Our traditional instinct has been to look to our leaders to steer a clear path through uncertain and complex times. But marshaling the foresight to navigate today’s volatility and disruption requires something more than leadership. It requires teamship—the combined talent and insight of peers sharing the leadership load rather than expecting one heroic individual to know what’s best. Even so, our research shows that only 25 percent of large companies have structured team practices for sensing and responding to disruption. As we head into 2025, the solution is to fundamentally reimagine how teams work together and combine new collaborative behaviors with practical tools for looking ahead.
Teamship combines two vital elements. The first is a commitment among teammates to achieving a shared mission—lifting one another up in the process. These teammates don’t cooperate just when it’s convenient; they actively push one another to reach new heights through candid feedback, peer coaching, and unwavering mutual support. It’s a step beyond traditional collaboration into true shared ownership of success.
As I explain in my new book, Never Lead Alone: 10 Shifts From Leadership to Teamship (Harper Business, 2024), when teams pair these peer-to-peer behaviors with modern collaboration practices that enable bolder innovation and faster decision-making, we see dramatic results. Consider: A 79 percent increase in candor, a 46 percent increase in collaboration, and a 44 percent increase in accountability. Yet, remarkably, only 15 percent of teams achieve this standard today.
The most powerful application of teamship is in how it helps organizations anticipate and navigate change. Consider our Foresight Five Minutes practice: Teams dedicate five minutes in regular meetings for members to share signals of potential disruption or opportunity they observe across domains – from technology trends, regulatory developments, and competitor market moves to customer behavior shifts. As each person shares their observation, the team listens and builds on the insight, asking questions like:
Lockheed Martin demonstrates the impact of this approach to practicing foresight. In early 2020, during a foresight session, a team member raised concerns about “blogs about a virus in China.” This insight wasn’t dismissed but elevated for assessment. By February, the company had transitioned to remote work well ahead of most organizations as the Covid pandemic took hold.
Looking ahead, several major shifts will demand this powerful combination of teamship and foresight.
First, the AI revolution will require teams to think beyond simple automation and productivity gains. Organizations that merely layer artificial intelligence tools onto existing roles might see a 30 percent productivity lift. But the real opportunity lies in fundamentally reimagining entire workflows and business models. Just as Netflix revolutionized entertainment delivery while Blockbuster simply digitized its existing processes, tomorrow’s winners will use AI to reinvent how work gets done.
Second, this transformation demands new leadership partnerships. The most successful organizations are forging powerful alliances between their technology and human resources leaders to drive change. Neither the human nor technological elements of transformation can be redesigned in isolation. The organizations that thrive will be those that can bring together technologists, process experts, and behavioral specialists to achieve breakthrough performance.
Finally, the focus will shift decisively from where work happens to how teams engineer innovation. Forward-thinking companies like Dropbox are showing the way, thoughtfully engineering in-person connections while leveraging asynchronous collaboration to include more voices in innovation. The key is having an intentional strategy for when teams come together physically versus collaborating virtually or asynchronously.
The message is clear: Thriving in 2025 requires both strong teamship fundamentals and systematic foresight practices. Teams must be equipped to work together effectively and sense and respond to change collectively. The question is: Is your team ready to meet this challenge?