You Cannot Think Your Way Into a New Way of Leading

How Herminia Ibarra's Outsight Principle Reframes the Work of Institutional Change

In my last piece, The System Is Not Broken [blocked], I left you with a question that stops most change initiatives dead in their tracks: What would we have to stop being in order to become what we say we want to be?

It's a terrifying question. It moves the conversation from the relative safety of strategy and operations into the far more vulnerable territory of identity. And it's why so many leaders, faced with the institutional immune system I described, retreat to what they know. They commission another report. They hold another workshop. They refine the plan one more time, hoping that a more perfect insight will finally unlock the path forward.

But what if that's exactly backward? What if, as INSEAD professor Herminia Ibarra argues in Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, we cannot think our way into a new way of leading, and instead, we have to act our way into a new way of thinking (Ibarra, 2015)?

This is the paradox of leadership and change. Insight doesn't precede action. Insight follows action.

The Outsight Principle

Ibarra (2015) calls this the "outsight principle." The idea is that the only way to break from the gravitational pull of our current reality is to do things that expose us to new experiences, new relationships, and new ways of working. We generate outsight, the external perspective we get from doing new things, which in turn shifts our insight. As she puts it, "New ways of acting not only change how we think… but also change who we become" (Ibarra, 2015, p. 6).

This resonates deeply with Karl Weick's foundational work on sensemaking. Weick (1995) famously asked, "How can I know what I think until I see what I say?" He argued that we make sense of the world retrospectively. We act, we speak, we do something, and only then, in looking back at what we did, do we construct a story about what it means and what we believe. We act our way into understanding.

For any leader trying to move an institution, this is a profound and liberating idea. It means you don't need to have the perfect, fully-formed vision before you start. You don't need to win the grand intellectual argument. You need to create opportunities for your people, and for yourself, to act their way into a new identity.

From Identity Problem to Provisional Self

This is how we solve the identity problem I wrote about previously. When a proposed change threatens a leader's or an institution's sense of self, the answer isn't to argue harder. It's to lower the stakes of trying something new.

This is where Ibarra's concept of "provisional selves" becomes so powerful. Instead of asking people to commit to a massive, permanent identity shift, we create small, "safe-to-fail" experiments where they can try on a new way of being (Ibarra, 1999). A pilot program. A cross-functional task force. A small-scale partnership. These aren't just projects; they are identity sandboxes. They are what Robert Kegan (1982) would call "holding environments", temporary, supportive structures that act as evolutionary bridges from one way of being to the next.

I saw this with a university provost I was advising. Her institution defined itself by its traditional, research-focused faculty. The idea of launching a suite of industry-focused, skills-based credentials felt like a threat to their very identity. The strategic arguments for it were sound, the market demanded it, employers were asking for it, but the institutional immune system was in full revolt.

Instead of fighting a war of ideas, she did something small. She worked with a single, respected department to launch one professional certificate, co-developed with a local corporate partner. It was framed as a limited experiment. A "pilot." It required minimal upfront investment and didn't threaten the core curriculum. But it did something crucial: it allowed a handful of faculty and administrators to act like the kind of institution that partners with industry. They had to talk to executives, design a curriculum around market needs, and measure success based on job placements, not just academic rigor.

They were trying on a provisional self. And it worked. The program was a success, and the faculty involved didn't feel like they had compromised their identity. They felt like they had expanded it. They became the internal champions for the model, and their story, their "outsight", was more powerful than any strategic plan the provost could have written. They had acted their way into a new way of thinking.

The Smallest Credible Proof Point

This is the work of leadership in complex systems. It's not about having the grand vision. It's about having the courage to launch the smallest credible proof point. It's about finding the places where the energy for change already exists and creating a safe space for that energy to take form. It's about trusting that if you create the right conditions for action, the right thinking will follow.

So, if you are a leader who feels stuck, who sees the need for change but is paralyzed by the institution's resistance to it, my advice is this: Stop trying to think your way out. Stop polishing the strategy. Instead, ask yourself a different set of questions:

• What is the smallest, safest, most reversible action we could take tomorrow that would allow us to act like the organization we want to become?
• Who are the people in my organization who are already hungry for this new way of working, and how can I create a protected space for them to experiment?
• How can I help my team see this not as a threat to their identity, but as a chance to play with a new one?

The answer to "What would we have to stop being?" is not found in a boardroom. It is found in the doing. Act like a leader. The thinking will follow.

About the Author

Dr. Jenni Kincaid is the Founder and CEO of Leading Connection, a Education-as-a-Service (EaaS) company based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), specializing in purpose-driven leadership development, human capital strategy, and global education ecosystem design. She holds a Doctorate of Education in Leadership and Learning in Organizations from Vanderbilt University's Peabody College of Education and Human Development. With over 25 years of cross-sector experience and more than a decade in the Middle East, she advises ministries, universities, and international organizations across the GCC and beyond. She is a UAE Golden Visa holder, recognized by the Emirate of Abu Dhabi as an education expert. Connect at leadingconnection.ai

References

Ibarra, H. (1999). Provisional selves: Experimenting with image and identity in professional adaptation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(4), 764–791. https://doi.org/10.2307/2667055

Ibarra, H. (2015). Act like a leader, think like a leader. Harvard Business Review Press.

Kegan, R. (1982). The evolving self: Problem and process in human development. Harvard University Press.

Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Sage.