Listen to the Heart

Courage is at the heart of leadership. We know that people are not resisting change as much as resisting the loss of connections, control, clarity and competence that often happens when stepping outside one’s comfort zone. Still, we as leaders push forward and aim for continued improvement. We seek a greater level of excellence and want to create this vision at the day to day level. 

Along with courage, we need something else. As Ron Heiftz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky in their book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World (Harvard Business Press, 2009) write: “To lead your organization through adaptive change, you need the ability to inspire. Adaptive challenges involve values, not simply facts or logic. And resolving them engages people’s beliefs and loyalties, which lie in their hearts, not their heads.”

John Kotter in his book, The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations (Harvard Business School Press, 2002) writes: “The single most important message in this book is very simple. People change what they do less because they are given analysis that shifts their thinking than because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings.”

Heiftz, Grashow and Linsky acknowledge this understanding when they write: “You need to strengthen two skills to master the ability to inspire: listening from the heart and speaking from the heart. After all, you cannot connect deeply with people unless you know what is in their hearts and what is in yours.”

This week and every week, pause on a regular basis and listen to your heart, and listen with your heart. This combination has the potential to be transformative for you and many other people.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Acting Politically

In the world of adaptive change and organizational transformation, there is a lot of office politics. Effective leaders know how to manage these different elements and all of the different personalities involved. It is not easy work, but it is powerfully important work. 

Ron Heiftz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky in their book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World (Harvard Business Press, 2009) point out the following: “By acting politically, we mean using your awareness of the limits of your own authority, and of stakeholders' interests, as well as power and influence networks in your organization, to forge alliances with people who will support your efforts, to integrate and defuse opposition, and to give valuable dissenting voices a hearing as you adjust your perspective, interventions and mobilize adaptive work.”

The first step from my own experience and from what the above authors have researched is that we need to find allies in order to be effective. As they write, “Trying to lead an adaptive set of interventions without allies is like braving Buffalo, New York, in the dead of winter without a warm coat. That is especially true when you attempt to lead change in a group or organization of more than twenty people. In such settings, the complexity of the political landscape is way beyond anyone’s ability to navigate alone.”  Allies and confidants are very helpful in understanding the political landscape.

The second step is “take responsibility for casualties.” This is very important and I have seen it done well and done very poorly. The impact of either way is profound and long lasting. As the above authors note, “adaptive change results in casualties: people in the organization who loose something of value, whether it is a familiar way of doing things, status, job, or in the military, their lives.” 

Recognizing that casualties are inevitable, we need, as leaders, to pay attention to them, spend time with them, acknowledge our role in creating them, and find ways to help them in a respectful manner to endure what is happening or to get on with their life in a new way.

This is important strategically, the above authors remind us, because you are “communicating to the allies of those who have become casualties: if these allies see you treating their friends humanely, they may have more positive feelings about you and your initiative. If they see you treat their friends callously, they will have one more good reason not to come on board.”

This week, find more allies and prepare for how you will take responsibility for casualties. When we hold ourselves accountable in this manner for the outcomes of our decisions and our actions, large or small, we send an important message as a leader. 

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Figure out Ripeness

Once you have been on the balcony, referencing the metaphor from last week’s blog post, then it is time to start figuring out how to create an effective course of action. Ron Heiftz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky in their book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World (Harvard Business Press, 2009) recommends we determine the “ripeness” of problem within the organization. As they explain, “an issue is ripe when the urgency to deal with it has become generalized across the system. If only a subgroup or faction cares passionately, but most other groups in the system have other priorities on their mind, then the issue is not yet ripe. Determining ripeness is critical because a strategy of intervention to ripen an issue that is only localized is different from a strategy to deal with a ripe issue that is already generalized.”

Their writing on this subject reminds me of John Kotter’s research in the book Leading Change where he talks about the importance of creating urgency before creating action. The late William Bridges in his book, Managing Transitions also talks about this concept and the importance of selling the problem before implementing the solution. The key is to realize that complacency and status quo are real and will fight back against change or transformation unless there are enough people who understand that doing business as usual is more dangerous than doing business in a whole new way.

