IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

Adaptive Leadership

ADAPTIVE LEADERSHIP

Module 4
Readings
1 HR
EXPERIMENTING
A D A P T I V E LY

Congratulations! This is the last module
of the course. So far you’ve learned the
importance of getting on the balcony to
see the leadership “gap,” analyzed factions
to understand “whose work is it?” and
distinguished between adaptive and
technical work so you don’t waste time
Because the “people with the problem
are the problem,” the experimenting on
an adaptive challenges is itself an act of
mobilization. That is, the factions involved
enact the solution through their active
search for one. This is the unique part about
the experiments you will be designing to run

Leadership
and resources solving the wrong problem on the dance floor.
perfectly.

Leadership
An experiment, whether done by a scientist,
Now it’s time to get back on the dance floor a marketer or yourself in tackling an
and experiment with a new kind of dancing. adaptive challenge, must start with a

Adaptive
hypothesis. Think of the diagnostic work

Adaptive
Why experiment? you’ve done in the first three modules of this
As you know, adaptive challenges can’t be course as hypotheses you’ve created and are

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“solved” like a technical problem since the now going to test on the dance floor.
solution is unknown. Fortunately, there’s
a tried and true way to approach this In this module, you’ll design an experiment
situation. Experimentation. for your own challenge to try out.

Like a scientist, who works toward

discovering unknowns, experimentation
means making a hypothesis, testing it,
updating it and testing again. Adaptive
experiments follow a similar approach—
with a twist.

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 THE SKILL OF NOT KNOWING:
A BOOK EXCERPT

It’s good to not know what to do. Much better than thinking you know
what to do, but actually don’t. Another word for not knowing is humility,
which shares an etymological root with the word humiliation. In other
words, we gain humility after the humiliating defeat, failure , and frustration
that come with having thrown our best at a problem or situation. With
humility, a space opens between problem and solution, between action

Leadership
and reaction, for us to try something truly new, to fail and find out, yet
again, what doesn't work.

Leadership
Instead, trust that you will recognize leadership moments when they occur.

Adaptive
Trust that you will feel the courage gather when the moment comes, and

Adaptive
that you will know what to do when it does. Give yourself permission to act
from a different spirit, from a deeper sense of purpose and relationship to
the complexity of the situation and the people involved. Allow yourself to

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act from a spirit of experimentation, play, exploration, or something that
makes you feel alive…

Whatever that next step is, it will come with a little bit of uncertainty. It’ll
require courage. Yet, from this place of honesty emerges collective action,
a genuine commitment to sustain leadership work that, over time, reveals
answers that were not visible from where you started.

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READYING YOURSELF
AND OTHERS

As you get ready to act, you might find yourself Why It Feels Risky and What It Means
having second thoughts. Do I understand the to Modulate the Risk
situation sufficiently? Do I care enough to even You take people out of their comfort
make the time? Can I afford to take a risk? zone and “raise the heat” when you call
More importantly, can I afford not to? attention to tough questions, surface
a deep value contradiction, or draw
Exercising leadership is risky, which is why we people’s sense of responsibility beyond
seldom see it. Readying yourself and others their current norms and job description.

Leadership
requires understanding what holds us back

Leadership
from starting, and what modulating the risk The launch of even B
small experiment
looks like once you’ve begun. can introduce disorientation, frustration,
tension or even some conflict as people

Adaptive
What Holds Us Back begin to face an issue they’d rather avoid.
Here are common things that can hold you

Adaptive
back from summoning courage for the work of As you can imagine, in such
leadership: environments where people feel

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discomfort and perceive inherit risks, you
+ Loyalties to people who may not need to be present and compassionate to
believe you are doing the right thing. the pain or confusion, taking care that it
The people you depend on and who doesn’t get too high. At the same time, as
depend on you can feel disappointed someone practicing adaptive leadership,
or exposed when you act differently. you need to be aware
that without some
level of tension – without some impetus
+ Fear of incompetence. Not having
for change – people will stay stuck in the
an answer can make you feel like a
status quo.
fraud or intellectually vulnerable.

