Many of today’s leadership challenges aren’t caused by a lack of effort or commitment, but by systems that were never built to support how work and careers now function. The year ahead will reward leaders who stop relying on endurance and start rebuilding foundations.

By Lisa Taylor

Endurance has been substituting for systems, and it’s reaching its limits

At the start of 2025, I wrote about courage and the reality that leaders were being asked to do hard things without a clear roadmap. The year demanded judgment under pressure. Leaders stretched in ways many didn’t expect, while resilience was treated as if it could replace certainty, capacity, or design.

Over time, a deeper pattern emerged. Endurance isn’t just a response to disruption. It has been compensating for systems that can’t support the work people are being asked to do, quietly shifting risk from organizations onto individuals. When systems rely on endurance to keep functioning, strain builds. Burnout isn’t a failure of commitment or coping. It’s a predictable signal that the foundations enabling work are being pushed past their limits.

This is a year for returning to fundamentals with focus and discipline.

Not by doing less, but by rebuilding the foundations that allow people and organizations to perform without constant strain. One of the clearest places this shift is emerging is in how leaders are rethinking the workforce, especially in organizations managing cost pressures, transformation, and growth at the same time.

When systems are missing, programs multiply but outcomes don’t change

Across sectors, traditional HR programs alone aren’t enough for the challenges organizations face. Learning, reskilling, and talent initiatives keep multiplying, yet many leaders still feel stuck. Under pressure, the most rational response often seems to be doing more. Another program. Another platform. Another framework.

The result isn’t inaction, but activity that doesn’t compound. Without clear workforce infrastructure, organizations default to visible interventions, layering programs over time without a structure that connects them to business priorities or how work is changing. The problem isn’t effort or volume. It’s cohesion.

A similar shift happened in technology once complexity outgrew programs. As digital systems reshaped organizations, IT leadership evolved. Creating the first CIO roles wasn’t about influence. It reflected a recognition that roles, processes, and decisions were increasingly shaped by underlying technical architecture, whether leaders named it or not.

The same inflection point has arrived for human systems. Every strategic decision depends on people and reshapes how work gets done across roles and functions, yet many organizations still lack the human capital infrastructure required to manage that complexity at scale. When it’s missing, leaders are forced to improvise, especially when short-term performance pressure collides with long-term capability needs.

A transportation company under cost pressure shows how this plays out. As their operating models shifted, performance gaps surfaced quickly, particularly among managers promoted for technical expertise. The response was to run a workshop, giving managers tools while a broader leadership strategy was still taking shape. Given the pressure to deliver, the decision made sense.

But the workshop ended up being asked to fill a role it couldn’t play. It substituted for alignment. Framed as a return to basics, it focused on skills without the systems that would allow those skills to be applied consistently. Career pathways, role expectations, and transition support were still undefined. Acting quickly felt safer than pausing to design the conditions for change to stick.

This is where stewardship becomes so important. What was missing wasn’t commitment, but sustained responsibility for how today’s workforce decisions shape tomorrow’s capability. We see this pattern repeatedly when skills gaps are addressed before the systems that enable people to use those skills are in place.

Without a clear line of sight between present decisions and future workforce needs, organizations default to short-term fixes that feel responsible in the moment but rarely build durable capability over time.

Stewardship is about governing conditions, not managing initiatives

Rebuilding foundations means shifting from managing activities to stewarding systems. It requires leaders to take responsibility for the conditions that determine whether initiatives can deliver results, not just whether they are well run.

Workforce strategy is business strategy in practice. Strategy only becomes real through how people grow, move, and contribute over time. That’s why it requires the same rigor that’s applied to finance, operations, and technology, including clear decisions about structure and governance.

From this perspective, career infrastructure and internal career centres aren’t optional enhancements for organizations. They are core operating conditions. When they exist, decisions about talent stop being improvised and start compounding over time. Business outcomes and career outcomes stop coming into tension because they’re shaped by the same system.

Fixing the conditions that prevent people from growing and contributing effectively at work, what we call Broken Talent Escalators®, isn’t about returning to old models or rebuilding ladders. It names a recurring pattern that appears when career mobility systems fail to reflect how careers unfold, forcing organizations to rely on external hiring and endurance instead of sustained capability development.

System limits, not leadership intent, are setting the constraints for 2026

At Challenge Factory, our work is grounded in a simple reality: organizations can’t move faster or farther than their systems allow. Looking ahead only works when those systems are built to support what comes next. In 2026, our focus is clear. Career infrastructure. Workforce architecture. Systems that allow people and organizations to grow together.

Organizations that keep layering initiatives onto systems that don’t fit how work and careers function today won’t struggle because of weak intent or ambition. They’ll struggle because misaligned systems can’t turn strategy into sustained capability, no matter how hard people push.

This year won’t reward louder signals or faster cycles of activity. It will reward leaders who recognize where endurance has been covering for structural limits and who invest in foundations that allow performance without constant strain.

As leaders set priorities for 2026, the question isn’t whether organizations need stronger foundations. It’s whether leaders can afford to keep making decisions their systems aren’t built to deliver.