Leadership in the age of paradox

The leadership models many executives have relied on – built around clear trade-offs, predictable environments and top-down control – are no longer sufficient in a world defined by contradiction.

Today, leaders are operating in an economy shaped by trade wars, breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and extreme weather systemic challenges that defy linear planning and reward adaptability over certainty.

At the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Tianjin, China, such shifts were on full display. On one stage, speakers addressed rising protectionism, hardening borders and a global economy fragmenting into rival blocs, while in the corridors, entrepreneurs and innovators were focused on speed, experimentation and building alliances across borders, not building walls.

These are not two worlds. They are one. And they are colliding.

This paradox is not a temporary anomaly. It is the new normal.

Whether companies are deciding where to hire, where to store their data or where to manufacture their products, the choices they face no longer come with clear answers. The trade-offs that once guided strategy are breaking down.

Leaders now have to hold competing goals at once: to grow globally while staying closely attuned to local markets; to provide clear direction from the top while giving teams the autonomy to act fast; to run lean operations without sacrificing the slack that builds resilience when disruption strikes.

Instead, the imperative now is to design for contradiction: to build organizations that do not aim to eliminate tensions but are structured to work within them.

That begins with a different way of thinking. When supply chains are breaking, AI is rewriting jobs and no market feels stable for long, the old trade-offs between efficiency and resilience, speed and control are often false. Trying to resolve the tension can leave you weaker on both fronts.

Some tensions are not meant to be solved. They need to be held, deliberately. This is not hesitation; it is what allows organizations to stay flexible, learn quickly and act with clarity when everything around them is unstable.

The paradox, in short, is the strategy.

This paradox thinking was evident throughout Summer Davos. While official panels focused on "fortress economies", tariffs and trade blocs, companies were simultaneously talking about how to collaborate, move faster, learn from local markets and adapt on the fly. One global drinks brand described rolling out a new product quickly – not by giving up control, but by letting local teams make decisions fast, while staying aligned on what mattered.

Such examples are no longer fringe cases. They are the blueprint for how to lead through contradiction.

Nowhere is paradox thinking more evident than in the evolution of global production models. What began as offshoring (moving production to low-cost countries), evolved into nearshoring with COVID-19, where companies brought operations closer to home to reduce risk. Then came friendshoring: shifting supply chains to politically aligned countries amid geopolitical tensions.

Currently, many are adopting what some call X-shoring: a flexible mix of all three, designed to balance cost, speed and stability, rather than rely on a single model. Some companies are pushing the logic of X-shoring even further, by reimagining what should drive location decisions in the first place.

Now it’s about balancing several things at once: building backup capacity in different regions that can be switched on when needed (temporal-shoring), placing teams where the right talent already exists (skill-shoring), and cutting emissions by choosing lower-carbon supply routes (carbon-shoring).

All these strands are converging toward what some are calling right-shoring: a more strategic, dynamic distribution of operations across the globe, not based on ideology or cost alone, but on the functional logic of what fits best, where.

The point is not to find the perfect model, but to design for contradiction. Consider three tensions companies are now learning to manage, not resolve:

Paradoxes do not go away. They need to be understood, revisited and managed over time. The skill is not finding the perfect answer, but learning fast enough to keep up with change.

At Summer Davos, some of the most forward-looking companies were not focused on controlling every part of their business, but on creating systems where others – teams, users, partners – could adapt and respond quickly. WeChat owner Tencent, for example, has grown into a $580 billion company by building platforms that let its network evolve from the bottom up, not by issuing orders from the top.

This kind of design reflects a deeper shift in leadership: away from chasing perfect answers, and toward managing opposing needs at the same time. The hardest part? Staying with the mess long enough to learn from it. The mistake is not the tension itself. It is trying to erase it. Paradox isn't a problem to solve. It's the environment we're called to lead in.