The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World

Adaptation requires learning new ways to interpret what goes on around you and new ways to carry out work. It’s not surprising, then, that in organizations with significant adaptive capacity, there is an openness and commitment to learning.

ON THE PRACTICE FIELD • Think of a norm that would help your organization be more adaptable. Get two or three of your colleagues on board and start doing it whenever appropriate. For example, perhaps you would try out a norm that says, “People should spend five minutes at the end of meetings to reflect on the team performance and individual effecti

The most effective leadership anchors change in the values, competencies, and strategic orientations that should endure in the organization.

Get Past the Past To lead adaptive change, you have to refashion loyalties; that is, have a conversation both in your heart and in person with people to whom you have loyalty in which you explain to them why the current situation requires you to sift through their expectations of you, honoring many of them but not all.

From the moment humans are born, they turn to those in authority to provide answers, comfort, sustenance, and safety. Their

Like turtles, people need to stick their neck out to move forward. One company we know gives a Turtle Award each year to the initiative that generates the most lessons for the organization, even when the initiative bombs.

When strategic decisions need to be made, the perspectives of frontline people are considered.

It takes some practice to hold open more than one idea about reality, particularly when those multiple ideas conflict with one another. Once your people have generated several interpretations of their collective challenge, your goal is to help them keep those interpretations alive instead of gravitating prematurely toward one of them.

There is another reason to make yourself spend time with resisters: by meeting with them, you can acknowledge the sacrifices you are asking them to make and how difficult and painful those sacrifices may be.