Therefore, Heiftz, Grashow and Linsky asks us to answer three questions in order to figure out the depth of ripeness related to change. They are as follows:

- “Is the urgency localized in one subgroup and not yet widespread across the larger system?”

- “Or, on the other hand, are people avoiding the hard work of dealing with the adaptive challenge at hand because the pain of doing so has reach too-high levels of disequilibrium?”

- “Is the prevailing momentum to treat the situation as a technical problem or as an adaptive challenge?”

This week, ponder the above three question and come up with some answers. Your answers will help you determine how to move forward in developing your strategy for the future.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Understanding Status Quo

Ron Heiftz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky in their book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World (Harvard Business Press, 2009) write that status quo is elegant and tenacious. As they explain, “Yesterday’s adaptive pressures, problems, and opportunities generated creative and successful responses in the organization that evolved through trial and error into new and refined structures, cultural norms and default processes and mind-sets…. Yesterday’s adaptive challenges are today’s technical problems.”

What we have to recognize as adaptive leaders is that “over time, the structures, culture, defaults that make up an organizational system become deeply ingrained, self-reinforcing, and very difficult to reshape.” Thus, many leaders and organizations “get trapped by their current ways of doing things, simply because these ways worked in the past.”

When taking the first step to solving adaptive problems, the authors recommend you “get on the balcony” so you can see how your organizational system is responding to adaptive challenges and problems. This popular metaphor of getting on the balcony is based on the understanding that there is a “dance floor” or “practice field,” where you work on a day to day basis, and then there is a “balcony”, where you can see the bigger picture. This concept is very familiar to this who have read the book, Great By Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck - Why Some Thrive Despite Them All by Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen where these two authors talk about how leaders zoom out before zooming in to deal with a problem. From the balcony, adaptive leaders are able to gain a better understanding of their company’s structures, culture and defaults, i.e. “its habitual ways of responding to problems.”

This week, give yourself permission to spend more time on the balcony than the dance floor. Then, spend more time understanding how status quo is working and what are the defaults within your organization. This depth of work will help when it comes to designing effective new solutions. 

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

In the Beginning

When we are dealing more each day with adaptive problems rather than just technical problems, we enter into a whole new world of leadership, namely the practice of adaptive leadership. Ron Heiftz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky in their book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World (Harvard Business Press, 2009) have three specific recommendations when this happens.

First, they recommend we not do it alone. They suggest we “find partners who will share the dangers and the exposure. Together, you’ll stand a far better chance of avoiding attacks from opponents and keep your initiative alive.” Realize that adaptive leadership involves being experimental and exploring new ideas. It will surface issues that people may not want to deal with or discuss. Having a strong leadership team will make a profound difference.

Second, they recommend that we “resist the leap to action.” As they note, “adaptive challenges are hard to define and typically require people to reinterpret and question their own priorities, as well as their habits of thinking and behavior.” Remember that once you engage in practicing adaptive leadership, “you will be courting resistance by stirring the pot, upsetting the status quo, and creating disequilibrium.”

Third, they recommend that we “discover the joy of making hard choices.” As they explain, “what makes adaptation complicated is that it involves deciding what is so essential that it must be preserved going forward and what of all that you value can be left behind. Those are hard choices because they involve both protecting what is most important to you and bidding adieu to something you previously held dear: a relationship, a value, an idea, and image of yourself.” 

A large part of adaptive leadership is making new and different choices from those you have made in the past. Having partners and resisting the leap to action until in-depth reflection and thought has taken place means you have created a better beginning. 

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

The Speed of Transformation

After a spring of visiting with many executives in different industries, one thing has become abundantly clear, the speed of transformation has picked up significantly since the beginning of the year. What was expected to take five to seven years is now trying to be done in two to three years. And what in the past took three years is now trying to be done in twelve to eighteen months. In fact, no sooner has something been completed then senior leaders are rethinking the whole thing once more. Whether it is structural change, systems redesign or the entire business model, more and more leaders and managers are wanting to implement change faster than ever.

