Business leaders are often told to embrace uncertainty, shake things up, and move fast. But this mantra masks the dangers of disruption, which can just as easily harm as help. In recent research with Richard Haynes, Ingo Marquart, and Hai Anh Vu, we examined a disruptive leadership approach called “annealing.” My summary view: Although annealing can prompt change and innovation, most leaders should pause and reflect before trying.
“Annealing” comes from metallurgy, where heating and cooling alter the properties of a substance, such as metal or glass. In a leadership context, it means deliberately “heating up” a team – or even an entire organization – with a sudden shift, and once desirable responses emerge, “cooling” to lock in the improved arrangement. Annealing thus entails igniting a “fire,” watching how colleagues adjust, and then absorbing what was learned. To qualify as annealing, this “fire” must get started intentionally, not as an unplanned outburst or offloading of stress.
Annealing is not the approach of conventional managers, who work to prevent accidents or other harms in the “fog of war.” Such managers give their organizations a steady, protective hand. In contrast, annealers wilfully harness and even amplify uncertainty, foregoing stability in the short term to get to a better future state. Their aim is to break entrenched patterns and bring new possibilities into focus. This is leadership as a controlled burn.
Two famous examples – Steve Jobs at Apple and Jack Welch at General Electric – point to the potential, as well as the perils, of the approach. Jobs provoked his teams with searing criticism, triggering heated arguments that eventually ushered in shared breakthroughs. Welch reshaped GE through sweeping strategic demands and mass layoffs, forcing divisions to reinvent themselves or disappear. Both CEOs raised the “temperature” with intent, and both knew when to “cool.”
Their successes also obscure a crucial point: Annealing is not a leadership birthright. It’s a tool whose effectiveness hinges on conditions that only some leaders ever possess.
Why annealing works only for the few
The glamour of the Jobs and Welch narratives may invite imitation. But our review of past research points to three enabling conditions, each of which must be present for annealing to work as intended:
- The leader holds robust status, a wide base of credibility and trust across the organization
- The team has sufficient emotional energy to endure the turbulence
- The wider environment offers both generous resources, for instance, funding, time to experiment, and supportive allies, and enough uncertainty to justify the disruption.
Take away any one of the three, and annealing will likely bring damage rather than renewal.
Robust status is the first hurdle. Without this, a leader’s attempt to heat things up is likely seen as floundering, not forging: Employees will disengage, rather than play along. Jobs could insult his engineers yet still hold their attention since they felt (rightly or wrongly) he could guide them to something exceptional. A fragile, less-esteemed leader who tries to anneal instead gets ignored or abandoned.
Emotional energy also matters. Weary colleagues can’t respond creatively to crisis. This is why leaders must keep recent history in mind before trying to anneal. Organizations and teams already reeling from a destabilizing event – a recent merger, a round of layoffs, or something larger, like a pandemic – must regain their emotional energy before they can endure the strain of annealing.
The surrounding environment is decisive, too. Welch’s interventions were backed by GE’s formidable resources and his internal allies, along with pressing competitive uncertainty that helped legitimize his approach. Without sufficient internal resources and enough external uncertainty, annealing looks foolish and unnecessary.
Annealing is a high-stakes, if potentially high-reward, move, not a managerial default.
The danger of overheating
Even if these three enabling conditions are in place, annealing can still fail because of a built-in temptation: to keep the temperature high for too long. Unlike in metallurgy, where the outcomes are usually predictable, organizational “heating” is inherently uncertain, and the risks of harm are much higher. Excessive heating can weaken a leader’s standing and siphon off employees’ vitality, turning beneficial exploration into burnout.
In metallurgy, the cooling process starts once the internal structure has shifted favorably. In organizations, the idea is the same, but the signals are harder to interpret. Leaders can easily fail to discern when disruption stops yielding insight and starts killing vitality. Miscoding noise as progress, it’s easy to heat for too long. Cooling at the right juncture is essential: Jobs knew when to step away from an argument and reconnect with a colleague, shifting from a combative to a collaborative frame. Welch eventually stopped restructuring and inspired cultural renewal within GE. Cooling is not an afterthought. It’s the phase during which the gains from the heating process get locked in.
When leaders are late to the cooling phase, whether from inattention, hubris, or an addiction to drama, they risk unnecessary harm: eroded trust, fractured networks, and a reputation for instability.
A different message for today’s leaders
My claim is not that more leaders should pursue annealing, but that only some should, and, even then, only with eyes open to the risks. Annealing can yield valuable realignment, but its success requires a mix of status, emotional energy, and environmental fit. Without these, heating is more likely to damage than to renew. The everyday work of leadership (restoring clarity, sustaining energy, and building trust) is the better path for most leaders, most of the time. Controlled chaos is a specialized tool, not a default.
