What do CEOs want when considering change and transformation?

I keep seeing posts saying how amazing AI is at knowing what customers want ... so I thought I'd put it to the test ... this is what I asked and what it said.

What do senior leaders, board members, and CEOs want most with respect to leading effective and efficient change and transformation in industry?

Senior leaders, board members, and CEOs typically prioritize several key outcomes when leading change and transformation efforts, with the overarching goals of ensuring both effectiveness and efficiency. These can be summarized as:

• Sustained Performance Improvement: They want measurable improvements in performance, productivity, and profitability, all while minimizing disruptions to ongoing operations.
• Speed and Agility: Executives seek to implement change rapidly but sustainably, ensuring that their organization remains competitive and adaptable to market demands without becoming destabilized by rapid shifts.
• Alignment and Engagement: Ensuring that all levels of the organization, from top executives to front-line employees, are aligned with the vision for change and actively engaged in supporting it.
• Risk Mitigation: Managing the risks associated with transformation, including financial, reputational, and operational risks. Leaders look for ways to de-risk change initiatives while driving value.
• Cultural Integration: Executives recognize that successful change is deeply tied to culture. A high priority is fostering a culture of innovation, adaptability, and continuous improvement that supports the desired transformation.
• Leadership and Talent Development: Leaders seek to cultivate strong leadership skills within their teams to support ongoing change initiatives, as well as identifying and retaining high-potential talent who can drive future success.
• Simplicity and Scalability: They want transformation strategies that are not overly complex and can be scaled across various functions and geographies within their organizations.

So I then asked it this ...

Is there any suggestion that they recognize performance improvement is linked to behavior change (in themselves or reports)? If so, do they link behavior to brain function, making neuroscience a critical area of knowledge? What messaging/language is used when they engage support at this level?

The AI said ...

There is a growing awareness among senior leaders that performance improvement is indeed tied to behavior change. More and more, they are recognizing that lasting transformation cannot occur without shifts in both their own behaviors and those of their teams. However, while behavior change is increasingly acknowledged, the direct connection to brain function (and the need for neuroscience knowledge) is still evolving in mainstream corporate discourse. Here are some key points:

• Behavior Change as a Driver of Performance: Leaders are realizing that new systems, technologies, or processes are ineffective without corresponding changes in behavior. High-performing companies invest in behavioral leadership development, emotional intelligence training, and coaching to shift mindsets and behaviors aligned with strategic goals.
• Neuroscience’s Rising Role: While still not mainstream, a subset of leaders is beginning to make the link between behavior change and neuroscience. They are starting to explore how the brain’s functioning—neural plasticity, cognitive biases, emotional regulation, and decision-making processes—influences behavior and thus performance outcomes. This understanding is particularly strong in industries with high complexity or volatility (e.g., technology, healthcare, and finance).
• Language and Messaging Used by Leadership: The messaging around this is becoming more sophisticated, as leaders increasingly value scientific and data-driven approaches to behavioral change. Key terms and language that have surfaced in this space include:

• "Neuroleadership": Framing leadership in terms of neuroscience principles, focusing on how the brain affects decision-making, creativity, stress management, and interpersonal relationships.
• "Behavioral Economics" and "Cognitive Neuroscience": Using insights from these fields to understand how unconscious biases, habits, and brain-driven responses influence leadership and business decisions.
• "Mindset Shifts": Leaders often talk about transforming mindsets to drive behavioral change. These conversations tend to draw on neuroscience to explain how new neural pathways can be formed to sustain change.
• "Emotional Intelligence" and "Cognitive Agility": Messaging around emotional intelligence is tied to an understanding of brain processes related to empathy, regulation, and social interaction, all of which drive performance.
• "Habit Formation" and "Neural Rewiring": Messaging is increasingly focused on how new behaviors can become ingrained through repeated actions, which directly engages with the neuroscience of habit formation and long-term behavioral change.

Challenges to Adoption: Despite the increasing use of this language, many leaders remain hesitant or uncertain about fully embracing neuroscience as a tool for business change. The gap lies in translating the science into actionable leadership practices and convincing senior teams that understanding brain function is crucial for performance. However, as neuroscience becomes more mainstream in leadership development circles, this is shifting.

In terms of support: when leadership teams engage external support to address change, they are beginning to seek partners who can provide:

• "Science-backed frameworks" (such as BTFA? *) that link brain-based research with practical leadership and change strategies.
• "Behavioral assessments and coaching" that use neuroscience to target areas of individual or team development.
• "Cognitive training" aimed at increasing adaptability, focus, and resilience, with an emphasis on understanding the brain's role in these processes.

This growing trend of incorporating neuroscience into leadership transformation indicates an increasing appetite for understanding brain function as foundational to behavior and performance. However, there is still significant room for expanding this conversation at the executive level.

*I have to say, the AI included BTFA - I didn't add it - which is very encouraging indeed. We provide these support options at Duxinaroe, with our coaching and training framed by BTFA? once the teams we help understand it.

What jumps out at me from this AI generated overview, is that executives often find themselves juggling multiple, often conflicting, objectives. The demands for speed and agility can stand in direct tension with the need for consistency and stability. Similarly, balancing cultural integration with the pursuit of performance improvement creates friction, especially when cultural change may require time and patience that contradicts the push for rapid results.

At the core of this issue is a misunderstanding, or perhaps underappreciation, of how the brain thrives. The brain, by its very nature, seeks certainty, safety, and stability, which are fundamental to optimal cognitive function (& thus key to essential business traits like, innovation, problem solving, collaboration, improvement etc.).

When leaders inadvertently create environments filled with uncertainty, conflicting demands, or rapid shifts, they unknowingly drive brain states into stress mode, diminishing decision-making, creativity, and adaptability, all of which are critical to navigating transformation.

Leaders need to recognise that conflicting priorities not only create organisational challenges but also put undue strain on their people’s capacity to perform at their best. Neuroscience helps unravel this complexity by illuminating how leaders can shape environments where brains, and thus individuals, flourish. Clarity, psychological safety, and consistency in messaging and strategy help align brain function with organisational goals... and we only truly appreciate (as leaders) what terms like 'Psychological safety' mean, once we have a handle on the neurological process behind the term.

By understanding the brain’s needs for certainty and predictability, leaders can better manage these conflicts, fostering conditions (through their approach to strategy deployment, through their approval of systems etc.) where teams feel secure enough to innovate, engage, and adapt without feeling threatened.

In summary, knowing more about the needs of the human brain, empowers leaders to reconcile these conflicting objectives more effectively, creating a high-performing environment based on sound neuroscientific principles.

If you want your senior leadership team to enjoy and leverage the competitive advantage this new knowledge provides, follow the link below and use the 'contact us' form.

We'll be delighted to arrange a time to talk and answer any questions.

www.duxinaroe.org