The impact of this action is the dramatic rise of two things. The first is accelerated convergence where all the change initiatives are trying to get done at the same time with the same level of urgency. The staff involved in implementing all of this change is totally overwhelmed and stretched to their limits. 

Now pause for a moment and realize that the word “change” at times like this has become quite tricky because we are using it frequently but not defining it clearly. In reality, the word “change” has two different meanings now in the world of leadership. One definition relates to doing things better. The other definition relates to doing things differently. The key for all involved is to define which definition are we referencing when we talk about change. Nine times out of ten, a consultant is brought in to solve this problem when in reality, all that needs to happen is that people in leadership positions need to clarify what they are meaning.

Second, the more we transform our organizations to meet the ever changing needs of our customers and clients the more problems will surface. Whether the changes are slow or fast, the best leaders know that defining our problems are as important as solving them. The first step to successful problem solving starts with understanding the differences between technical problems and adaptive problems.

In simple terms, a technical problem has a solution that already exists. The problem is clearly defined and the role of the problem solver is to implement a known solution. Using existing skills, resources and process, the right person with the right tool is deployed to fix the problem.

On the other hand, an adaptive problem requires new thinking and new solutions lest the organization enter a period of significant decline. Here, the defining of the problem may require learning and call into question fundamental assumptions and beliefs. Those involved may have to make major changes to solve the problem, and this will require all new ways of thinking.

Because I am seeing the rapid rise of adaptive problems due to accelerated organizational transformations, I am going to spend most of the summer writing about this subject, and sharing it here in my weekly blog. I will be drawing heavily on the research presented in the following book: Heifetz, Ronald, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky. The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, Harvard Business Press, 2009. 

When I first read this book, I struggled mightily with it. It was dense, academic level reading which required me to completely understand one chapter before preceding to the next. Often, I had to reread a chapter two to three times before I was ready to go to the next chapter. Still, the quality of the research and concepts were exceptional. It was just complicated reading. When I got done, I was delighted, and thought I might not have to do that all over again. However, since 2009, I have often turned back to this book so that I could better figure out what was going on within a certain situation. I also realized that while it was complicated and in-depth, there were very practical and helpful tools and concepts within the book that I now reference on a weekly basis.

While I wish all of you could stop what you are doing and run out and devote two plus weeks to reading this book, I am realistic enough to know that most of you are just too busy and worn out to have the time or energy to do this. Therefore, I will be spending most of the summer into the early fall sharing key concepts with you so you have a greater understanding as you move forward through all of the change and transformation that is taking place in your world.

So, for starts, I challenge you this week to spend more time diagnosing your problems before you attempt to solve them. It will make a world of difference over time.

P.S.  For those of you who would like to read a good, new book this summer, I recommend the following: Lencioni, Patrick. The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize And Cultivate The Three Essential Virtues, Jossey-Bass, 2016.

As Lencioni notes: “I think the problem is that we’ve failed to define what being a team player requires.” His new model focus on three virtues of an ideal team player, namely humble, hungry, and smart. He notes that humble team players “lack excessive ego or concerns about status. They are quick to point out the contributions of others and slow to seek attention for their own.” He defines hungry as “a manageable and sustainable commitment to doing a job well and going above and beyond when it is truly required.” Finally, he explains that smart people are people smart, namely they “have good judgement and intuition around the subtleties of group dynamics and the impact of their words and actions.”

For those of you who have read The Five Dsyfunctions of A Team, you will find this new book focuses “on an individual team member and the virtues that make him or her more likely to overcome that dysfunctional that derail teams.” As the author continues, “… the ideal team player is all about the makeup of individual team members, while the five dysfunctional are the dynamics of teams getting things done.”

Furthermore the author notes “There are four primary applications of the ideal team player model within an organization: (1) hiring, (2) assessing current employees, (3) developing employees who are lacking in one or more of the virtues, and (4) embedding the model into the organization’s culture.”

