Laura Carrington, founder of Carrington LLC, has observed organizations navigating a level of disruption that has fundamentally altered leadership functions. AI, digital transformation, shifting workforce expectations, economic volatility, and rapid transformation cycles may be forcing businesses to adapt faster than many leadership models were designed to accommodate. Yet amid the race toward innovation, Carrington argues that many organizations continue to overlook the factor that ultimately determines whether change succeeds.
"It's people. No matter what industry or organization it is, without people, you have nothing," Carrington states.
A veteran of IT strategy, portfolio management, organizational change management, and federal consulting, Carrington points out that while businesses heavily prioritize technology and planning, those factors alone do not determine a project's outcome. She asserts that true transformation hinges entirely on human adoption. She says, "It's super important that people have buy-in, that they understand what changes are happening, why they're happening, and what direction we're going in so we can all move together."
Carrington credits her work in organizational change management for shaping her understanding of why technically sound strategies stall. Writing her master's thesis, she examined leading models of leadership and found, consistently, that the gap between theory and practice is vast. She says, "The nuances of leadership have been studied forever, but it's rich in theory and often inconsistent in practice."
She recalls working across enterprise-level technology initiatives and large-scale federal programs. And across those ventures, the throughline, she adds, has always been people.
She points to research to validate her belief. A report found that employee engagement in the United States remains historically low, while leadership trust and organizational communication rank among the strongest predictors of workforce performance and retention. Carrington believes those numbers pivot toward a broader leadership problem instead of an employee problem.
She argues that many organizations are still operating with industrial-era leadership habits despite functioning in a digital information economy. She argues that rigid hierarchies and transactional management styles struggle to sustain engagement among modern knowledge workers who expect collaboration and purpose.
"We have unprecedented rapid change, but we're still applying leadership models that no longer fit the environment we're in," she explains. From her perspective, resistance to change isn't irrational. She believes employees often resist transformation because they lack context or confidence in the direction being proposed.
According to her, organizations tend to underestimate how much clarity people need before they can fully support a transition. "Change resistance is natural," she explains. "You have to plan on it, but you also have to address it. You can't pretend it doesn't exist. Modern leaders must function as facilitators of alignment." That, she adds, requires setting a clear vision, communicating purpose consistently, and creating space for collaboration across teams.
Carrington says, "Transformational leadership is a sustainable, shared, intentional, cooperative model capable of succeeding in a rapidly evolving world." Each element of that definition, in her view, reflects a broader concern about the sustainability of leadership itself.
Often, organizations facing constant disruption may operate in a state of chaos, where decision-making can become reactive instead of strategic. To avoid that, Carrington believes leaders must first learn how to regulate themselves before they can effectively guide others. "You really have to lead from the inside. If you're making decisions from a place of disarray, your decisions are going to reflect that," she notes.
To facilitate that, she believes internal discipline becomes increasingly important, especially as executives attempt to balance long-term strategy with practical execution. Carrington often refers to this as the ability to see both the forest and the trees, which means understanding immediate tactical requirements while remaining conscious of broader organizational and societal impact.
She has often seen many leaders excel at one side of that equation but struggle with the other. Task-oriented managers may execute efficiently without understanding wider implications, while visionary leaders sometimes fail to connect strategy with day-to-day realities. Carrington argues that effective leadership now requires both perspectives simultaneously. "We are connected to everything," she says. "Organization, teams, communities, they're all ecosystems."
Carrington's philosophy also extends into broader questions about sustainability and community impact. Leadership, she notes, cannot be separated from the environments organizations influence. She says, "Businesses create profit, but where's the value? Are we sustainable as an organization? What are we contributing?"
In a similar vein, she also emphasizes mentorship and shared leadership development. Instead of waiting for a single figure to emerge as the solution during periods of uncertainty, Carrington believes organizations should cultivate leadership capabilities across entire teams. "We need to develop leaders in everybody," she says. "We need people who can help move organizations forward together."
Technology, she posits, will keep advancing, and strategy will evolve with it. Within that realm, Carrington believes that leaders who master the human dimensions of change: communication, integrity, alignment, trust, and the willingness to develop leadership capacity across the entire organization, might endure through the next decade of disruption. Setting a vision is necessary, but getting a team to own how they achieve it, she adds, is the more consequential act.
