When asked for their top challenges in leading organizations, many executives and managers will share, “a lack of urgency and a lack of a culture that feels a sense of urgency” at the top of their lists.

Leaders of innovative companies love to advocate theories and platitudes about how they are able to “Fail-Fast-Forward,” create cultures of continuous improvement, and disrupt markets seemingly with magic pixy dust. Business school case studies and examples of successful companies make it seem like it’s easy to succeed in business and the great lore of American ingenuity is that anyone can become a billionaire with a good idea, a garage in silicon valley, and a few investors looking for the next Google.

I read with sadness the passing of Clayton Christensen who left us too early at the age of 67 years old.  Christensen, who Forbes called one of the most influential business theorists of the past 50 years, was a best-selling author, Harvard Business School Professor, and avid business simulation creator.  His book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma” was one of those rare works that changed the world of corporate strategic thinking forever by presenting a framework for how innovation takes place and why it is a common archetype for existing market leaders to fail at seizing the next wave of innovation in their markets.

I think the time has come for us to stop using Uber as the “ultimate” benchmark example for a disruptive business strategy.

There are many forces and tendencies competing in the business world that directly impact the effectiveness of every leader trying to set (or understand) strategy while executing that strategy through people. The team, the district, the region, the division, the business unit, the organization, customers, competitors, government, family, friends, and the digital social network all contend for attention in the mind and heart of a leader. And in this complexity, nothing is clear, and nothing is easy. The leader, no matter if a first-time leader or the Chief Executive Officer of a Global 5,000 company, is faced with the same challenges of having multiple affiliations and a lack of ability to make choices independent of the cascading pressures of multiple stakeholders. For these many reasons, leadership autonomy has been taken away from leaders and has been replaced by “safe” decision making and the constant mind-numbing managing to the needs of multiple stakeholders all who threaten quietly or overtly to negatively impact the leader when things go astray which often will happen. If you haven’t picked up on it yet, when you hear the magic words, “someone needs to be accountable for this,” that means some leader someplace is going to be given some very negative feedback.