For any of you who are working on teamwork this summer or coming fall, or one or all the above four areas, this is a good book and worth the time to read it. As Patrick Lencioni notes in the introduction to the book, “Leaders who can identify, hire, and cultivate employees who are humble, hungry, and smart will have a serious advantage over those who can not.” Given current challenges in the areas of recruitment and retention, we all could use an advantage. Here is a good place to start.

Happy summer reading!

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Break Down Silos And Build More Bridges

In preparation for the roll-out of a new strategic plan, the CEO asked me to meet with them and each of their direct reports to make sure they were all on the same page. To get each conversation started, I asked the following three questions: 

- What is changing now that we have a new strategic plan? 

- What will actually be different because of the new strategic plan? 

- Who’s going to lose what when we implement the new strategic plan?

Half way through these meetings, one person responded, “Nothing much will change. This is just like one of the new systems that we rolled out last month. It’s just more, not different.” There was a profound silence in the room and one could almost hear the CEO’s mouth hit the floor, it dropped open so quickly. I just smiled because we had run into a classic case of what I like to call “strategic blindness,” i.e we don’t see our strategy as a whole organization, and we just see the parts we like. In short, we had encountered a potential silo. 

We forget some days that “... status quo functions elegantly to solve a stream of problems and opportunities for which it has already evolved.” As Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky write in their book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, Harvard Business Press, 2009, “Yesterday’s adaptive pressures, problems, and opportunities generated creative and successful responses in the organization that evolved through trial and error into refined structures, cultural norms, and default process and mind-sets.... In other words, yesterday’s adaptations are today’s routines.”

As Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky in the aforementioned book continue: “Overtime, the structures, culture, and defaults that make up an organizational system becomes deeply ingrained, self-reinforcing and very difficult to reshape.” When things are going well, having a self-reinforcing culture, structure and systems is beneficial. When something important changes, e.g. the financial crisis that happened in 2008, an organization or a system’s tenacity can prevent it from adapting, and from learning to thrive in a new context.

The reason this happens is that the organization is trapped by it’s current ways of doing things, simply because these ways worked in the past. The thinking and acting in that particular manner produced success for the organization. It also produced success for individuals who embraced the “new” way of doing things. It even produced leaders who reinforced the “new” way of doing things. These “new” leaders reinforced what was working and do not challenge new structures, culture or systems. The end result is that the organization becomes blind to the ever shifting competitive landscape.

When encountering a silo, first, as recommended in the book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, diagnosis whether or not you have a silo or an individual who is acting like a silo. If it is an individual, then coach in or coach out. If it is a silo, diagnosis the subsystems within it like structure including who reports to who, culture including behavioral norms, meeting protocols, ways of problem solving, decision-making, and what reinforces the culture, e.g. a certain incentive program, and systems including default systems and processes. The goal is to understand how the silo got to where it is a silo and what keeps it from evolving into something else.

Second, with the above in mind, analyze the competitive environment. What are the new adaptive pressures, challenges and opportunities that are surfacing? Distill them into specific trends, demographics, and economic indicators. Recognize you are going to have to “sell the problems” before you find the solution.

Third, reflect on this quote by Stephen Covey from his book, The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, Free Press, 2004: “If you want to make minor changes and improvements, work on practices, behavior and attitude, but if you want to make significant, quantum improvement, work on paradigms.” From my perspective, the power of an effective strategic nexus helps guide all involved when working with a silo. When breaking down silos, we need to have something to replace it with otherwise people, systems and culture will default to the old way of doing things. 

Remember: the culture of any organization is tenacious.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

The Many Responses to Change

When things occur in the world of organizational change that are difficult, risky or complex, people often respond in four ways. Some will marginalize the required changes and attempt to keep the whole organization from confronting an issue. Others will divert the attention of those in management and leadership by broadening the agenda or by overwhelming an agenda with seemingly logical reasons for disrupting their game plan. Still, others will attack the leader personally in order to neutralize his or her message. Finally, some will seduce those in leadership positions with other projects that are much more likely to succeed.  What ever the choice, the goal of all four of these actions is to reduce disequilibrium that could be generated when people need to address the issues brought up by organizational change. Furthermore, all four of the above actions, as noted by Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky in their book, Leadership On The Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading, Harvard Business School Press, 2002, will restore order and protect people from the pains of adaptive work.

