When Crosswinds Hit

Leading Through Unexpected Change

Even the best teams fall apart when the unexpected hits.

I learned this the hard way. There I was, happily rolling along, thinking I was doing a decent job building a relationship with the new boss, when boom. "Oh, can you just come in here a second Mark? Just need to have a quick chat with you."

Twenty minutes later my world had turned upside down. There's a restructure. We don't want to lose you but I'm sure we can find something for you. To be honest, I stopped listening after the words "we think your role might become redundant."

Life's crosswinds. They come out of nowhere and blast at us. And when they hit, they expose everything we thought was solid.

Where races quietly explode

In cycling, crosswinds are where races quietly explode.

There's no crash. No drama. No obvious moment where everything goes wrong. Just teams suddenly stretched, split, and exposed. The crosswinds don't look dangerous to spectators, but they're where strong riders get dropped and cohesive teams fall apart.

When wind hits from the side, no one can sit comfortably behind another rider. The usual formation - the neat line where everyone takes turns at the front and recovers behind - doesn't work anymore. The physics have changed.

The savvy riders know this. They spread out diagonally across the road, forming what's called an echelon. They hold tight lines and work together because space is limited. The riders that don't react, don't adapt - they get spat out the back.

Sound familiar?

When structures break

I've seen it time and again in the teams I work with.

Change hits. Structures break. The old hierarchies that everyone thought would protect them just don't hold. What worked last quarter, last year, before the restructure - none of it protects anyone now.

Someone gets made redundant. A merger gets announced. A new strategy lands that makes half the senior team's expertise obsolete overnight. Leadership changes and suddenly the rules of the game are different.

And just like in cycling, the teams that survive aren't necessarily the strongest or the most talented. They're the ones that can adapt their formation when the wind changes direction.

Sometimes the weather changes in an instant

The best cycling teams prepare for crosswinds. They look ahead, read the road, check the forecast. They know where the exposed sections are and they're ready when they hit them.

But even then, sometimes the weather changes in an instant.

Which is what happened to me.

Suddenly I was on my own, about to be spat out the back. Or that's what it felt like. All those years of experience, all that expertise, all those relationships I'd built - none of it seemed to matter in that moment when the structure changed and my role disappeared.

Instead, even though the crosswind hit me hard, I adapted.

I spoke to people. I shared the load. I had a little cry. (Maybe more than one.) Then I started to work out what I needed to do next and, crucially, who could help me.

I realised it wasn't about having to do this all on my own. I had a team around me - friends, colleagues, family. People who could shelter me whilst I figured out my next move. People who'd been through similar crosswinds and knew what it felt like to have the ground shift beneath you.

Not about pedalling harder

That's the space I often work in now with leaders and their teams.

It's not about helping them pedal harder to try and keep going when everything's falling apart. That's what most people try first - work longer hours, push harder, carry more weight, prove they're indispensable.

But that's not what gets you through the crosswind.

What gets you through is taking the time to look up. To ask yourself: what's actually coming at us here? If these crosswinds hit - or when they hit, because they will - how can we work together to shelter each other and ride it out?

Because here's what I've learned, both from my own redundancy experience and from working with dozens of senior leaders since: you can't muscle your way through organisational change on your own. The leaders who try end up exhausted, isolated, and often still get spat out the back anyway.

The ones who navigate it successfully are the ones who build their echelon before they need it.

Questions worth asking

So where are the crosswinds hitting your team right now?

Not the official narrative about transformation and opportunity. The real crosswinds. The change that's making people nervous, the restructure that everyone knows is coming but nobody's talking about, the strategic shift that's going to make someone's job redundant even if we don't know whose yet.

Who's carrying more than their fair share?

Because in every team under pressure, there's always someone who's sheltering everyone else whilst quietly burning out. There's always someone who's doing the emotional labour of holding the team together whilst pretending they're fine. And when the crosswind hits properly, those people go first.

Are you in the right formation?

The structure that worked when things were stable probably won't work when the wind changes. The hierarchies that protected people in steady conditions become liabilities when you need to adapt quickly. The question isn't whether your team is good - it's whether they're positioned for what's actually coming.

Someone outside the wind

Here's what I've noticed about crosswinds, both on the bike and in organisations: when you're in the middle of one, it's almost impossible to see the full picture.

You're too busy concentrating on holding your line, protecting yourself, trying not to get dropped. You can feel that something's wrong, that the formation isn't working, that people are struggling. But you can't see what needs to change because you're using all your energy just to stay upright.

Sometimes you need someone outside the wind to help you see the formation you actually need.

Not someone who's going to tell you to pedal harder. Not someone with a perfect framework that worked somewhere else for someone else's team. Someone who's been spat out the back themselves and knows what it feels like. Someone who can help you look up, see what's coming, and work out who needs to be where when the wind changes.

That's what I do. I work with leaders and their teams to help them navigate crosswinds - the restructures, the mergers, the strategic pivots, the moments when everything that felt solid suddenly isn't.

Not by teaching them to be stronger or more resilient or more whatever. But by helping them see the formation they need, build the team that can shelter each other, and adapt when the weather changes.

Because crosswinds are coming. They always are.

The question is whether you're ready when they hit.