A few days ago, I was invited to speak at an international pharmaceutical company about a topic that sounds anything but corporate, and quite uncomfortable: discomfort as a competitive advantage.
I shared the conversation with master teacher Clara Kluk, a leading voice in innovation who has spent decades studying how organizations face — or avoid — change. What we put on the table wasn't feel-good inspiration with Instagram-worthy quotes. It was a more demanding idea: vulnerability as a strategic condition for growth.
For many years, we were sold a formula for business success: hire brilliant people (IQ), operate with discipline (efficiency), execute without distractions (KPIs), and you'll win. Today, that narrative is crumbling against a less glamorous reality — you can have smart teams and efficient companies… and still become irrelevant.
The variable deciding who survives in today's business environment is a new coefficient: AQ (Adaptability Quotient). The real capacity — not just the lip service — to adapt when the environment changes faster than your day-to-day operations.
And here's the mindset shift that business leaders need to make, something I see every day among my clients: most organizations aren't failing because of a lack of talent — they're failing because of low AQ. They have the muscle to run the machine, but not to redesign it.
One example we used to illustrate this is what happened in New York City in 1860. At the time, horses were the primary mode of transportation — and this created a massive waste problem. The city was literally drowning in manure, a seemingly inevitable crisis. Enormous amounts of time and brainpower went into figuring out "how to clean it up better." Apocalyptic forecasts were made. And then what almost no one anticipates when adaptability is low happened: the problem stopped being the problem. Not because a solution was found, but because the system changed — the automobile replaced the horse.
That episode should remind every leadership team to always keep this in mind: you can spend years optimizing the solution to the wrong problem. And by the time you finally "solve it," the world has already moved on. That's low AQ in action — obsessing over efficiency within the same model, unable to imagine what comes next.
Another story that makes this case is that of the lobster. This animal never stops growing, but its shell does. At some point, its body no longer fits. So what does it do? It sheds its shell. It becomes vulnerable. It hides. It goes through a fragile period. Then a new, larger shell grows. And it keeps going.
The lobster doesn't "manage change." It creates it. Because if it doesn't, it dies. In organizations, the shell is mental: "this is how we do things here," "this has always worked for us," "let's not rock the boat," "we can't afford to make mistakes." And that shell becomes a trap — it protects, yes… but staying in that comfort zone prevents growth.
That's why change feels like a threat. It requires organizations to swallow a hard pill: growth demands accepting a state of vulnerability. No exceptions. There is no transformation without that period.
The great misconception is believing that people "resist change." In reality, people resist uncertainty. It's not fear of change — it's fear of changing blindly, without understanding the why or the purpose, without a clear direction.
So if we're serious about adaptability, we need to stop romanticizing "organizational culture." We need to ask the uncomfortable questions:
- Does your organization know how to change with clarity, or does it change out of anxiety?
- Do people understand the purpose, or do they just receive instructions?
- Is there real permission to learn, or are mistakes elegantly punished?
- Do you measure the energy behind change, or just report progress on a dashboard?
Because raising your company's adaptability quotient isn't a leadership catchphrase. It's about improving a system. It's designed, trained, and measured.
In the age of AI, the advantage won't come from "adopting tools." Anyone can buy those. Your advantage will come from adapting behaviors, redesigning ways of working, breaking down silos, learning faster than your competition, and executing without internal drama.
I've seen organizations where every department lives in its own silo — teams that don't even know what the team next to them does — and yet they claim to be innovative. That's not innovation. That's marketing. With low AQ, a company becomes a collection of efficient islands that can't move as a system.
The question isn't whether you're going to change. You will change. The market will change you. Technology will change you. Your customers will change you. Your talent will change you. The real question is: will you change by design or by collapse? And to answer that, your organization needs to build its adaptability.
By Irene Marqués, Partner at Olivia México