When you’re in business or leading a team, it’s possible to hit every target but still end up with an organisation you no longer recognise or feel good about.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of treating speed as the only measure of quality leadership. You find yourself making decisions faster, adapting to constant disruption and delivering results under growing pressure.
In this kind of environment, leadership becomes reactive, and the focus narrows to the next deadline, the quarterly result or the urgent problem. Meanwhile, purpose, people and long-term direction quietly receive less and less attention.
The danger is ending up with results but no purpose. A business can grow quickly while losing the trust, resilience and sense of meaning that help it endure.
At the July 2026 Business Blueprint conference, Masami Sato, the creator of the global giving initiative B1G1, offered a quieter view of leadership. Her unique advice showed that small shifts in perspective can help leaders navigate exponential change while creating businesses that last and contribute.
The principles below cost nothing to apply and can change how you lead from your very next decision.
Here’s how to be a better leader in exponential times:
Recognise the Season You Are In
Masami encouraged leaders to see businesses, projects and lives as “seasonal”.
Ideas emerge, grow, mature, reset and eventually begin again. Leaders create unnecessary frustration for themselves when they expect every season to look like rapid growth.
Ask what season your business is actually in right now:
- Spring may call for experimentation
- Summer/growth requires focus and capacity
- Maturity/autumn invites refinement
- A resetting season like winter may require rest, repair or reinvention
Work with the season instead of fighting it.
Know What Is Worth Living For
The Japanese concept of Ikigai (生きがい or 生き甲斐) is often presented as the intersection of passion, mission, vocation and profession, or the combination of what you’re good at, what you love and what others need. Masami offered a far simpler translation: “Ikigai actually means worth living for.”
Purpose does not have to be grand or commercially impressive. It may be family, community, craft or service. When leaders know what makes the work worth doing, they make clearer decisions and sustain their commitment well beyond short-term rewards.
Prepare the Roots Before You Move the Tree
‘Nemawashi’ (根回し) means preparing a tree for transplantation by gradually tending and turning its roots. Applied to leadership, it means preparing your people and your systems before you introduce major change.
Fast-moving markets can make consultation feel slow, yet announcing a decision without first creating understanding will damage trust and weaken execution. Getting to know the people affected, listening to their concerns, building support, and strengthening the foundations are the first steps to take. It is far more resilient and faster to move when you prepare carefully.
Let Your Obstacles Do the Teaching
Disruption is not always evidence that a plan has failed. Instead, difficulty can reveal weak systems, deepen capability and prepare the organisation for what comes next. As Masami put it, “People succeed because of obstacles.”
Instead of asking only how to remove a challenge, ask what it can teach you. Capture the lesson, strengthen the process and carry that capability into the next season.
Find the Beauty in Imperfection
Wabi-sabi (侘寂) recognises that everything changes and that nothing remains perfect or permanent. Masami connected it with kintsugi (金継ぎ), the Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery with gold so that the repair work becomes part of its beauty.
Leaders do not need to hide every setback. A repaired relationship, a redesigned offer or a rebuilt team may end up stronger precisely because the break was acknowledged. So treat mistakes honestly, repair them thoughtfully and allow the experience to shape a more valuable business.
Lead With a Legacy Mindset
Long-lasting family businesses tend to think beyond quarterly performance. They consider what will be entrusted to their employees, customers, children and communities. That longer horizon encourages empathy, stewardship and durable trust.
To lead with the same horizon:
- Extend your definition of family beyond the people closest to you
- Consider how today’s decisions will affect people you may never meet
- Judge success by what the business leaves behind, not only by what it earns
Make Impact Part of Success
Revenue, profit, scale and value all matter, but Masami argued that impact belongs beside them rather than after them.
Ask yourself: Is the world better because your business is in it?
If yes, then connect your everyday commercial activity to a meaningful contribution. Creating impact does not require a large program. The best way to get started is to repeat an action that is genuinely relevant to the business and make it a habit.
Seven Steps to Lead Through Change
To lead well through exponential times, aim to maintain your direction while the ground shifts underneath you.
To put this into practice, follow these seven steps:
- Name the season your business is in, and lead for that season.
- Define what makes the work worth doing before you set your targets.
- Prepare your people and systems before you announce the change.
- Ask what each obstacle is teaching you, not just how to remove it.
- Repair setbacks openly and don’t try to hide them.
- Measure success by what the business will leave behind.
- Choose one act of impact and repeat it consistently.
When purpose, preparation, resilience, acceptance, legacy and impact work together, you can make a real impact without losing your humanity or your sense of purpose.
About Business Blueprint
The World’s #1 Business Program
Business Blueprint brings members the latest techniques and strategies to take control of their marketing, build better foundations and achieve the growth they are dreaming of.
If you’re tired of the business owner hamster wheel and sick of spending every day putting out spot fires, sign up for personal support, group accountability and access to the strategies that will maximise your profits and free you from the daily grind.
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- In-person conferences
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- Access to a library of over 1000 training videos (check out some samples here)
- Accountability groups
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