When the Mission Changes, Does the Team?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about what India’s Gen Z student protests taught me about leadership.

It became one of the most-read pieces in the series. And I think I know why.

The story wasn't really about politics. It was about young people finding their voice. About purpose. About what happens when people who don't normally sit at the same table decide they have something worth standing up for.

I thought that chapter was over.

Boy, was I wrong.

The movement has changed. The issues have changed. And that makes it even more interesting from a leadership perspective.

Because the difficult part of leadership isn't always starting something - It's about knowing what to do when the situation changes.

The first protests were largely around education, examination irregularities and accountability.

The current protests have moved toward electoral rolls, the Election Commission and concerns around the SIR process.

Depending on whose side you are on, you can have strong opinions about either side. But I am not here to judge you.

What interests me is what happens when an organisation suddenly finds that the problem it started with is no longer the problem in front of it.

I've seen versions of this in UX. A team starts with:

"We need to redesign this dashboard."

Six months later, the dashboard isn't really the problem anymore.

The customer has changed.

The business has changed.

The technology has changed.

But the team is still working against the original brief.

Noone is really asking the tough unasked, silent question - What are we actually trying to change?

That question is more useful than asking what we're building.

A good team understands the purpose behind the work. That gives it room to change direction without losing its way.

Alignment ≠ Agreement

This is probably one of the hardest things to get right as a leader.

You don't need everyone to agree. You need everyone to only understand what they're trying to accomplish.

I've always thought disagreement was healthy in a UX team.

A researcher should be able to challenge a designer. A designer should challenge a product manager. An engineer should be able to tell us that an idea won't work.

That's not dysfunction. That's a team thinking and working as it is supposed to.

The problem starts when disagreement becomes fragmentation.

The current movement brings together people and groups with different backgrounds, interests and agendas. That creates a difficult question:

How do you build enough alignment to move together without allowing the loudest voice to redefine the purpose?

I've had to deal with smaller versions of this as a manager. There have been many times when different people in my team saw the same problem differently. They have different incentives. Different experiences. Sometimes, different definitions of success.

The answer isn't to eliminate those differences. It's to make sure everyone knows what we're solving for.

Leadership is often portrayed as making the call when everyone else is uncertain.

I've started thinking about it differently.

Sometimes the better decision is recognising that you don't have enough information yet.

When the stakes are high, there are usually competing questions.

Should we push harder or negotiate? Should we stay with the current approach or change tactics?

Is compromise helping the mission or weakening it?

There isn't always a clean answer. The same applies to teams.

I've become much more comfortable saying: "We don't know yet."

It creates space to get another perspective, find the missing information and make a better decision.

Being decisive is useful. Being confidently wrong isn't.

Where's the feedback?

One of the things UX taught me early was that strategy isn't something you create once and then protect.

You research. You observe. You learn. You adjust.

Rinse and Repeat.

The same is true for any team working through uncertainty.

The current protests are still evolving. The coalition is changing. The issues are becoming more complex. The response from institutions is changing too.

So the strategy has to keep responding to reality.

A strategy that can't change when reality changes isn't really a strategy. It's a script.

I've seen this happen inside organisations.

Come January, senior leadership creates year-long roadmap that aligns with their Rally Cry. By March, the assumptions behind it are no longer true. By May, the rally cry has long dried out.

But because a lot of effort went into creating the plan, people become reluctant to change it.

That's sunk-cost thinking disguised as commitment.

Good leaders stay committed to the outcome, not necessarily the original route.

This is probably the easiest trap for any team to fall into.

Never-ending meetings, and Slack messages are flying in swift dawn to dusk. Projects are moving. People are forever busy. People are exhausted.

But somehow all this makes you feel like it's progress.

But, what actually changed?

In the course of managing people, I've realised I've made this mistake myself as a manager.

I've watched teams become very good at activity without being equally good at progress.

The same distinction matters here.

But momentum isn't the same as change.

Sustained change needs clearer things:

What are we asking for?

Who can act on it?

What needs to happen next?

How will we know whether anything actually changed?

That's the difference between moving and moving toward something.

I've seen leaders become attached to the route rather than the destination.

They defend the plan because they created it.

They defend the decision because they've already invested in it.

They defend the approach because changing it feels like admitting they were wrong.

But leadership isn't about protecting your previous decision.

It's about making the best decision with what you know now.

Sometimes that means staying the course.

Sometimes it means taking the next exit.

And sometimes it means saying: "We need to change direction."

That's not failure.

That's adaptation.

This is where I want to end this article - Because it isn't finished.

The interesting question now isn't simply whether this movement can attract people. It's whether it can maintain a coherent purpose as more people and organisations become involved.

Can different groups remain aligned?

Can disagreement remain productive?

Can the movement turn mobilisation into sustained institutional change?

Can it make decisions without losing the reason it started?

I don't know.

And I don't think we should pretend to know yet.

That's what makes it interesting.

Today, I'm watching this protest, not just as a citizen, but as a manager as well.

Because there is something fascinating about watching a large group of people try to solve a complicated problem in real time.

It's messy, emotional, imperfect.

And there is no playbook.

Which, frankly, is what most leadership looks like anyway.

Starting something takes conviction. Knowing when to change it takes judgment. And knowing the difference between the two might be one of the hardest parts of leading people.