+ Uncertainty about the right path. The delicate balance between having
+ Feeling some loss of a sense of just enough “heat”, but not so much
comfort, security, routine, identity. that things break down is know as the
productive zone of disequilibrium (PZD).
+ Not having the stomach, relentless
Being aware of the concept will help
persistence or patience for the time
you be better prepared UP
NPEVMBUF the
and effort required to make change
risk once you begin your experiment on
happen.
the dance floor.
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O R C H E S T R AT I N G
DISEQUILIBRIUM

The Productive Zone of Disequilibrium (PZD)

The PZD is like a pressure cooker: set the temperature and pressure too low, and you stand no
chance of transforming the ingredients in the cooker into a good meal. Set it too high, and the
cover will blow off the cooker’s top, releasing the ingredients of your meal across the room.

The following graphs shows what adaptive work looks like over time.

Adaptive
Adaptive
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Leadership
Problems within our repertoire - technical problems - generally get resolved quickly with a lower
amount of disequilibrium and a shorter period of time. Problems outside of our repertoire that
require changing hearts and minds - adaptive problems - take more time and require a sustained
disequilibrium.

Orchestrating disequilibrium requires letting in enough “heat” to keep people above their comfort
zone or threshold of change, but not so much that things start to boil over past the limit of
tolerance. On the following page, we’ll discuss more on how people avoid staying in the PZD so
that you will be better prepared to prevent that from happening when you are managing the
“heat” on the dance floor.

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AV O I D I N G
W O R K AV O I D A N C E

Because the productive zone of disequilibrium is the space in which people have to make tough
choices, confront conflict, take risks and interrupt the status quo, there is a natural tendency to
get out of the zone. We call this work avoidance.

Adaptive
Adaptive Leadership
Leadership
Work Avoidance Form 1: Displace Responsibility

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+ Shoot the messenger > Marginalizing the person raising the issue

+ Delegate the adaptive work > To consultants, committees or task forces

+ Attack authority > Compelling them to take the work back prematurely

+ Scapegoat > Blaming others who aren’t in the room

Work Avoidance Form  Divert Attention

+ Launch technical fixes, therefore wasting time and resources

+ Defining the problem to fit your own competence, and therefore taking potential,
creative solutions off the table

+ Creating a proxy fight, such as a personal or personality conflict, to avoid the real issue

+ Denying the problem and leaving it unaddressed and unresourced

Understanding these forms of work avoidance and being able to point out when people engage
in this behavior is important when you are trying to manage and control the “heat” with your
faction.
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PZD
WORKSHEET

Think about a moment in your work or personal life when you experienced a productive zone of
disequilibrium (PZD). Perhaps it was a tough conversation with a good friend that you stuck in
longer than you had to. Or feedback from a caring boss that, however accurate, was difficult to
adjust to.

What happened?

Leadership
Leadership
How did you feel? Did you ever get above the “limit of tolerance”? If so, how did you recover?

Adaptive
Adaptive
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Did you or anyone involved engage in any work avoidance? What work avoidance behavior do
you tend to default to when faced with a tough choice?

In hindsight, were you able to stay in the PZD long enough to see progress? Or did you
return prematurely below the “threshold for change”? If so, how might you have handled it
differently?

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EXAMPLES: BRINGING
PEOPLE INTO PZD

1: COURAGEOUS CONVERSATION 2: READYING AND RIPENING THE

One practical approach to creating
productive disequilibrium is to have a
courageous conversation with one of the
stakeholders you need to engage.
It’s a technique for surfacing a tension
ADAPTIVE WORK
Before engaging in a courageous
conversation, you might have to ripen the
issue and ready people to take it on. An issue
is ripe when it has people’s attention and
is considered important. An individual or

Leadership
inherent in the adaptive challenges while faction is ready when there is a willingness
making sure to preserve your relationship. and capacity to do the adaptive work.

Leadership
In this module, you watched a video READINESS
featuring a courageous conversation that

Adaptive
HIGH LOW
Eric facilitated at Acumen. Watch the video

Adaptive
again and pay attention to how technical Crisis is Group looking to
acknowledged authority
solutions and work avoidance are handled,
HIGH

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as well as how the various stakeholders are Take on the issue Need to build
illuminated to help understand the directly capacity
RIPENESS

adaptive work.

