The lesson from the current pandemic, and the high levels of uncertainty we are all feeling as individuals and organizations, is that increased rapid and complex change is becoming the new normal.

Too often, “leadership” and “management” are still thought of as positional (though the research on this point says it is not).

It is driven most of all by evolving (and sometimes now exploding) technologies and geographic integration.

when people see relevant stakeholder change they are inclined to try to initiate responses to adapt. Thus we called these winning cultures “adaptive.”

emerging science—with a set of concepts and principles and tactics—has three major root systems.

All this is to be contrasted with management, which might be usefully defined as the set of structures and policies and actions that enable systems of people and technology to operate reliably and efficiently, despite size, geographical reach, or other sorts of sometimes great complexity.

Mandela took hundreds of actions, some large like the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” some seemingly small or marginal, like developing a friendship with the white captain of the country's rugby team, and some on the surface simply odd, like his lunches with the widows of former apartheid leaders. But inherent in so much of what he did was

Humans have within them something we call the Survive Channel. It has the biological equivalent of a radar system that is constantly on the lookout for threats. At first, a very long time ago, these were probably mostly physical threats. Today, the same basic hardware is programmed by society and personal experiences to be alert to career,

One system involves the study of individuals: specifically, our “human nature” and resistance to or capacity for change. This study is based on research that goes back centuries but has recently been enhanced greatly with a trove of new material from brain science.