InsightsReadiness Reimagined: How to Build a Change-Seeking CultureJeff PachecoJuly 21, 2025Richard Drury/Getty ImagesIn brief:In todays artificial intelligence (AI)-driven environment, being change-ready is no longer enough. Organizations must become change-seeking, proactively scanning for opportunities, challenging norms, and moving early to stay ahead of disruption.Change-seeking cultures foster psychological safety, experimentation, feedback loops, and strategic alignmentanchored by robust learning systems that empower all employees to contribute to innovation.A change-seeking culture starts at the top. Senior leaders must go beyond supporting transformationthey need to embody it by embracing experimentation, prioritizing learning, and making innovation a visible strategic priority across the organization.For years, change-readiness has been a strategic imperative. Organizations have worked to cultivate cultures that adapt quickly and execute decisively. But in todays fast-moving, AI-driven world, readiness is no longer enough.Adaptability is still essentialbut at a greater speed. The next evolution is already underway: building a change-seeking culture. Unlike reactive, change-ready organizations, change-seeking organizations proactively scan for opportunity, challenge assumptions, and move earlybefore disruption demands it.Why Ready Isnt Ready AnymoreIn Harvard Business Impacts 2025 Global Leadership Development Study, 40% of senior leaders said their organizations are placing a greater emphasis on building change-ready cultures. But the data also revealed a shift: 71% now say the ability to lead through constant change is critical, up dramatically from just 58% in 2024. Four in 10 said leading transformation is even more crucial now than it was just one year ago.1This reflects a growing acceptance that the need for change is continuous and widespread. And in this environment, the ability to respond quickly is less powerful than the ability to anticipate and act early.What Defines a Change-Seeking Culture?Change-seeking cultures dont wait for changethey initiate it. These organizations:Encourage curiosity and experimentationProactively identify new ideas and unmet needsCreate psychological safety for taking informed risksIntegrate feedback loops that accelerate learningThey position learning and development not as a support function but as the neural network of transformationcirculating insights, capability, and culture across the enterprise.How to Foster a Change-Seeking CultureTo foster a change-seeking culture, organizations must go beyond encouraging agility. They must design for it. That means:Preparing people. AI is reshaping the way we innovate, and employees need a solid understanding of the tools involved to participate. Our research shows that organizations embracing hands-on learning are more effective at building AI fluency across roles.2Democratizing experimentation. Organizations can learn faster by getting more people involved in testing ideas. Vastly increasing the capacity to conduct experiments is becoming more critical for making decisions based on data instead of intuition.3Aligning experimentation with strategy. Innovation should be guided by a clear set of strategic priorities that matter to the business. This helps avoid experiments that generate a lot of creative ideas but may fail to deliver meaningfulefficiency, value, or growth.4Fostering psychological safety. If employees fear retribution for failure, they wont experiment. Leaders must model learning behavior, reward well-intentioned risk-taking, and create space to reflect on and learn from setbacks.Embedding feedback loops. Organizations need mechanisms for collecting, sharing, and acting on learning so that successful experiments scale and less successful ones inform future actions.A Case in Point: Moodys Moves FirstMoodysa legacy financial institutionoffers a compelling example. In a traditionally risk-averse industry, its CEO, Rob Fauber, chose to go all in on generative AI, even as many peers hesitated due to regulatory uncertainty and technical risks.As profiled in Harvard Business Reviews How a Legacy Financial Institution Went All In on Gen AI, Fauber focused not just on technology but also on learning and culture.5 His team launched the initiative with three guiding principles: Make everyone an innovator, build on new ideas, and deliver real business impact.They started with learning. Moodys invested in internal academies, upskilling campaigns, and broad-based AI fluency. The enhanced capability of the organizations workforce created conditions for accelerated innovation.By late 2024, Moodys was deploying an AI agent capable of producing risk reports in just one houra task that previously required a full week of human effort. The result wasnt just improved efficiency. It was a proof point for cultural transformation.The Leadership GapDespite examples like Moodys, many organizations remain stuck in wait and see mode. In our 2025 global leadership development study, 52% of respondents said their company is placing a greater emphasis on building an AI-ready culture. Yet only 36% felt their senior leaders fully embrace AI as a core part of strategy and operations.This mismatch between aspiration and behavior matters. Cultures take shape not just through systems and programs but also through what senior leaders talk about, reward, and demonstrate. If executives want change-seeking behavior, they need to embody itopenly experimenting, learning, and adjusting.Getting Started: Building a Change-Seeking CultureBuilding a change-seeking culture isnt about launching a single transformation program. Its about instilling an ongoing top-down and bottom-up capability for sensing and seizing whats next. Organizations can take these actions to begin:Start with learning and make it visible. Innovation still starts with people, but given AIs central role in innovation today, building AI fluency across the organization is essential.Create systems that reward initiative, not just execution. Recognize teams for surfacing new ideas, identifying inefficiencies, and learning from pilotseven when those pilots fail. Normalize the idea that progress can start with anyones ideas and initiative.Hold leaders accountable for culture. Make effectively leading change, encouraging innovation, and fostering psychological safety core performance expectations, not soft add-ons.The Bottom LineMany organizations still treat change-readiness as a strategic endpoint. But in a world of constant reinvention, its only the beginning. As technology rewires markets, roles, and operating models, the ability to initiate and lead changenot just react to itis the goal.The organizations that will succeed are those where everyone, at every level, is expected to help chart what comes next. Change-seeking is not a capability confined to innovation teams or digital labs. It is a cultural imperative.Standing still is now the greater risk. The advantage belongs to those willing to move first.To find out more about how we can help your organization build a change-seeking culture,contact ustoday.Harvard Business Impact, 2025 Global Leadership Development Study, 2025. https://www.harvardbusiness.org/insight/2025-global-leadership-development-study-fast-fluid-and-future-focused/ Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning, Learning Through Experimentation: Why Hands-On Learning Is Key to Building an AI-Fluent Workforce, Harvard Business Publishing, 2024. https://www.harvardbusiness.org/insight/learning-through-experimentation-why-hands-on-learning-is-key-to-building-an-ai-fluent-workforce. Iavor Bojinov, David Holtz, Ramesh Johari, Sven Schmit, and Martin Tingley, Want Your Company to Get Better at Experimentation?, Harvard Business Review, January-February 2025. https://hbr.org/2025/01/want-your-company-to-get-better-at-experimentation. Rogers, David L., The Missing Link Between Strategy and Innovation, HBR.org, March 18, 2024. https://hbr.org/2024/03/the-missing-link-between-strategy-and-innovation. Stuart, Toby E., How a Legacy Financial Institution Went All In on Gen AI, HBR.org, March 25, 2025. https://hbr.org/2025/03/how-a-legacy-financial-institution-went-all-in-on-gen-ai. Leading ChangeOrganizational CultureTransformationShare this resourceShare on LinkedInShare on FacebookShare on XShare on WhatsAppEmail this PageConnect with usChange isnt easy, but we can help. 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