Am I Leading the Next Blockbuster? Most CEOs Don’t Think So Either.

Few leaders believe they are steering the next Blockbuster. That is precisely why the question matters. Businesses rarely become irrelevant because their leaders stop caring or their people stop trying. More often, they keep improving a model that still appears to work, even as the market begins to move beyond it. From the inside, protecting today’s performance can look entirely rational.

This Rebel insight is about one of the hardest judgements a leadership team has to make: when should you optimise the machine you already have, and when must you redesign it for the world you are entering? Not every constraint demands reinvention. Processes can be improved, delivery can be tightened and genuine strengths should not be discarded for the sake of appearing progressive. But when the structure itself is creating the drag, further optimisation can protect the very conditions holding the business back.

Within this article, we will explore why that distinction is becoming more urgent, how AI exposes rather than removes structural friction, and the practical signals that reveal whether your operating model remains an advantage or has become a handbrake. The aim is not to prescribe another transformation programme. It is to help you ask a better question: are you improving the right machine?

You can feel the pressure building. Markets move faster. Customer expectations shift. Technology changes how value is created, how quickly it can be delivered, and how long advantage can be held. AI is part of that pressure, but only part. The deeper issue is structural: is your business organised to benefit from the world that is arriving, or is it set up simply to defend the one that made it successful.

Does this sound familiar?

A weak process can be improved. A poor delivery rhythm can be tightened. Even a bad quarter can be corrected. What keeps you awake is something more fundamental: the possibility that the very model which made your business successful may now be the thing slowing it down. The structure, governance habits, decision rhythms and leadership behaviours that once created scale in the industrial revolution may now be the handbrake on pace in the age of digital and AI.

Rebels, we are no longer in your grandfather’s era. The belief that if the machine still works today, it can be tuned into relevance tomorrow is now an outdated pipedream.

Let’s be clear, not every problem demands reinvention. But when the structure itself has become the drag, refinement stops being prudent and starts becoming dangerous.

There is a reason the Blockbuster story still lands with all of us. Not because it is fashionable to mock the past, but because it shows how rational decline can look from the inside. The company did not fail because no one could see change coming. It failed because the current business model kept making defensive decisions feel sensible and money today, over securing tomorrows future still talks and that’s the bottom line. The stores still generated cash. The core engine still looked worth protecting. The future opportunity was visible, but harder to justify than fixing the machine that already paid the bills.

That is what makes these moments dangerous. The old model does not usually collapse all at once. It keeps making caution look responsible until the market has moved far enough that reaction becomes catch-up.

That is why AI matters – not as the whole story, but as a forcing function. It sharpens the consequences of drag. Drop powerful new capability into a business still governed by slow decisions, vertical silos and heavy approvals, and you do not get transformation. You get faster evidence that the system is stuck. AI does not remove friction. It amplifies it.

That is why the real leadership question is not, How do we improve what we have? It is, Are we improving the right machine?

If your current model still enables clear priorities, fast decisions, visible work, accountable teams and measurable progress against outcomes, optimise it. If it does not – if work still slows every time it crosses a boundary, if priorities fragment across functions, if leaders sit in the middle of too many decisions, if governance is built to report status rather than improve flow, then optimisation will only preserve the handbrake. Most organisations are not slow because people lack capability or because there is no strategy. They are slow because the system is stuck.  This is why we talk about leading the rebellion against broken business – for this exact reason.

Because, this is where too many organisations lose time. They treat the moment as if it were mainly about sharper strategy language, cleaner planning, or another round of future-state thinking. But the harder truth is usually more practical than that. The issue is not whether leaders can describe the future elegantly. It is whether they can align around the few outcomes that matter, make the necessary trade-offs, and then reshape how work actually flows through the business so those outcomes can be delivered.

That shift shows up in operating terms, not abstract ones. It means making priorities and blockers visible in one place. It means using governance to improve flow and prioritisation, not simply report status. It means moving from vertical silos into cross-functional ownership. It means tightening decision rights so the people closest to the work can act with more pace. It means building a more adaptive operating model rather than trying to extract tomorrow’s performance from yesterday’s structure. Better, faster outcomes do not happen by accident; they come from changing the conditions that decide whether work flows or stalls.

A word of caution. If you are a leader that likes to bang their fist on the table when things don’t go right, surround yourself with yes “men” and don’t empower your teams, then forget everything we have just written – you have much bigger problems.

The businesses and leaders that handle this well do not start by trying to look revolutionary. They start by getting honest, really honest.

When Alan Mulally took over Ford as CEO in 2006, the company was on the verge of becoming bankrupt. Before Mulally, the executive culture at Ford was fear-driven. The previous CEO routinely fired people who brought up bad news. As a result, senior leaders lied and made all their updates green.

During one meeting, Mulally asked how the company could be losing $17 billion if every division was performing perfectly. Eventually, an executive named Mark Fields bravely stood up and presented a red, troubled status slide. The room went silent, assuming he would be fired.

Instead of punishing him, Mulally applauded Fields’ vulnerability. He thanked him for his transparency and asked the team how they could help fix the issue.

This single moment transformed the culture. By turning “red” from a career-ending failure into an opportunity for the team to collaborate and problem-solve, Mulally fostered an environment of radical honesty.

This is uncomfortable. Many corporate cultures reward performance rather than truth. Being really honest and transparent can be counter cultural. But asking the uncomfortable questions, is where improved performance starts. It asks leaders to disturb parts (or all) of the business that may still be generating value today. But that is what serious leadership looks like when the market is changing underneath you. The real risk is not disruption. It is protecting the wrong thing for too long.

So are you excited but stuck? Unsure where to start?

This is where PerfectRebel comes in. We exist to help businesses break free and to adopt a better, more modern, more adaptive way of leading and delivering. Want to know where we would start? Join the waiting list for House of Rebel membership and join other execs bouncing ideas off each other in safe, relaxed spaces. It’s also where we reveal all our trade secrets freely to our fellow rebels.

Join here: https://perfectrebel.com/house-of-rebel/