I’ve written before about what adaptive leadership is and using it to co-produce challenging conversations:
Adaptive leadership is mobilising people to tackle rough challenges and thrive. It’s about adapting to influences — methods, behaviours and beliefs — from other systems — cultures, fields & organisations. It anchors the ability to change and adapt to the evolving needs, practices & motivations of citizens, networks and even society within the values of public service. It helps you improvise, learn and iterate, allows time for yourself and others to adapt and challenges you to move to the edges to test your capacity (or that of your organisation, neighbourhood or network) to adjust. It’s also about encouraging you to challenge the expectations of people you look to for authority and subsequently manage the resistance they may display.
I went on Acumen’s Adaptive Leadership course. Acumen has some great free courses, so check them out. Anyway, the course immerses you in the learning process, and then you must pick a complex challenge that requires adaptive leadership and practise the learning. As a side note, I love learning, whether it’s to help people learn through change, adapt to the pandemic, or shape the future.
What’s the problem you face where there is a gap between your aspiration and the current reality?
How can I support people in uncovering the needs, assets, and motivations of those around them and helping them develop solutionsthat could challenge the value or even need for services meeting a similar outcome?
- How can I support staff in wanting to change the way they work to facilitate and support change with citizens rather than providing or even commissioning a service for them?
- How can I support citizens who want to change the way they get help, from receiving assistance from a service to working with that service and others to meet that need together?
What actions have you already taken to address this challenge?
They have developed a programme that encourages citizens to seek support to uncover their community’s needs, assets, and motivations and develop solutions with them.
What are the perspectives of other stakeholders involved in this issue?
Citizens don’t feel they have the time or money to fully dedicate themselves to developing those solutions. Staff don’t feel they need to engage with other groups meeting a need similar to theirs. Investors want to invest in solutions that can increase.
What could they potentially gain or lose if progress is made?
Citizens could better meet their needs, influence how these are met, and feel supported by others in the community. However, they could lose the certainty of support they’re currently getting. Staff could enjoy working with citizens better but lose their sense of worth and security in knowing what they can do.
Why is this challenge significant to you? Changing needs and services could help citizens, staff, and other stakeholders better use the assets. This approach has worked elsewhere, and I’m trying to make it happen now.
Changing needs and services could help citizens, staff, and other stakeholders better use the assets. This approach has worked elsewhere, and I’m trying to make it happen now.
What benefits would it bring to you and your organisation or community if progress was made? It would validate that the approach works to help people meet their needs and motivations. It would make my organisation more responsive, adaptive, and trusted. It would make the community more supportive of each other, resilient, and creative.
It would validate that the approach works to help people meet their needs and motivations. It would make my organisation more responsive, adaptive, and trusted. It would make the community more supportive of each other, resilient, and creative.
How does adaptive leadership connect to the challenge you are trying to address in this course?
They help people make the best use of their skills and collaborate with others creatively, making them feel like they are part of a community that is creating value.
How to diagnose the adaptive challenge
Make people in the organisation feel good about themselves and their enterprise, even if they are doing little beyond the bare minimum to live those values.
Because these decisions are so difficult, many leaders simply avoid making them or try to arrive at a compromise that ultimately serves no constituency’s needs well. As a result, the organisation’s commitments continue to conflict.
Think of several competing commitments in your organisation. How are people in your organisation dealing with this situation? What are the positive and negative consequences of this way of coping?
How can we make savings while managing the increase in demand of need from our residents?
Commissioners are developing risk stratification, and researchers are working with operational staff to identify activities that aren’t essential or don’t add value. People feel empowered when they’re involved in these projects, as they can see how and why changes are made, but not those who aren’t involved, who think they’re being left out and left behind.
Whenever members of an organization come together and have a conversation, there are two types of conversation. One is the overt conversation, manifested in what people say publicly. The other is the covert conversation, often left unsaid due to the organisational system’s aversion to tension and conflict. However, addressing these unsaid issues is crucial for adaptive change.
Remember the last tough conversation in which you or someone else gave voice to the unspeakable? What enabled this to occur? For example, did someone else ask each person to give voice to a heartfelt but unpopular perspective?
Trust that people could share, that the person had the role of speaking the “unspeakable.”
What happened as a result of the conversation?
There was a better understanding of the situation and a feeling that the issue had been discussed, and there was more clarity because it had been discussed.
We find two common pathways in the patterns by which people resist the potential pain of adaptive change: diversion of attention and displacement of responsibility.
What are the technical aspects of your challenge?
The programme’s methodology, research insights, design principles, ideas and solutions, and governance are included.
What are the stakeholders involved in your challenge? What are their values, loyalties and losses?
What was the key takeaway from mapping stakeholders and the system?
People you’re trying to convince often have a similar aversion to loss, particularly fearing the loss of control over what they knew and the potential loss of legitimacy the new process creates in not feeling needed or valued.
