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Energy constraints, talent wars, and public scrutiny are exposing the limits of the traditional model. Companies that once were defined by operational excellence are now being asked to master something entirely different: constant reinvention. And many of their leaders lack the experience and expertise for this new reality.
The question is no longer how to operate well. It’s how to transform constantly, re-engineering leadership and operating systems to keep pace with exponential growth.
"The big transition now is moving from operating to transforming, which requires different kinds of leaders," explains Sean Dineen, leader advisor at Russell Reynolds Associates (RRA).
"People who think more broadly, look outside-in versus inside-out, are curious, adaptable, not stuck in routines, constantly pushing for 'what do we need to do differently?' They experiment, scale what works, and bring ambition and aspiration: not just putting incremental points on the board, but thinking about multiplying what's possible."
"We're in a 'reset moment' around what kind of leadership is required," Sean says. "Most organizations' leadership frameworks and capability models are stuck in the past; the business environment and change outside outpace what organizations have internally."
The challenge is acute. Operating leaders typically emphasize control, precision, and incremental improvement—essential qualities for running infrastructure reliably. The operators who built their businesses around uptime and predictable yield must now master dynamic capacity planning, AI-optimized workloads, and cross-market partnerships.
Transformational leaders, by contrast, demonstrate curiosity, flexibility, and a willingness to experiment. Rather than viewing constraints around capital, land, power, or talent as obstacles, they approach them as catalysts for innovation.
Most leadership teams were assembled for the former, but the market now demands the latter.
So can existing leaders adapt? Sean is candid: "Some may be able to make the shift, but that's probably a minority. It's probably going to require a new profile of leader."
He's equally direct about why: "People with a playbook are fine in a steady-state environment, but when things are changing exponentially, that leadership becomes obsolete quickly. This environment requires new leadership, mindsets, and perspectives."
It's a tough message, but one that boards need to hear. Leadership assessment and succession planning must focus less on tenure and more on transformation potential—the capacity to learn, adapt, and multiply opportunity.
Jennifer Rockwood, leadership advisor at RRA, works extensively with digital infrastructure companies navigating this new reality.
"In the last five years, real estate players— the industry's early incumbents—recognized the need to form specialized partnerships with hyperscalers, as well as to diversify and scale capital sources due to the immense growth opportunities, especially with AI," Jennifer explains. "Two things now dominate every conversation: capital and talent. How to finance growth and whether you have the right people to execute it."
The competition for talent is fierce. "Anyone with a track record in the US or EMEA has likely made moves in the last year to 18 months," Jennifer notes. With unprecedented capital flowing into the sector, experienced leaders are in constant demand.
"A shift is happening: companies that started with their roots in real estate now need to innovate and bring more specialized expertise in energy markets, interconnections, and infrastructure challenges," Jennifer says.
Capital and capability have become inseparable as investors expect evidence of operating sophistication: the scrutiny is not just EBITDA but grid access, power purchase strategies, and data sovereignty exposure. What's needed now are flatter structures, faster collaboration, and organizations that move at the pace of opportunity, not bureaucracy.
What organizations actually need is a fundamental evolution in how they operate and who operates them. The prevailing approach in digital infrastructure has long prized precision, control, and reliability. Those qualities built trust with customers and investors.
But as the sector enters a new phase of global interdependence and technological acceleration, a different orientation is required:
These shifts demand leaders who can operate across technical, commercial, and policy frontiers simultaneously.
The challenge is finding the right balance. "Innovative solutions, especially around energy management, are intriguing but seem to be struggling to gain traction because of added costs and the unknown risk they may pose to operational reliability," Jennifer observes. "Reliability and track record take precedence over trying new technology."
It creates a paradox: the sector powers the world's digital innovation but must carefully weigh when and how to innovate within itself.
Sean frames the imperative this way: "Historically, change was episodic—with a start and end date. Now it's perpetual. That requires a totally different mindset and way of operating."
Nowhere is this transformation imperative more urgent—or more constrained—than in energy. Power is simultaneously the sector's greatest growth driver and its most critical bottleneck.
Jennifer believes a moment of reckoning is coming. "The industry, which has been accustomed to access to capital being the primary—but readily solvable—constraint to growth, will hit systemic challenges, especially in developed markets like Europe and the US, where infrastructure can't be built fast enough.”
