución.

7. Diseñar para la toma de decisiones humana

Los incidentes suelen derivarse de sesgos cognitivos predecibles como la normalización de la desviación, el sesgo hacia la producción, el exceso de confianza y el sesgo retrospectivo.

Reconocer estas trampas en la toma de decisiones desplaza el enfoque de culpar a las personas hacia fortalecer los entornos de decisión.

8. La evolución cultural como capacidad a largo plazo

Una cultura de seguridad sostenible requiere integración en lugar de reinvención, desarrollo estructurado de capacidades en lugar de programas puntuales y medición del impacto conductual en lugar de métricas de actividad.

Las organizaciones que tienen éxito:

• Integran la seguridad en los sistemas existentes de liderazgo y operación

• Diseñan itinerarios de aprendizaje que apoyan la aplicación en el día a día

• Miden el cambio de comportamiento y los resultados operativos

• Refuerzan el progreso de manera consistente en el tiempo

La evolución cultural es un compromiso sostenido con la alineación del sistema y el desarrollo de capacidades.

Conclusión

La evolución de la cultura de seguridad trata menos de añadir controles y más de fortalecer sistemas.

La seguridad es algo que las organizaciones producen: a través de la claridad del liderazgo, el diseño operativo, la seguridad psicológica y el aprendizaje continuo.

Quienes integren estas capacidades de forma consistente no solo reducirán riesgos. Construirán organizaciones más resilientes, sostenibles y de alto desempeño.

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Sources & references:

• WorldSteel Association. Safety Culture & Leadership Fundamentals.
• Norsk Industri (2025). Safety Leadership and Learning: A Practical Guide to HOP.
• D. Parker et al. / Safety Science 44 (2006). Development of Organisational Safety Culture

• Hollnagel, E. (2014). Safety-I and Safety-II: The Past and Future of Safety Management.
• Hollnagel, E. (2018). Safety-II in Practice: Developing the Resilience Potentials.
• Conklin, T. (2012). Pre-Accident Investigations: An Introduction to Organizational Safety.
• Edmondson, A. (2018). The Fearless Organizations
• Reason, J. (1997). Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents.

• Resilience Engineering research (Hollnagel,Woods, Leveson and others).

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Across industries, safety is undergoing a structural shift. What was once managed primarily as a compliance function or performance metricis increasingly understood as a reflection of how organizations are designed, led and continuously improved.

In complex and high-risk environments, safety is notachieved through stronger enforcement or additional programs alone. It emerges from the interaction between leadership behavior, operational design, decision environments and the organization’s capacity to learn and adapt.

Drawing on global safety science, Human & Organizational Performance (HOP), research on psychological safety, and our cross-industry transformation experience, eight key shifts are shaping the next evolution of safety culture.

1. Safety as a Core Organizational Value

Safety is moving beyond being treated as a shifting priority. Priorities compete. Values guide.

When safety becomes a core organizational value, it shapes decision-making, trade-offs under pressure, operational planning and resourceallocation. Safety becomes the natural consequence of how the system operates,rather than a campaign layered on top of production.

This shift also redefines the role of safety functions, from compliance policing to enabling safe and sustainable performance.

2. Learning as an Operating Discipline

Organizations are embedding continuous learning into everyday operations. Rather than focusing only on what failed, they exploreweak signals, near misses, operational friction and successful adaptations.

Learning becomes a core capability, accelerating insight, strengthening resilience and improving decision quality.

3. Leadership Ownership at All Levels

Safety culture is increasingly recognized as a leadership capability, not solely an HSE responsibility.

Executives define direction and tone.
Middle managers translate expectations into operational decisions.
Supervisors shape the daily decision environment.

Successful organizations translate safety expectations into concrete leadership behaviors and daily routines, creating clarity and alignment across levels.

4. Psychological Safety as Infrastructure

A strong safety culture depends on speaking-up environments.

When employees feel psychologically safe, weak signals surface earlier, risk trade-offs are openly discussed and learning accelerates.

Psychological safety is operational infrastructure , not a soft topic.

5. Amplifying What Works

There is growing recognition that most work is completed safely, often under variable conditions.

Studying success reveals adaptive capacity and strengthens resilience. This complements traditional incident analysis by reinforcing expertise and confidence.

6. Aligning Work-as-Imagined and Work-as-Done

Procedures and plans rarely capture operational complexity perfectly.

Leading organizations reduce the gap between policies and operational reality by inviting front line input and empowering stop-work authority.

The goal is better alignment between design and execution.

7. Designing for Human Decision-Making

Incidents often stem from predictable cognitive biases such as normalization of deviance, production bias, overconfidence and hindsight bias.

Recognizing these decision traps shifts focus from blaming individuals to strengthening decision environments.

8. Cultural Evolution as a Long-Term Capability

Sustainable safety culture requires integration rather than reinvention, structured capability journeys rather than one-off programs, and measurable behavioral impact rather than activity metrics.

Organizations that succeed:

• Integrate safety into existing leadership and operational systems
• Design earning journeys that support day-to-day application
• Measure behavioral change and operational outcomes
• Reinforce progress consistently over time

Cultural evolution is a sustained commitment to system alignment and capability building.

Conclusion

The evolution of safety culture is less about adding controls and more about strengthening systems.

Safety is something organizations produce — through leadership clarity, operational design, psychological safety and continuous learning.

Those who embed these capabilities consistently will not only reduce risk. They will build more resilient, sustainable and high-performing organizations.

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Sources & references:

• WorldSteel Association. Safety Culture & Leadership Fundamentals.
• Norsk Industri (2025). Safety Leadership and Learning: A Practical Guide to HOP.
• D. Parker et al. / Safety Science 44 (2006). Development of Organisational Safety Culture

• Hollnagel, E. (2014). Safety-I and Safety-II: The Past and Future of Safety Management.
• Hollnagel, E. (2018). Safety-II in Practice: Developing the Resilience Potentials.
• Conklin, T. (2012). Pre-Accident Investigations: An Introduction to Organizational Safety.
• Edmondson, A. (2018). The Fearless Organizations
• Reason, J. (1997). Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents.

• Resilience Engineering research (Hollnagel,Woods, Leveson and others).

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Most sales meetings don’t fail.
They just don’t lead to a decision.

And that’s where value is lost.

Today’s customers are more informed, more selective, and more time-poor.

They don’t need more product pitches.
They need conversations that help them prioritize, decide, and move forward.

And yet, 58% of sales meetings fail to create real value.

Not because sellers lack capability, but because conversations are not designed to move decisions forward.

“Customers don’t act on every need they recognize.

They act when something becomes a priority.”

 In this short executive brief, you’ll discover:

• Why most conversations inform… but don’t drive action
• What actually makes customers prioritize and move
• How to create urgency without damaging trust
• The shift from presenting solutions to enabling decisions
• What separates conversations that stall from those that accelerate momentum

If your teams are experiencing stalled deals, delayed decisions, or slow pipeline movement, this brief will help you understand why, and what to do differently.

Download the Executive Brief and learn how to design conversations that actually move decisions forward

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