Every recent year has been labelled ‘disruptive’, so by now the word has worn thin. But 2026 feels different—not because disruption is accelerating, but because its effects have compounded. What we are seeing now is not shock, but consequence.
By the end of 2025, the signals were already unmistakable. Across Europe and the UK, mass layoffs gathered pace—not at the margins, but at the core of the economy. In the UK alone, employers filed plans affecting more than 260,000 roles through mass dismissal programmes. In Germany, surveys showed one in three companies planning job cuts, with industrial sectors shedding well over 100,000 roles in a single year. Poland, often framed as Europe’s growth engine, entered 2025 with forecasts of up to 80,000 redundancies. Similar patterns played out across France, particularly in manufacturing and semiconductors.
What matters is not just the scale, but the explanation. These were not layoffs driven by a sudden collapse in competence. The people affected were, in many cases, highly qualified, experienced, and employable. Roles disappeared not because individuals failed to keep up, but because organisations no longer knew how they might be relevant.
A decisive distinction
This is where the conversation still goes wrong. Disruption has become familiar. We talk about it fluently. We model it, scenario-plan it, insure against it. Resilience, in particular, has been elevated to a kind of strategic virtue. Stay strong. Absorb shocks. Endure. But resilience is not the same as relevance. Resilience helps you survive what hits you. Relevance determines whether you are still needed once the dust settles. In 2026, that distinction becomes decisive.
I was reminded of this recently while running workshops on reinvention and change management with teams, working for a global medical-devices company in the middle of a business-model reinvention. The organisation is doing what many are doing: reassessing portfolios, structures, and cost bases. Layoffs have been announced.
What struck me was not resistance or denial. It was fixation. Almost every conversation gravitated back to the same question: Who will be affected? Who might go next? The future was framed almost entirely through the lens of workforce reduction. The employees I spoke with kept repeating the global leadership—while announcing the global business model reinvention—devoted quite some time to the layoffs planned and said they “were nothing to worry about”.
Narrative over reality
Very little attention was given to a harder, more important question: how do we prepare ourselves—individually and collectively—to remain relevant, regardless of the outcome? That pattern is everywhere right now.
Leadership teams cling to narrative over reality. Organisations talk about resilience as if endurance were the ultimate goal. Brands relaunch themselves while leaving untouched the way decisions are made, power is distributed, and value is actually created. This is why so many reinvention efforts fail. Not because they lack ambition, but because they aim at the wrong target.
Reinvention is not about the type of entity involved—company, government, institution, or individual. It is not about digital versus organisational versus personal change. Those are categories that make consultants comfortable. Reinvention is about relevance. And relevance is unforgiving. It does not care how successful you were. It does not reward effort or intention. It is earned—and re-earned—through choices that are often uncomfortable: what you stop defending, what you stop funding, what you stop assuming will still matter.
In 2026, the real risk is not disruption. It is obsolescence. Obsolescence does not arrive with headlines. It creeps in while organisations are busy ‘managing change’ instead of redefining their role in the world. It affects people who did everything right, just for a version of the future that never arrived.
For those who sense the shift but have not yet named it, this is the moment to be honest. The unease is not anxiety about change. It is recognition that yesterday’s logic no longer guarantees tomorrow’s relevance. Waiting is tempting. Seeing how things settle feels prudent. It isn’t.
This year will not reward the loudest, the busiest, or even the most resilient. It will reward those who decide early what they must become—and act accordingly. Reinvention is no longer about preparing for the future. It is about proving, every day, that you still belong in it.
That is the line in the sand.
Photo: Dreamstime.
