Happy Friday 👋 !

If you feel like the floor is shifting below you right now, you’re not alone.

November is that crazy busy paradoxical moment for leaders and teams:

➡️ You’re racing to finish 2025: closing projects, hitting targets, getting revenue in the door.
➡️ And you’re simultaneously planning 2026: new goals, new strategies, new bets.

It’s business planning in a world that not only refuses to sit still but is changing faster that we can keep up.

🌉 Welcome to Liminality

Daniel Goleman — best known for Emotional Intelligence — recently described today’s workplace as a liminal space:

This is exactly the condition that demands adaptability.

From AI reshaping how we work and decide, to customer expectations shifting faster than budgets can keep up — every industry is being re-architected and reinvented in real time.

In the past decade alone, we’ve seen:

• 🤖 AI evolve from tech enterprise use and experimentation → everyday utility for individuals
• 🏠 Work move from office-based → hybrid and AI-augmented
• 💸 Finance shift from 100% banking-led → decentralized and digital
• 🎨 Creativity transform from human-only → human–AI co-creation
• 🌍 Sustainability move from side initiative → growth driver

That's a lot of liminal space. It's not just disruption. Industries are being re-invented and new ones are being invented!
And it’s exactly why “business as usual” planning no longer works.

🧭 Planning in Times of Liminality

Here’s what I’ve been sharing with clients during their 2026 planning sessions:

The pace of transformation means the teams who anticipate change — not just react to it — are the ones who stay ahead and thrive. You can embed adaptability into your planning with a few powerful steps and questions.

1️⃣ Map the Changes Already Happening

Across your people, your business, your clients, and your industry.

• People: How are skills, motivations, and mindsets shifting and what skills do we need to invest in?
• Business: Which systems or business models are becoming outdated or showing new opportunity?
• Clients: What emerging needs are they signaling (even subtly)?
• Industry: What trends are accelerating that could reshape your market?

👉 Planning should start zooming out to see a fuller picture so you can identify the liminal stages.

2️⃣ Identify Vulnerabilities and Openings

Liminal times expose weak spots and new opportunities.

• Where are you stretched thin or reliant on outdated systems?
• Where could uncertainty actually be turned into advantage?

💡 Adaptive organizations run pre-mortems, not just post-mortems — imagining both the failures and the breakthroughs before they happen.

3️⃣ Ask Future-Focused Questions

This question consistently unlocks clarity, alignment, and smarter decision-making.
You can extend it with a few others:

• What assumptions from 2024–2025 will no longer hold true in 2026?
• Where could AI, customer expectations, or regulation disrupt us gradually or suddenly?
• Which capabilities do we need to build to stay competitive?
• Where are our people feeling the most friction and what’s that telling us?
• What client needs are emerging that we’re not yet addressing?
• If we had to reinvent one core process for a world moving twice as fast, which would it be?
• What opportunities appear when we zoom out 2–3 years ahead?

Planning in liminal times is less about predicting and more about perceiving and being adaptable.

4️⃣ Reframe Planning as Experimentation

Traditional planning assumes stability.
Adaptive planning assumes motion.

Instead of rigid goals, design experiments:

• Set clear lessons you want to learn.
• Define your limits (costs, timing, non-negotiables).
• Run short cycles and feed learning back fast.

This turns uncertainty into momentum.

5️⃣ Anchor It All in Purpose

When everything’s changing, purpose becomes your compass.
Ask:

Purpose connects adaptability to meaning — and keeps teams aligned even when the path ahead isn’t clear.

💡 Why Adaptability Belongs in Your 2026 Plan

In AQai’s Adaptability Model, the three pillars help to navigate liminal times:

• Ability: Skills like resilience, mental flexibility, and unlearning enable you to effectively manage uncertainty and setbacks.
• Character: Hope and motivation fuel your willingness to adapt.
• Environment: Our work culture and systems enable adaptability to flourish.

When you plan through an adaptability lens, you’re not just preparing for change, you’re building capacity to thrive through it.

Without Perfect Clarity, Adaptability is Your Planning Superpower

You won't have perfect clarity in your business or career planning.
You need curiosity, courage, and flexibility to connect the dots between today’s shifts and tomorrow’s possibilities.

As Goleman reminds us:

So as you race to close 2025 and design your 2026, don’t plan for certainty.
Plan for change.

Have a great weekend!

Ann
​www.adaptsuccess.com​

🧠 Gear Up for Change is your weekly dose of insight on navigating and leveraging change — grounded in AQai’s science of adaptability. If you find it valuable, forward it to a colleague who’s also leading through liminality and they can subscribe here.

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Want to Gear Up for Change Faster? Here are 3 Next Steps:

1️⃣ Get Your FREE AI Leadership Edge Scorecard. How prepared are you to lead your team and thrive through change? Find out in less than 5 minutes.

2️⃣ Measure Your AQ Take a 25-minute assessment to discover your Adaptability Quotient (AQ). Learn how to thrive in times of change and create a strategy for your growth. Gear up for the rest of 2025 using our companion AQme Workbook. (Tip: check with your manager -- you can probably expense this!) Learn more here.

Issue #55, 7 November 2025