WHEN THE PLAN BREAKS

Leaders should know when to persevere and when to change course, writes LINUS OKORIE

In August 1914, Ernest Shackleton and his crew sailed from England aboard the Endurance with an extraordinary ambition: to become the first expedition to cross Antarctica from coast to coast.

It was a bold mission, but within months, the Antarctic ice had trapped their ship.

By October 1915, the Endurance was crushed by the pressure of the ice and sank. Shackleton’s original mission was over.

But his leadership had only just begun.

This distinction matters because leadership is often measured by whether people achieve the goal they set out to accomplish. Yet some of the most important moments in leadership occur when the original goal becomes impossible.

What does a leader do when the plan no longer works?

Do they continue pursuing a dead objective because abandoning it feels like failure? Do they blame circumstances? Do they wait for someone else to provide an answer?

Or do they have the courage to redefine success?

Shackleton chose the latter.

His expedition had failed in its original objective, but he immediately understood that the priority had changed. The mission was no longer about crossing Antarctica.

It was about bringing every member of his crew home alive.

That shift from achievement to responsibility is one of the most important distinctions in leadership.

Leaders must know when to persevere and when to change direction. Persistence is admirable, but persistence without judgment can become stubbornness. A leader who refuses to change course simply because a decision has already been made is not demonstrating commitment; they may simply be protecting their ego.

The world of business is filled with organizations that failed to make this distinction.

Nokia did not fail because it lacked talented engineers or a powerful brand. It failed to respond effectively enough to a fundamental shift in the mobile-phone industry. Blockbuster did not lack customers or resources. Its difficulty was recognizing quickly enough that the business it had mastered was changing.

In both cases, the challenge was not simply technological. It was strategic.

The environment had changed, but the organization struggled to change with it.

This is why leaders must develop what I would call the courage to abandon the familiar.

There is a natural human tendency to become attached to plans, strategies and ideas once we have invested time, money and reputation in them. Leaders are especially vulnerable because changing direction can feel like admitting that they were wrong.

But leadership is not about being right forever.

It is about being responsible enough to respond when reality proves that the old answer is no longer sufficient.

Shackleton’s story is remarkable because his expedition faced uncertainty for months. His crew endured extreme cold, isolation and hunger while their route home remained uncertain. Yet historians have repeatedly noted Shackleton’s attention to morale and the daily well-being of his men.

He understood something that many leaders overlook: people cannot live on strategy alone.

When uncertainty stretches from days into months, people need rhythm, communication, purpose and confidence that their leader is not losing perspective.

Shackleton maintained routines. He kept his men occupied. He understood individual personalities and adjusted his approach accordingly. He knew that maintaining the psychological strength of the team was as important as solving the physical problems confronting them.

There is a lesson here for organizations navigating difficult times. When uncertainty rises, leaders often communicate more about numbers than people.

Revenue is down. Costs are rising.

The market is changing. Targets have been revised.

All of these matter. But people also want to know:

What does this mean for us?

What are we trying to protect?

What do you expect from me?

Do you still believe we can come through this?

A leader’s job during uncertainty is not to manufacture false optimism. It is to create credible hope.

Credible hope does not pretend that the situation is easy. It acknowledges the difficulty while giving people a reason to believe that their collective effort still matters. This is especially relevant for African organizations.

Our businesses operate in environments where uncertainty can become a permanent feature of the operating landscape. Economic volatility, infrastructure challenges, currency pressures, technological disruption and changing consumer behaviour require leaders who can adapt without becoming directionless.

The answer cannot always be another five-year plan.

Sometimes what leadership requires is the ability to say: This was the plan. Reality has changed. Here is what we are going to do now.

That sentence requires humility. It also requires a leader who has built enough trust for people to follow them when the destination changes.

Trust becomes particularly important because adaptive leadership is rarely comfortable. Changing direction may mean reallocating resources, abandoning profitable activities, entering unfamiliar markets or asking employees to learn completely new ways of working.

People will resist if they believe change is simply the latest idea of an unpredictable leader.

They are more likely to follow when they understand the reason behind the change.

This is why leaders must communicate not only what is changing but why. Purpose provides continuity when strategy changes.

Shackleton’s crew could survive the loss of the Endurance because their deeper objective had become clear: survival and getting home.

The ship was gone. The original route was gone.

The original timetable was gone.

But the purpose remained. That is the lesson modern leaders should take seriously.

An organization should be flexible about its methods without becoming confused about its mission.

A school may change how it teaches.

A business may change how it delivers its product.

A government may redesign how it provides services.

A company may abandon one market and enter another.

But beneath these changes must be a clear understanding of what the organization exists to accomplish.

Without that clarity, adaptation becomes reaction.

With it, adaptation becomes strategy.

There is another lesson in Shackleton’s story that deserves attention: leadership is not demonstrated by avoiding every failure.

The Endurance sank. The expedition did not achieve its original objective.

Yet Shackleton’s leadership is still studied because he prevented failure from becoming catastrophe.

That distinction matters.

Leaders will make wrong decisions. Markets will invalidate strategies. Investments will fail. Projects will miss their targets.

The question is not whether failure will occur.

The question is whether the leader has the capacity to learn, adapt and protect the people entrusted to them when it does.

In our organizations, we should therefore stop rewarding leaders merely for defending their original plans.

We should reward those who can recognize reality early, listen to evidence, change course intelligently and keep people aligned around a meaningful purpose.

The best leaders are not always the ones who take their organizations exactly where they first intended to go.

Sometimes they are the ones who recognize that the destination must change and have the wisdom to lead everyone towards a better one.

Shackleton set out to cross Antarctica.

He did not accomplish that mission.

But he brought his entire crew home.

Sometimes leadership is not about completing the journey you planned.

It is about having the wisdom to change the journey without losing the people who trusted you to lead it.

 Okorie MFR is a leadership development expert spanning 30 years in the research, teaching and coaching of leadership in Africa and across the world. He is the CEO of the GOTNI Leadership Centre.