One way to deal with these normal choices around the loss of the familiar is to improve performance planning, management and coaching. During routine one to one coaching time, we can create an environment where people can explore, define and better understand the problems they are dealing with as an organization, and then generate realistic and appropriate responses to change. We can also help them build better plans for the future. 

Recognizing that adaptive problems may require all involved to learn new information in order to solve the problem, we must build coaching relationships where people feel safe enough to do this level of learning, especially if fundamental beliefs and patterns of work are called into question. New ways of thinking are difficult in the beginning. Having a thoughtful and helpful coach always makes a difference. 

This week focus on being a better coach and helping people learn their way through change. 

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Learn To Better Define Your Problems

On a regular basis, I urge leaders to better understand and define their problems before they go racing off to create a solution. As I have learned over the years, a poorly defined problem and the subsequent solution can create more problems rather than solutions when the solution is implemented. 

The first step as we plan for fall is to better understand the differences in our problems. Basically, there are two types, namely technical problems and adaptive problems. With the former, the solution falls within the current range of problem solving expertise. With the later, the problem requires new perspective, expertise and new solutions, lest the organization decline.

Most leaders with technical problems focus on getting the right person with the right tool so they can create the right solution. Technical problems are solved by applying existing skills, resources and processes.

Adaptive problems, on the other hand, require new perspective, expertise and solutions. One of the major challenges is actually defining the problem. Doing this may require learning and can call into question fundamental assumptions and beliefs about how we work and what we do. Usually defining and solving an adaptive problem may require all involved to change priorities, beliefs, habits and loyalties. In short, they may require a whole new way of thinking. 

For those of you who are intrigued by this level of work, I encourage you to check out the following two excellent resources:

- Heifetz, Ronald, A., and Marty Linsky. Leadership On The Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading, Harvard Business School Press, 2002.

- Heifetz, Ronald, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky. The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, Harvard Business Press, 2009.

In the beginning, the key is to learn to better define your problems. Once you do this, finding the right solution can be easier and more effective.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Breaking Down Silos & Building Bridges

In preparation for the roll-out of a new strategic plan, the CEO asked me to meet with them and each of their direct reports to make sure they were all on the same page. To get each conversation started, I asked the following three questions: What is changing now that we have a new strategic plan? What will actually be different because of the new strategic plan? Who's going to lose what when we implement the new strategic plan?

Half way through these meetings, one person responded, “Nothing much will change. This is just like one of the new systems that we rolled out last month. It’s just more, not different.” There was a profound silence in the room and one could almost hear the CEO’s mouth hit the floor, it dropped open so quickly. I just smiled because we had run into a classic case of what I like to call “strategic blindness,” i.e we don’t see our strategy as a whole organization, and we just see the parts we like. We also had encountered a potential silo.

We forget some days that “... status quo functions elegantly to solve a stream of problems and opportunities for which it has already evolved.” As Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky write in their book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, Harvard Business Press, 2009, “Yesterday’s adaptive pressures, problems, and opportunities generated creative and successful responses in the organization that evolved through trial and error into refined structures, cultural norms, and default process and mind-sets.... In other words, yesterday’s adaptations are today’s routines.”

Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky in the aforementioned book explain that “Overtime, the structures, culture, and defaults that make up an organizational system becomes deeply ingrained, self-reinforcing and very difficult to reshape.” When things are going well, having a self-reinforcing culture, structure and systems is beneficial. When something important changes, e.g. the financial crisis that started in 2008, an organization or a system’s tenacity can prevent it from adapting, and from learning to thrive in a new context.

