The Back Story – Inside the Work: Sevinc Caglar

The Back Story - Inside the Work:

Sevinc Caglar

We sat down with Sevinc Caglar, a senior leader in Canada, who joined ADAPTOVATE in October 2023, to talk about how she helps teams turn strategy into action — and what that reveals about leadership, judgement and staying useful in a fast-changing environment.

What problem are you currently paid to be great at?

I help teams make real choices when everything feels important. Most of the leaders we work with aren’t short on ambition or activity. They’re overloaded with priorities, initiatives, and well-intended plans that don’t necessarily always line up. Strategy exists, but it doesn’t reliably translate into decisions, trade-offs, or follow-through. As a result, execution slows down, accountability blurs, and leadership conversations stay abstract longer than they should.

My job is to cut through that. I help teams clarify what actually matters now, what can wait, and what should stop. That means shaping a small set of strategic priorities, designing the operating cadence around them, and putting the right decision mechanisms in place so leaders can act with confidence rather than deferring or revisiting the same issues every cycle.

If leaders leave a room knowing exactly what they’ve decided, what they haven’t, and what happens next, I’ve done my job.

What is a common assumption in your field that you believe is wrong – or at least outdated?

A common assumption is that alignment comes from consensus. In strategy and transformation work, there’s still a belief that if everyone agrees, execution will follow. In reality, consensus often slows things down and masks the hard trade-offs that actually need to be made.

What I’ve seen work better is clarity over consensus. People don’t need to agree on everything to execute well, they need to understand the decision, the rationale behind it, and what it means for their work.

When leaders focus less on universal buy-in and more on decision quality and follow-through, momentum improves quickly. Alignment becomes a by-product of action, not a prerequisite for it.

“If leaders leave a room knowing exactly what they’ve decided, what they haven’t, and what happens next, I’ve done my job.”

Describe a moment at ADAPTOVATE when your thinking changed materially.

During a GenAI engagement with a retail client early in my time at ADAPTOVATE, there was pressure to be exhaustive and to “get it right” before moving. Given the pace of change in GenAI, that instinct was understandable.

What changed my approach was how we reframed the problem. Instead of trying to design the perfect strategy, we focused on identifying a small number of use cases that were concrete, low-risk, and meaningful enough to test. We made assumptions explicit, accepted that some would be wrong, and designed pilots that limited downside while maximizing learning.

Within weeks, the conversation shifted from abstract debates about potential to evidence from real work. Leaders could see where GenAI actually saved time, where it didn’t, and what that meant for the next decision.

That experience reset how I think about progress in ambiguous spaces: move with intent, keep decisions reversible where you can, and treat learning as a valuable outcome.

What is a difficult decision you’ve had to make recently where there was no obviously “right” answer?

During a recent RFP response, I had to decide how hands-on to be as the team lead. My instinct, especially under time pressure, is to step in and drive the work directly. Instead, I made a conscious choice to step back. My role shifted to resolving issues, removing blockers, pressure-testing thinking when asked, and providing emotional and psychological support as deadlines tightened.

It wasn’t the most difficult decision in terms of trust, I trust the team, but it was new for me not to be hands-on. The result was a stronger response and a more confident team. It reinforced that leadership isn’t always about doing the work yourself, but about creating the conditions for others to do their best work.

When a client or stakeholder strongly disagrees with you, how do you usually handle it?

When a client strongly disagrees with me, I slow the conversation down rather than push harder. My first step is to understand what’s actually behind the disagreement. Often, it’s not about the recommendation itself, but about risk, accountability, or something they feel responsible for protecting. I ask questions to surface that, and I restate their concern plainly, so they know it’s been heard.

If the disagreement is about facts or assumptions, we make them explicit and test them. If it’s about judgement, I’m clear about where I stand and why, without trying to win the argument. I’m comfortable saying, “Here’s the risk I see, and here’s the trade-off you’re choosing,” and letting leaders own that decision.

There are times when I change my view, and times when I don’t. In both cases, I focus on keeping the relationship intact and the decision honest. Trust, in my experience, comes less from being right and more from being clear, consistent, and explicit about the trade-offs being made.

What separates a good outcome from a great one in the type of work you do?

A good outcome is a decision made, a plan agreed, and an implementation completed. A great outcome is when the organization actually behaves differently as a result. The difference isn’t sophistication or volume of output. It’s whether the work changes how people allocate attention, time, and resources once the engagement moves on. If things only work while consultants are in the room, it’s not a great outcome. One way to judge success is by what still holds six months later. When the behaviors we set out to change actually stick, that’s a great outcome.

What skill are you deliberately trying to get better at right now – and why?

Getting more hands-on with AI. Many of the decisions leaders need to make about AI sit at the boundary between technical feasibility and business value and without some hands-on experience, it’s easy to oversimplify trade-offs or underestimate constraints like data quality, integration effort, or risk.

For me it’s not about becoming an engineer, but about being credible and useful when organizations are making high-stakes decisions about where AI can and can’t create value.

What do you pay attention to that most people in your role ignore?

I pay attention to how the work gets done, not just whether it gets done. The work will get done somehow. It always does. What often gets ignored is that the “somehow” matters. It shapes decision quality, team dynamics, and whether people are willing to take responsibility the next time the stakes are high.

I watch how intensity is managed, who carries the load, and whether people feel safe to challenge assumptions. Those signals are easy to miss. In my experience, when people feel respected and supported, the work is better, decisions are stronger, and teams finish with energy rather than just getting through it.

Outside of work, what activity reliably sharpens your thinking or perspective?

I spend time reading publications in the areas we work in: strategy, organizational design, and AI.

What is one belief you held strongly five years ago that you no longer hold?

I believed that resilience and the ability to “push through” were the answer to almost any challenge at work. What I’ve come to realize, though, is that resilience can mask deeper problems. If the same issues keep repeating, “getting through it” may mean we’re normalizing patterns that should actually be challenged. What I find more useful now is paying attention to when resilience is being required. If it’s needed repeatedly, that’s often a signal that something in the system (i.e. priorities, decision-making, incentives, or ways of working) needs to change.

That shift has affected how I approach my work. Instead of defaulting to pushing through, I now stop and examine what’s creating the pressure in the first place, including my own choices. If I keep needing resilience in the same situations, that’s a sign to change how I’m working, deciding, or setting expectations. Resilience still matters, but I no longer see it as the answer to structural or recurring problems.