If you sometimes feel like me, that you’re facing nonstop disruption, you may not be imagining it. In particular, it’s a question that over the past few years I’ve asked myself as each year ended. In fact, as 2025 ended, I asked: What single word truly captures the world we are stepping into? For 2026, my choice was one coined by futurist Roger Spitz: metaruption! It’s a multidimensional family of systemic disruptions. Disruptions stacked on top of disruptions, each feeding the next.

Remember how we used to fear the rare black swan, that unpredictable shock? Today, black swans don’t arrive one at a time; they arrive in flocks. They lay eggs for more black swans. No slowdown, no plateau, just acceleration.

With tariffs redrawing trade routes, the unclear impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) on people we once thought irreplaceable (even the talk of an “AI bubble” is scary), and today’s workforce rewriting the rules of engagement, executives everywhere could be coming to a realization that 2025 might have been the slowest year of the rest of their lives. This isn’t just a flurry of change; it’s a permanent climate shift that often feels as if everything is shifting at once. 

Yet, too many organizations still pretend they can ride out the storm, survive until things stabilize, and then get back to normal. That assumption is probably outdated — even dangerous.

Disruption used to be something you could point to:

A new competitor;

A new technology;

A new regulation.

Metaruption is different:

There may be no single cause;

No clear beginning;

No clean end.

Instead, leaders face overlapping pressures that hit strategy, operations, culture and people — all at once. It explains why so many organizations feel strangely stuck right now. Not because they lack intelligence or effort, but because linear tools cannot solve nonlinear realities.

Metaruption is why best practices, which may have served us well previously, age overnight. It’s why change fatigue is everywhere, and why even successful companies sense their footing is less stable than it looks.

What this means for you

Metaruption changes the leadership mandate. It explains that quiet feeling many people carry, as if everything is shifting at once. The question is no longer “How do we manage change?” It becomes “How do we build an organization that can continuously adapt across multiple dimensions at once?”

Modern management theory was built for a different era: the post-war economic boom of the mid-20th century — a world of relative stability. That world no longer exists. It’s no longer only about change management; rather, it’s about survival, growth and talent retention in a world where no advantage lasts long. Your advantage in 2026 will come from building adaptability, range and reinvention capacity — an ability to learn, unlearn and reconfigure again and again.

So, this is why reinvention can no longer be considered a one-time initiative. It must become an operating system — connecting strategy, innovation, change and human dynamics into one coherent rhythm — that becomes indispensable.

Make reinvention your default setting

It’s time to stop treating change like a project. When disruption is continuous, you can’t wait for things to calm down before you adapt. You need systems that make adaption continuous.

Change can’t be managed like snow in the desert. If it snows once every 50 years, you plow the roads as best you can and wait for it to melt. However, if it snows every month or more frequently, you build continuous snow-plowing into the budget and across all processes — or launch a ski resort!

When change is snowing constantly, many companies are still trying to shovel. It’s a warning of sorts, because in a world where disruption is the norm, traditional coping mechanisms (such as cutting costs, hiring freezes and treating change as a one-off emergency) don’t build resilience — they burn it out.

Thus, the need for a reinvention system: a set of tools, habits and organizational muscle memory that converts volatility from a threat to an opportunity.

Don’t treat reinvention as a last-minute shove, but as part of your ongoing operating rhythm. Like those snowplows, be ready before the first flake falls. That way, you’re already structurally prepared.

Top-performing organizations don’t survive disruption by accident. They:

Treat change as a core business capability;

Invest in reinvention infrastructure, not only crisis response;

Align leadership, culture and incentives for adaptability.

Don’t wait for disruption to knock. Invite it!

I want to pause here so as to say this clearly. You may be part of a sizeable cluster of readers who have read our articles on the topic of reinvention in this publication, as well as through our MCA Talk monthly newsletter and our frequent postings on LinkedIn. The statistics suggest there is a sizeable group of open-minded people out there — daring to look at the world with courage, curiosity and a radically open mind as they face change.

This community gives me hope that we’ll find more like-minded folks seeking to live and lead in the storm. Those who see reinvention not as a one-time transformation, but rather as an ongoing operating system.

My invitation to you. Stay tuned!