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Human communities have always had to acquire new adaptive capacity. With each new wrinkle of complexity, often generated by new technologies, people have had to invent and discover new ways of living and doing business across group boundaries. So it should come as no surprise that in the face of our... More

These are extraordinary times. Change is all around and the challenges of adapting and remaining competitive are urgent. Now, more than ever, leaders must be equipped to handle adaptive challenges and build the adaptive capacity of their organizations. First explored by authors Ron Heifetz and Marty... More

To successfully lead adaptive change, you must connect with the values, beliefs, and anxieties of the people you are trying to move. But in addition to mobilizing others, adaptive leadership requires you to do some introspective work as well. Practicing adaptive leadership is difficult on the one ha... More

The first step in tackling any adaptive challenge is to take a step back so you can see how your organizational system is responding to it. From this perspective, you will gain a clearer view of your company's structures, culture, and default responses to problems. You will grasp the nature of the a... More

Adaptive challenges are difficult because their solutions require people to change their ways. Unlike known or routine problem solving for which past ways of thinking and operating are sufficient, adaptive work demands three challenging human tasks: figuring out what to conserve from past practices,... More

Understanding the political relationships in your organization is key to seeing how your organization works as a system. This activity, which the authors call thinking politically, can help you design more effective strategies for leading adaptive change. The key assumption behind thinking political... More

Diagnosing the organizational system, the adaptive challenge at hand, and the political landscape in an enterprise takes time, careful thought, and courage. You have to improvise creatively and responsively as you engage stakeholders inside and across the boundaries of your organization. Some organi... More

When a problem is identified, people gravitate toward interpretations of the problem that are technical rather than adaptive, benign instead of conflictual, and individual rather than systemic. These kinds of problems are seen as having easy, painless solutions. Your job in exercising adaptive leade... More

Effective interventions mobilize people to tackle an adaptive challenge. They may be designed to make progress at any point in the process: for example, to surface a difficult issue, quash a diversion, or move people forward through a difficult period. At whatever stage of the process you are interv... More

People who think politically understand the relationships and concerns among people in an organization. Ignore the human complexities when you try to lead adaptive change, and you greatly reduce your chances of succeeding. Acting politically means using your awareness of the limits of your own autho... More

Everyone has a different capacity for tolerating conflict. Some people are comfortable working through conflict, while most avoid it entirely. But surfacing the relevant conflicts is essential if you want to generate progress on adaptive issues. To do this well requires an approach to conflict that ... More

Fostering an adaptive culture will enable your organization or community to meet an ongoing series of adaptive challenges into the future. Although building adaptive capacity is a medium- and long-term goal, it can only happen by mobilizing today. Every challenge you currently face is another opport... More

Like the organization you are trying to lead, you are a complex individual with competing interests and values, preferences and tendencies, aspirations and fears. As the authors suggest, you are a system. To understand your personal system, you have to take stock of your personality, life experience... More

Each person is like a stringed instrument, tuned in a slightly different way from everyone else. Your tuning derives from many different things: your childhood experiences, genetic predispositions, cultural background, gender, and loyal identifications with various current and historic groups. Those... More

Your bandwidth--your repertoire of techniques for moving adaptive change forward in your organization--is a key element in the complex system that is you, the leader of adaptive change. These techniques span the spectrum from graceful and inspired rhetoric to in-your-face confrontation. Depending on... More

Context counts. In addition to your own values, priorities, and sensitivities, you embody your organization's values, priorities, and sensitivities. So does every team or group in the organization. The roles you play as a leader of adaptive change and your behavior in those roles depends on the valu... More

Taking on adaptive challenges isn't easy. The only reason you would want to do this kind of work is to serve purposes that matter to you deeply. Identifying your higher purposes--figuring out what is so important to you that you would be willing to put yourself in peril--is a key element in the proc... More

There is no reason to shoulder the difficult work of adaptive leadership if you do not have compelling, higher purposes to serve, whether saving the world, renewing your organization, or helping your community meet longstanding challenges and thrive through tough times. Your purposes provide the ins... More

There are important emotional components to leading adaptive change. When you move people from a familiar place to a less familiar place, you operate on their emotions in addition to their heads. To connect with them authentically and powerfully, you must come from that place in yourself as well. Th... More

Do you inspire people? To lead your organization through adaptive change, you need the ability to inspire. Inspiration is not an innate quality reserved for the rare and gifted charismatic individual. With practice, anyone can strengthen the skill and deploy it for leadership. This chapter explains ... More

Take care of yourself rather than work to exhaustion. All the predictable consequences of burnout can result from poorly deploying your passionate commitments: bad judgments, losing connections with family, and your health. Take care of yourself not as an indulgence, but to help ensure that the caus... More

Leadership is an improvisational art. Everything you do in leading adaptive change is an experiment. Many people, however, fail to see it that way, feeling and succumbing to the enormous pressure to produce certain results from their actions. Framing everything as an experiment offers you more room ... More

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Drawing on a dozen years of research among managers, officers, and politicians in the public realm and the private sector, among the nonprofits, and in teaching, Heifetz presents clear, concrete prescriptions for anyone who needs to take the lead in almost any situation, under almost any organizatio... More