A while back, I saw a commercial for the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada (CPA).¹ Entitled Record Label, the ad re- creates a fictional meeting in the office of the president of a record label back in the early 1990s. He is lamenting the fact that his company is being “killed by this Internet fad.” The CEO asks his executive team to give him ideas on how to revive their flagging business.

One suggests a mail-order CD club where members get 10 CDs for $1. Another suggests they invest heavily in laserdisc technology, as he holds up this massive-looking CD. Finally, a seemingly sensible woman pipes up with a radical idea: abandon CD sales and instead create an online platform to stream music to customers for a monthly subscription fee.

There is a pause as everyone looks at her with a sense of confusion and contempt. Then the annoyed CEO asks, “How is that going to help us sell CDs?” The ad finishes with a devastating tagline read by a narrator: “Are you on the right side of change?”

This commercial showed a company confronting a fundamental shift in its business environment. Their old business model was becoming less and less successful. CD sales were down. Something new was emerging, but they couldn’t see it. One person in the room had the way forward, but the rest of the leaders couldn’t think of or see their business differently.

To me, this commercial sums up what leading in the future will be like. We are living through a period of significant change in our organizations, our economies, and our world. Companies everywhere are experiencing a higher degree of disruptive change. These include the onset of new technologies, intensifying global competition, sweeping demographic changes, increased regulatory pressures, climate, social and environmental challenges, and geopolitical and economic uncertainty. The global pandemic has accelerated these changes in a unprecedented manner. Many of my clients describe it as a VUCA world where things are more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous than ever before.²

In a period of radical change and disruption, we desperately need our leaders, at all levels, to be better than ever before. Leadership has always been critical to the success of any enterprise. However, as we have explored earlier in this book, at the very time we need all leaders to be stronger, the reality is that they are not.

Publilius Syrus was a Latin writer who lived from 85 to 43 B.C. He wrote, “Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.” He got it right way back then. Anyone can lead when times are good, when the world is stable, and the sea is calm. It takes real and accountable leaders to lead in today and tomorrow’s world. All leaders will need to be stronger than they have ever been to deal with this world of change. But they are not. But many leaders today are overwhelmed, disengaged, and underprepared.

I believe that the way forward is to focus on leadership accountability. It is and will always be what sets the truly great leaders apart from the rest. There is a dual response that will be required: individual and organizational.

At a personal level, you will need to embrace the four terms of the leadership contract. You will need to decide to be an accountable leader. You will need to step up to your obligations as a leader. You will need to develop the resolve and resilience to tackle the hard work of leadership. You will need to connect with your colleagues to build a sense of community because this is the model of leadership we will need to lead the future.

You will need to go beyond yourself to hold others accountable for being leaders. You will need to build truly accountable teams. You will also need to play a role within and across your organization to build a strong leadership culture and community of leaders.

At an organizational level, the dual response demands that you make leadership accountability a priority within a company. Senior leaders need to define clear leadership expectations for all their leaders. They must also do the hard work to sustain their momentum in building a strong leadership culture. Finally, they must invest the time to help leaders create a sense of community across the entire organization.

I have learned that no matter how great the challenge may be, there’s always hope. An ineffective leader can improve, a terrible team can become a great one, and an uninspiring culture can become amazing. It’s all possible, but it isn’t easy. Change never happens by accident or merely hoping for it to happen. It takes a deep desire, real determination —and one other important element—leadership accountability. How you respond to the challenges of the next decade will be critical not only to the success of your organization but also to the success of our society as a whole. Are you ready to commit to and be an accountable leader? If you answer yes, then congratulations. I invite you to join me and other accountable leaders as we lead the future for our companies and our world!