Growth-stage companies often wrestle with a tough trade-off: keep the ship steady or push into new territory and face the turbulence that follows. In a recent Wisdom From Wizards episode, Michelle Accardi, CEO at Liongard, made her stance crystal clear — true progress demands the courage to invite instability.

Wisdom From Wizards is brought to you by Caribou Strategic, helping tech scaleups stand out and succeed.

Why Discomfort Is a Reliable Signal

Michelle’s core belief is simple: stability can lull ambitious companies into complacency. Markets evolve, customer needs shift, and competitors never wait. By leaning into innovation, even when it introduces friction, leadership buys the optionality that keeps the firm relevant. “We always have to be constantly changing and meeting new market demands,” she said, highlighting the necessity of continuous reinvention.

For CEOs steering scaleups, this mindset reframes discomfort not as a warning sign but as evidence that your team is stretching — learning what it needs to win the next chapter.

Three Takeaways for CEOs of High-Growth Tech Firms

1. Create an Internal “Change Safe Zone.”
   Carve out time, budget, and psychological safety for teams to test ideas that might fail. When employees know experimentation is valued, they are far more willing to surface unconventional solutions.
2. Measure Momentum, Not Perfection.
   Replace static goals with learning milestones. Track how quickly your teams validate assumptions, adapt features, or retire obsolete processes. Momentum metrics help you celebrate progress even when the outcome is still fuzzy.
3. Frame Instability as a Shared Adventure.
   Communicate openly about the risks and rewards of each initiative. Michelle’s teams know that rough patches are a sign of forward motion, not mismanagement. When people see instability as the cost of ambition, they embrace it rather than resist it.

Putting It Into Practice

• Run quarterly retros that spotlight discomfort. Ask managers to list moments of unease over the last 90 days and what the company learned in return. Capture those lessons in a shared knowledge base so you can build on them instead of repeating them.
• Launch a “30-Day Zero Gravity” sprint. Give a cross-functional squad one month to attack a thorny customer problem with no legacy constraints. Protect the team from day-to-day duties and see what fresh thinking emerges.
• Tie executive bonuses to innovation velocity. Incentives shape behavior. Reward leaders for validated experiments shipped, rather than just revenue booked, to reinforce the importance of continuous reinvention.

Final Thoughts

Michelle Accardi’s perspective is a timely reminder: the comfort of stability often hides the risk of irrelevance. CEOs who welcome controlled instability gain a decisive edge, because they discover future growth engines before competitors even spot the opportunity.

Ready to convert discomfort into strategic advantage? Start by reexamining where your teams feel the most friction — and consider that you might be closer to a breakout idea than you think.