Don’t Be an Ozymandias: 4 Major Shifts Every Executive Should Make in 2025

Have you ever read Percy Shelley’s short poem “Ozymandias”? 

It’s about two giant pillars of stone jutting up out of a seemingly endless expanse of sand dunes. An inscription on the pillars describes Ozymandias as a “king of kings” who proclaimed to the universe “look at my works, ye mighty, and despair!” And yet, nothing remains except a half-sunken statue. All the land around is “boundless and bare.”

In life and in business, change is an absolute certainty, and leadership sets the tone. The “kingdoms” and leaders that understand this truth will not only find success, but they will also leave a lasting legacy. The “kingdoms” and executives who ignore change or refuse to evolve will not only stifle their own potential, but they will fail to leave behind anything that endures.

What separates the successful “kingdoms” from the ones left in ruin? How well leadership responds to change. 2025 is bringing a whole new set of challenges, and successful executives must evolve — they must be ready to make a shift. I’ve been advising successful executives for over two decades. After charting their evolutions these recent years, these are the four major shifts I think every leader needs to be making in 2025.

1. Start curating what you “see and hear.”
   What if I told you that I support brainwashing? Well, at least one particular type of brainwashing.

   We often think of “brainwashing” as an entirely negative idea. In movies and TV shows, “brainwashing” is almost always something that is being done to someone else by an evil force — an angry enemy or a manipulative group. These villains forcibly replace a person’s thoughts and emotions with ones of their own design.

   However, what happens when you hand control over to the subject? Suddenly, “brainwashing” is no longer a malicious act, but rather a conscious acknowledgement that you are ultimately the sum of what you repeatedly see — and you’d like to influence that. Vision boards, which are used by 1 in 5 entrepreneurs, are just one example of such positive brainwashing. What’s more, their effects translate across age groups.

   How else can you curate the insights you consume as a leader? Are you surrounding yourself with sensory experiences that inspire insight and restore your balance, or is it just the opposite? Books. Podcasts. Streamers. Social media personalities. This is the ecosystem that shapes you every day.

   TWO Key Takeaways:
   – Vision activities are only effective when alignment is achieved between both the goals and the tasks born from the process.
   – When consuming media connected to your professional life, surround yourself with positivity.

2. Start listening to others on a deeper level.
   After 48 hours, most people have forgotten over 75% of everything they’ve heard. Just in case you’ve forgotten what you just read already, let me repeat that: over 75% of everything they’ve heard.

   Without conscious effort, people are terrible listeners. Unfortunately, good and active listening is one of the most important traits for leaders in every industry. In fact, when the global medical community was recovering from their unprecedented response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the number one thing they said they needed more of was “listening leaders.” Leaders who know how to listen on a deeper level can transform any business.

   What does a “listening leader” look like? Pay close attention. Avoid interrupting. Defer judgment. Ask questions. Paraphrase things back to the listener. These simple steps can make your conversations with team members so much more meaningful.

   TWO Key Takeaways:
   – Active listening is essential for successful leadership, but very few leaders practice it consistently.
   – Active listening involves a lack of interruptions or preemptive judgments, as well as meaningful followup and paraphrasing.

3. Don’t stop at insight — turn it into action.
   The famed philosopher Alan Watts was very clear on one thing: There’s a difference between money and wealth. Money is just the actual bills or statements that measure someone’s current wealth. Meanwhile, wealth is an actual resource — a means of doing something. So many people, according to Watts, are anxious to get money without the faintest idea of what they might do with their own eventual wealth.

   Insight works much the same way in the modern business world. Everyone wants data. Everyone wants insight. Yet most leaders aren’t entirely sure what to do with that insight once they get it. They don’t understand that insight isn’t an end result. Insight is a collective process that ends with an agreed-upon action — or an “adapted mental model.” Without this end result, insight is just an arrow without a target.

   TWO Key Takeaways:
   – Do you know what to do with the valuable insights you find? The next steps are just as important.
   – Insight isn’t fully realized until you’ve reached an agreed-upon solution.

4. Start defining what success looks like after the finish line.
   Celebrating success is essential for a thriving workplace. In fact, certain studies show that productivity can increase by as much as 69% when employees feel celebrated. Unfortunately, not many executives think about what comes directly after an initial success, and so much momentum can be lost in the process. It’s sort of like pedaling your bike very quickly toward a ramp with no clear idea of what you’re going to do with all that speed and instant lift off the ground.

   This is why leaders in 2025 need to start defining what success looks like after the finish line. The best answer is to establish generative milestones, or milestones that build and evolve off themselves in order to continually push the organization forward. When this isn’t possible, then one objective can simply be pre-designed to lead directly into another. No matter the method, you never lose momentum.

   TWO Key Takeaways:
   – Celebrations are essential for a workplace, and they actually increase productivity.
   – No milestone should ever lead to a dead end; there is always somewhere else to carry the momentum of a team’s success.

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Written by Dr. Sam Adeyemi (SAY: Ah Day yeh me).
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