- Published on
Season or Saltation
- Authors
- Name
- Dr. Paul Moon
Blockbuster could have bought Netflix for $50 million. They laughed the offer out of the room.
By 2010, Blockbuster was bankrupt. Netflix now generates $45+ billion a year.
In my coaching work, I've watched leaders frame disruption the same way for decades: "We're in a difficult season. Things will come back." The assumption is that disruption is a temporary departure from a stable norm.
But sociologists have a better word for what AI is doing to industries right now: saltation — not gradual evolution, but a sudden, lineage-breaking leap so radical that old adaptive strategies simply don't reach across the gap.
The people aren't coming back to the old way. The conditions that made the old way work no longer exist.
From my book: the organizations finding their footing aren't the ones with a more charismatic leader or a better program. They're the ones rebuilding around what's durable — relationships, distributed leadership, shared ownership of the mission.
Is your strategy built for a season, or a saltation?
From Dancing in the Wind: An Adaptive Leadership Framework in the Age of AI.