The reason this happens is that the organization is trapped by it’s current ways of doing things, simply because these ways worked in the past. The thinking and acting in a particular manner produced success for the organization. It also produced success for individuals who embraced the “new” way of doing things. It even produced leaders who reinforced the “new” way of doing things. These “new” leaders reinforced what was working and do not challenge new structures, culture or systems. The end result is that the organization becomes blind to the ever shifting competitive landscape.

When encountering a silo, first, as recommended in the book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, diagnosis whether or not you have a silo or an individual who is acting like a silo. If it is an individual, then coach in or coach out. If it is a silo, diagnosis the subsystems within it like structure including who reports to who, culture including behavioral norms, meeting protocols, ways of problem solving, decision-making, and what reinforces the culture, e.g. a certain incentive program, and systems including default systems and processes. The goal is to understand how the silo got to where it is a silo and what keeps it from evolving into something else.

Second, with the above in mind, analyze the competitive environment. What are the new adaptive pressures, challenges and opportunities that are surfacing? Distill them into specific trends, demographics, and economic indicators. Recognize you are going to have to “sell the problems” before you find the solution.

Third, reflect on this quote by Stephen Covey from his book, The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, Free Press, 2004: “If you want to make minor changes and improvements, work on practices, behavior and attitude, but if you want to make significant, quantum improvement, work on paradigms.” From my perspective, the power of an accurate strategic nexus helps guide all involved when working with a silo. When breaking down silos, we need to have something to replace it with otherwise people, systems and culture will default to the old way of doing things. Remember: the culture is tenacious.

If you want to explore this subject in greater depth, I would encourage you to read the comprehensive and in-depth aforementioned book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, Harvard Business Press, 2009. It is very good. I also would encourage you to read John Kotter’s recent blog post on the Forbes website on “Breaking Down Silos.” Here is the link: http://blogs.forbes.com/johnkotter/2011/05/03/breaking-down-silos/.

Geery Howe, M.A.Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer inLeadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational ChangeMorning Star Associates319 - 643 - 2257

Questioning Fundamental Assumptions

Recently, I had the wonderful opportunity to spend most of a day with some Iowa high school, student government leaders. I was so impressed with their upbeat attitudes, perspective and openness to learning about leadership, communications and teamwork. With these young people as the future leaders of our country, we are in for a tremendous amount of positive and focused effort to make the world a better place.

As I often do with young people, I ask them to introduce themselves to me by sharing their name, grade, what role they play in student leadership and something unusual that I might not guess when I first meet them. I in turn share something about myself that they might not guess about me. As we came around the circle, a young man introduced himself and said he was a good wrestler. I smiled and replied that I was a wrestler in high school, too.

Given my Mom worked where I went to school, going home after school was not an option. I stayed because she stayed; she was my ride home. When I was in sixth grade, I discovered the varsity wrestling program one day after school and during the winter months I hung out with them until my Mom was done work around 5:00 pm. By the time I was in middle school, I often practiced with them, mostly because I did not have anything else to do after school. By ninth grade, I was a member of the varsity wrestling team. I even was a part of the Penn-Jersey championship team at the school one year. Not that I was a very good wrestler; most of the time I was cannon fodder for what ever weight class was missing someone. I wrestled up or down 1-2 weight classes and was told not to get pinned. Sometimes, I was successful.

When I shared with this young man that I was a former high school wrestler, he was stunned. He just looked at me and had that “Really?” look on his face. I guess he could not picture me, a bald 50+ year old presenter on leadership, as a wrestler, let alone some one who was on a champion team. I don’t know what he imagined when someone who wrestled in middle and high school got older but I was not the picture he had in his head. Maybe he had pictured “retired” high school wrestlers with huge biceps, massive thigh muscles, a butch hair cut and an awesome tattoo. Whatever it was, I was not fitting into his mental picture. For this young man, I clearly was an adaptive problem, calling into question his fundamental beliefs of what happened next.

Many people this winter are encountering adaptive problems. So much so that I believe it would be good today to review the difference between adaptive and technical problems. First, we need to remember that the solution to technical problems are already present within the organization's repertoire. On the other hand, an adaptive problem forces the organization to change, lest it decline.