Instead of trying to mimic the drama of Jobs or Welch outside their context, leaders should focus first on creating the conditions in which disruption, when it arrives, and whatever its source, will likely make colleagues and organizations better off.
September 30, 2025
Business leaders are told to move fast and break things. But sometimes they shouldn’t
by Matthew Bothner • Business, Comment
“Annealing” comes from metallurgy, where heating and cooling alter the properties of a substance, such as metal or glass. In a leadership context, it means deliberately “heating up” a team – or even an entire organization – with a sudden shift, and once desirable responses emerge, “cooling” to lock in the improved arrangement. Annealing thus entails igniting a “fire,” watching how colleagues adjust, and then absorbing what was learned. To qualify as annealing, this “fire” must get started intentionally, not as an unplanned outburst or offloading of stress.
Annealing is not the approach of conventional managers, who work to prevent accidents or other harms in the “fog of war.” Such managers give their organizations a steady, protective hand. In contrast, annealers wilfully harness and even amplify uncertainty, foregoing stability in the short term to get to a better future state. Their aim is to break entrenched patterns and bring new possibilities into focus. This is leadership as a controlled burn.
Two famous examples – Steve Jobs at Apple and Jack Welch at General Electric – point to the potential, as well as the perils, of the approach. Jobs provoked his teams with searing criticism, triggering heated arguments that eventually ushered in shared breakthroughs. Welch reshaped GE through sweeping strategic demands and mass layoffs, forcing divisions to reinvent themselves or disappear. Both CEOs raised the “temperature” with intent, and both knew when to “cool.”
Their successes also obscure a crucial point: Annealing is not a leadership birthright. It’s a tool whose effectiveness hinges on conditions that only some leaders ever possess.
Why annealing works only for the few
The glamour of the Jobs and Welch narratives may invite imitation. But our review of past research points to three enabling conditions, each of which must be present for annealing to work as intended:
Take away any one of the three, and annealing will likely bring damage rather than renewal.
Robust status is the first hurdle. Without this, a leader’s attempt to heat things up is likely seen as floundering, not forging: Employees will disengage, rather than play along. Jobs could insult his engineers yet still hold their attention since they felt (rightly or wrongly) he could guide them to something exceptional. A fragile, less-esteemed leader who tries to anneal instead gets ignored or abandoned.
Emotional energy also matters. Weary colleagues can’t respond creatively to crisis. This is why leaders must keep recent history in mind before trying to anneal. Organizations and teams already reeling from a destabilizing event – a recent merger, a round of layoffs, or something larger, like a pandemic – must regain their emotional energy before they can endure the strain of annealing.
The surrounding environment is decisive, too. Welch’s interventions were backed by GE’s formidable resources and his internal allies, along with pressing competitive uncertainty that helped legitimize his approach. Without sufficient internal resources and enough external uncertainty, annealing looks foolish and unnecessary.
Annealing is a high-stakes, if potentially high-reward, move, not a managerial default.
The danger of overheating
Even if these three enabling conditions are in place, annealing can still fail because of a built-in temptation: to keep the temperature high for too long. Unlike in metallurgy, where the outcomes are usually predictable, organizational “heating” is inherently uncertain, and the risks of harm are much higher. Excessive heating can weaken a leader’s standing and siphon off employees’ vitality, turning beneficial exploration into burnout.
In metallurgy, the cooling process starts once the internal structure has shifted favorably. In organizations, the idea is the same, but the signals are harder to interpret. Leaders can easily fail to discern when disruption stops yielding insight and starts killing vitality. Miscoding noise as progress, it’s easy to heat for too long. Cooling at the right juncture is essential: Jobs knew when to step away from an argument and reconnect with a colleague, shifting from a combative to a collaborative frame. Welch eventually stopped restructuring and inspired cultural renewal within GE. Cooling is not an afterthought. It’s the phase during which the gains from the heating process get locked in.
When leaders are late to the cooling phase, whether from inattention, hubris, or an addiction to drama, they risk unnecessary harm: eroded trust, fractured networks, and a reputation for instability.
A different message for today’s leaders
My claim is not that more leaders should pursue annealing, but that only some should, and, even then, only with eyes open to the risks. Annealing can yield valuable realignment, but its success requires a mix of status, emotional energy, and environmental fit. Without these, heating is more likely to damage than to renew. The everyday work of leadership (restoring clarity, sustaining energy, and building trust) is the better path for most leaders, most of the time. Controlled chaos is a specialized tool, not a default.
Instead of trying to mimic the drama of Jobs or Welch outside their context, leaders should focus first on creating the conditions in which disruption, when it arrives, and whatever its source, will likely make colleagues and organizations better off.
Matthew S. Bothner is Professor of Strategy and holder of the Deutsche Telekom Chair in Leadership and HR Development at ESMT Berlin.