As we look ahead to 2025, four shifts will help to determine which organizations thrive and which get left behind. These aren't just predictions; they're imperatives for any leader who wants to drive breakthrough performance in today's volatile business environment.
For decades, business has elevated the role of the leader. But our analysis of 3,000 teams over 20 years shows that the world's best teams don't win because of leadership alone – they win largely because of teamship. As I explain in my new book Never Lead Alone, teamship is the ultimate competitive advantage driven by two key forces: co-elevation behaviors, where teammates commit to lifting each other up, and modern collaboration practices that enable bolder innovation and faster decision-making. It’s not enough for teams to be driven forward by one or two talented individuals; we must cross the finish line together. It’s not enough for mediocre adoption of 21st century tools and agile processes; we need to embrace technologies and modes of working that will carry us forward further and faster.
The data is clear: when teams embrace teamship, we see a 79% increase in candor, 46% increase in collaboration, and 44% increase in accountability. Yet only 15% of teams achieve this standard today. In 2025, organizations must finally bridge this gap by shifting from traditional hub-and-spoke leadership to peer-to-peer teamship that unlocks the collective intelligence of the whole organization.
Most organizations right now are using generative AI to just apply new tools to existing roles. That tends to lead, if done well, to a productivity lift of maybe 30%. But we really need re-engineering entire workflows to change outcomes disproportionately. For example, with a social media community manager, you might say what we want to do is 10x the engagement with our community. The question isn’t about how we create content with AI, it’s about how we radically re-engineer the way that we can respond to and engage with our community base. How do we use generative AI to re-engineer the workflows altogether and think fundamentally differently about it?
One major financial services firm is creating a role that looks like a chief work officer to think about how AI changes work beyond just adding a tool to improve productivity. Look back in time to how Blockbuster used digital tools, but Netflix came along and created an entirely new business model and used those digital tools to invent an entirely new way of delivering the product to customers: streaming. We’re going to start seeing organizations take the opportunity of AI to entirely reinvent their business model.
We face a critical gap in who is reengineering work for today's world. Historical innovations in how we work came from engineers—Agile methodology from software engineers, Six Sigma from manufacturing engineers. Today's most inspiring transformational leaders often come from engineering backgrounds, like Arvind Krishna at IBM and Patti Poppe at PG&E. They've turned their attention not just to engineering products but to meticulously engineering their processes and ways of working.
But here's the key insight that these leaders understand: transforming how we work requires mastery across three domains - technology, process, and human behavior. This is why the most successful organizations are forging powerful new partnerships between CIOs and CHROs to drive transformation. Neither technology nor human behavior can be redesigned in isolation.
The gap in work reengineering creates an extraordinary opportunity. You don't need to be an expert in everything, you just need to be the leader who can bring together technologists, process experts, and behavioral specialists to think about 10x improvements in how we work.
The endless debates about return-to-office mandates miss the point entirely. In 2025, we need to focus less on where work happens and more on how we engineer innovation and breakthrough performance. The real question isn't about location but how we create the conditions for bold thinking and inclusive collaboration, whether teams are co-located or distributed.
Leaders like Drew Houston at Dropbox show us the way forward. Even as a "virtual-first" company, Dropbox thoughtfully engineers 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 organizations that will thrive in 2025 embrace all of these shifts—moving to teamship, partnering with AI, reengineering work through new leadership partnerships, and focusing on how (not where) innovation happens. The tools and practices exist today. The only question is whether leaders have the vision and courage to drive these changes.
What do you think about these critical shifts? I'd love to hear your perspective on what other forces will shape how teams work in 2025.
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Originally published in LinkedIn