In more detail, technical challenges or problems fall within our current range of problem-solving expertise. It is clearly defined and a leader or manager can implement a known solution. This involves connecting the right person or tool to the problem and applying existing skills, resources and processes.

On the other hand, adaptive challenges or problems require new perspective, expertise and solutions. In the beginning, defining the problem may require learning and often calls into question fundamental assumptions and beliefs. The solution to an adaptive problem can only be addressed through changes in people’s priorities, beliefs, habits and loyalties. In essence, adaptive problem solving requires new ways of thinking.

One element we forget when dealing with adaptive problems is resistance to loss. As Ronald Heifetz, Ronald, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky in their book The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, Harvard Business Press, 2009, (what I consider to be the best resource out there on this subject) note that finding out what these losses are, e.g. “a changing situation from life and loved ones to jobs, wealth, status, relevance, community, loyalty, identity and competence,” is vital to success.

For the young student leader who could not get his mind around my being a former high school wrestler who was on a champion team in the 70’s, an adaptive challenge requires tremendous thought and introspection. But with time, patience and perspective, it can lead to new ideas and understandings.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Building an Adaptive Organization - part #2

THEME: Spring 2010 From Vision to Action Roundtable Report

FOCUS: Building an Adaptive Organization - part #2

Monday morning: April 19, 2010

Dear friends,

Last week, I wrote about the importance of doing a better job of diagnosing our problems before creating a solution to them. In particular, I explained how technical problems start with a high level of disequilibrium which goes down over time. Thus, when an executive is facing a technical problem, he or she will often work to define the problem and the right solution, protect the organization from external threats, orient people to current roles, restore order, and maintain organizational norms.

I also pointed out that adaptive problems move in the opposite manner. Adaptive problems often start with a low level of disequilibrium. They do not always impact immediately the cash generating part of the business like a technical problem. Leaders typically respond to an adaptive problem by doing the following: identify the adaptive challenge, frame key questions and issues, identify external threats, redefine roles, resist orienting people to new roles too quickly for fear of reducing adaptive behavior, expose conflict or let it emerge so the solution is not influence by issues being left unresolved, and often challenge norms or let them be challenged given adaptive change requires people to rethink how they are working.

One critical element that Ron Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky point out in their book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, Harvard Business Press, 2009, is that leaders dealing with adaptive problems need to be observing events and patterns around them constantly and collecting this data as part of the processing. This observation made me remember the work of Noel M. Tichy and Warren Bennis in their article called “Making Judgment Calls: The Ultimate Act of Leadership”, Harvard Business Review, October 2007. Here, these two authors note that the first step in decision-making is what they call the “Preparation Phase.” They point out that leaders need to do a better job of sensing and identifying what is going on with in and around the company. From this information, they need to frame up the problem and name it. Once this is done, they then can mobilize others to work on it and make sure the appropriate resources are available. The key is constant environmental scanning so one can better understand what is happening and look for patterns within the events.

For example, we know today that there are 38.6 million people born between 1925 - 1945. They are often called the Traditionalists generation. Next are the Baby Boomers, born 1946 - 1964, and there are 78.3 million of them. The following generation is called Gen Xers, born 1965 - 1979, and there are 62 million of them. Finally, there are the Millennials, born 1980 - 2001, and there are 92 million of them. As we all know there are vast difference between each of these generations.

As I scan the environment, here are a couple of things I note. First, Gen Xers, who are new to mid-level management, have no experience in delegating. For them, it is easier to do it alone than include others. They also often lack the capacity to coach mostly because they never experienced it except in high school sports and because no one ever taught them. Finally, everything in the book, The One Minute Manager, is new material for them.