The realities of aging and insufficient grid and generation infrastructure were already a challenge being navigated by the power sector across the developed world. Grid and permitting bottlenecks compound the data center developers' dilemma: transmission congestion, long interconnection queues, and protracted permitting timelines are slowing access to new capacity even where capital is available.
Even with an apparent nuclear renaissance, there is no silver bullet. "Whether restarting decommissioned nuclear power plants or deploying new technology like SMRs (small modular reactors), these are still solutions that are a decade away from true impact," she notes. There's cognitive dissonance—people want quick solutions to ensure that the industry will keep pace with demand, but the regulatory, technological, and fundamental structural realities will almost certainly fall short.
Yet she sees opportunity in constraint. The leaders who succeed will be "those with the most capital and an operational innovation mindset, who understand optimization and cost-benefit trade-offs and who can navigate national security and public policy issues as AI models and platforms come under scrutiny."
Sean is bullish about the sector's ability to innovate through constraint.
"This is not an incremental, corporate moment; it's an exponential moment. We have to assume we're going to overcome these inhibitors or barriers."
He points to creative solutions already emerging: "Tech firms are finding their own power supplies, building small modular reactors. Even in financing, major technology companies are leveraging each other's balance sheets to fund investments—I’ve never heard of that before."
His advice? "If you're not operating with an abundance mindset, you'll miss the window."
The race is also playing out differently across regions. The Americas are pushing ahead with unprecedented speed, backed by technology investor capital. Europe faces tighter regulatory frameworks around sustainability and data sovereignty, requiring different skill sets in navigating compliance. The Middle East, as Sean notes, "is almost like a startup," scaling at extraordinary pace with fewer legacy constraints but different stakeholder dynamics.
Leaders who succeed will be those who can navigate these regional nuances while maintaining global strategic coherence.
Jennifer recommends three areas of focus for boards and CEOs navigating this transformation:
1. Enterprise risk management
Assess what could stop growth and what the business liabilities are, given new externalities beyond traditional operational risk. This includes geopolitical, regulatory, and resource availability considerations that weren't on the radar five years ago.
2. Evolve the digital infrastructure business model
The industry today is not the industry it was even five years ago. Determine what collective skill sets are needed to succeed in this new domain, especially as technology and infrastructure traditionally move at different speeds. Organizations must bridge that gap through strategic talent acquisition and development.
3. Innovation and agility
Accept the need for more innovation and agility to get ahead of systemic challenges, especially regarding the resource requirements to deliver the product. This isn't about innovation for its own sake – it's about operational innovation that creates competitive advantage.
The energy responsibility piece is evolving rapidly, and in unexpected ways. Jennifer points to a development that would have been "unimaginable five years ago": major utilities creating commercial leadership roles focused specifically on developing data centers in their territories.
This signals a fundamental shift in how utilities and digital infrastructure companies must work together. Boards themselves are beginning to recognize the value of different expertise, with energy and infrastructure backgrounds becoming increasingly relevant at the leadership table. The siloed approach of the past—where data center operators focused on their facilities and utilities focused on their grids—is giving way to integrated strategic partnerships.
The sector's growth trajectory remains extraordinary. Demand is not the question—it’s assured. The question is which companies will have the leadership and organizational capacity to power it.
"CEOs and C-suite execs constantly say things are moving faster than ever before and 'we're not changing quick enough—what do we do?'" Sean observes. "The best way to address it is redefining leadership for this new context—resetting expectations, assessing where leaders stand against those expectations, and identifying where new talent needs to be injected."
The companies that thrive will redefine leadership for perpetual change, design operating models that scale without rigidity, and foster mindsets that embrace innovation while protecting reliability.
The margin for complacency is gone. The next era of digital infrastructure will be powered by human capability, organizational agility, and leadership courage.
Ultimately, the digital future will be powered by the organizations able to reinvent themselves from within—continuously, confidently, and at scale.
Sean Dineen is a leadership advisor at Russell Reynolds Associates, specializing in financial services and technology transformation.
Jennifer Rockwood is a leadership advisor at Russell Reynolds Associates and works extensively with digital infrastructure, energy, and sustainability-focused organizations.
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