On the hand, Trophy Kids or Millennials are loyal to those they work with, not the faceless organizations that pay their salaries. They love positive feedback because it builds confidence and makes them feel secure. Millennials often have a complete disregard for positional leadership, and will react to positional leaders as if they are parents to be argued with when a decision has been made. Finally, most Trophy Kids or Millennials are being coached by people who have no coaching experience and are not very good at giving feedback. By the way, I still believe that the following book is the best one for understanding Millennials: Alsop, Ron. The Trophy Kids Grow Up: How the millennial generation is shaking up the workplace, Jossey-Bass, 2008.

This week, scan your environment more closely and share your observations with your team. This will be the first step in preparing them for handling adaptive problems and challenges.

Have a great week,

Geery

Geery Howe, M.A.
Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in
Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change

Morning Star Associates
319 - 643 - 2257

Building an Adaptive Organization - part #1

THEME: Spring 2010 From Vision to Action Roundtable Report

FOCUS: Building an Adaptive Organization - part #1

Monday morning: April 12, 2010

Dear friends,

Recently, after a morning meeting on strategy with a client, I stood up, left the room to get another bottle of water, and then came back in. When I returned, the tension and worry in the room was palpable. The senior executive explained to those gathered that there was a high probability the organization was going to have to lay-off people this June. The goal of this next meeting was to determine how to do it right.

From coast to coast, the number one concern amongst executives is whether or not they have the quality and skill level within their personnel at all levels in the organization to cope with the on-going pressures of this current economy. The second concern is how to manage their organization and continue to deliver positive outcomes, i.e. profit and growth, when their funding streams and budgets are decreasing. Everything else is secondary.

The standard solution to such concerns is to do the following: keep people informed, listen, set clear objectives, match the person with the job, and create meaningful work. While I recognize that all of these are good management activities, I think we need to explore these concerns at a deeper level, recognizing that the goal during challenging times is to create an adaptable delivery model.

The first step in this process is to understand the differences in your problems. Referencing the work of Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky in their book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, Harvard Business Press, 2009, we need to remember that there basically two kinds of problems. The first is a technical problem whose solution already lies within the organization's repertoire. The second is an adaptive problem which forces the organization to change lest it decline.

A technical problem falls within our range of current problem-solving and expertise. The problem is clearly defined and known solutions can be implemented by accessing current know-how. A leader needs to apply the right person or tool to the problem to create the right solution. Again, the critical part is to realize that the problem can be fixed by applying existing skills, resources and processes.

An adaptive problem, on the other hand, requires new perspective, expertise and solutions. Here, it may be difficult to actually define the problem. Those involved may need to learn new information and confront issues that call into question fundamental assumptions and beliefs. Furthermore, the solution to this problem can only be addressed through changes in people’s priorities, beliefs, habits and loyalties. In short, it may require a whole new ways of thinking.

Having worked on many of these kinds of problems since the Fall 2009 From Vision to Action Executive Roundtable, I have learned a few things. First, when facing an adaptive problem, people do not know where to start. Typically, their diagnosis of an adaptive problem comes from past technical reference points which are not always helpful.

Second, they attempt to define the problem, determine a solution, and try to implement the solution in a rapid manner. However, as Hieftz and others have noted, “... the common factor for generating adaptive failure is resistance to loss.” The authors of the above mentioned book advise that a key to leadership when dealing with adaptive problems is “the diagnostic capacity to find out the kinds of losses at stake in a changing situation from life and loved ones to jobs, wealth, status, relevance, community, loyalty, identity and competence.” This helps those involved work from a more holistic perspective.

Third, working on an adaptive problems means working at a different pace of change. While a technical problem may cause quite a bit of disequilibrium to status quo in the beginning, an adaptive is typically the opposite. Yet, as the problem is defined, it will cause a raise in the disequilibrium of status quo. Therefore, while a technical problem can be quickly defined and delegated to people to solve, an adaptive problem may need on-going leadership attention and involvement throughout the solution process.

This week, spend more time diagnosing the problem before you rush out to fix it. As Albert Einstein explained, “If I had an hour to save the world, I’d spend 55 minutes defining the problem.”

Have a fantastic week,

Geery

Geery Howe, M.A.
Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in
Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change

Morning Star Associates
319 - 643 - 2257