Group looking Group in denial

What part of the conversation do you for technical
think worked well? What part might need solution   Build allies and
LOW

to be revisited another day? partners before

Ripen adaptive ripening
elements

You also watched clips from the movie

Invictus, which tells the story of how Nelson
Mandela, newly elected as the first black
President of South Africa, prepared his own
people to take on the (adaptive) work of
rebuilding the nation after the end of
apartheid.

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EXAMPLES: BRINGING
PEOPLE INTO PZD

In the first scene, Mandela works through a
clash between his old bodyguards and the
new bodyguards on his security team.
Then in the second scene, Mandela is about
to walk into a confrontation.
In both examples, you saw the need to
engage in a gradual process of easing people
into an uncomfortable state of uncertainty,
disorder, tension or conflict at a pace and
level that’s tolerable for all involved.
Now, it’s your turn to imagine how you

Leadership
Finally, the last scene shows Mandela’s would do that to tackle your adaptive
speech to the committee that has just voted challenge.

Leadership
to disband the Springboks.
3FBE
NPSF
BCPVU
FYQFSJNFOUT
PO
UIF
OFYU

What did Mandela do to draw attention QBHF
BOE
UIFO
EFGJOF
ZPVS
PXO
5IJT
XJMM

Adaptive
(ripen) the issue of rebuilding the nation? CF
UIF
MBTU
BTTJHONFOU
UIBU
ZPV
OFFE
UP

Adaptive
How did he help ready people? DPNQMFUF
GPS
UIJT
DPVSTF

Tip: He chose a different tactic in each

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scene depending on the stakeholder.

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EXPERIMENT AND
TA K E S M A R T R I S K S

Here is an excerpt from ‘The Theory Behind

the Practice” Chapter 2 in The Practice Holding incompatible ideas in your head at the
of Adaptive Leadership on the value of same time is a little like deciding to get married.

experiments. At the moment you decide that this is the person

you want to spend the rest of your life with, you
have to fully embrace your choice; you have
Experiment and Take Smart Risks
to believe wholeheartedly that it is the right
decision. But your practical self also knows that

Leadership
“When you are dealing with adaptive challenges,
you probably would have fallen in love with
there is no obvious answer to the question “What

Leadership
someone else under different circumstances. So
is going on here?” Trying to define the problem
how can your intended be the only “right” one
at hand is a contentious act in itself. Managing
for you? If you treated the decision to marry this
this ambiguity requires courage, tenacity, and an

Adaptive
particular person at this particular moment as
experimental mind-set: you try things out, see
a 51–49 question rather than a 90–10 question,

Adaptive
what happens, and make changes accordingly.
you would never take the leap. The same paradox
applies to adaptive leadership interventions. You
When you adopt an experimental mind-set, you

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have to run the experiment with full and hopeful
actively commit to an intervention you have
conviction.
designed while also not letting yourself become
wedded to it. That way, if it misses the mark,
F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that “the test of a
you do not feel compelled to defend it. This
first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two
mind-set also opens you to other, unanticipated
opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still
possibilities. (You are undoubtedly familiar with
retain the ability to function.” In the realm of
the stories about the ways Benjamin Franklin and
adaptive leadership, you have to believe that your
Thomas Edison produced their great inventions
intervention is absolutely the right thing to do at
by accident, while pursuing some other purposes
the moment you commit to it. But at the same
entirely.) Thinking experimentally also opens you
time, you need to remain open to the possibility
to learning: you stay open to the possibility that
that you are dead wrong.”
you might be wrong. Finally, an experimental
mind-set facilitates the iterative nature of
the adaptive leadership process: you make an
intervention based on your interpretation of the
situation, and you see what happens. You use the
results of your experiment to take the next step
or to make a midcourse correction.

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FINAL
THOUGHTS

Congratulations! You have now completed
the last reading on adaptive leadership. Here
are some final thoughts from Eric.
“I hope you’re seeing progress on your “gap”
and learning helpful techniques for leading
adaptive change. At the deepest levels,
to do so reduces our work to the kind of
technical, us vs. them mentality that’s
making headlines these days. Embracing
it and being open to “alien” ideas, values
and loyalties helps our work become more
spacious and generous.

Leadership
however, we don’t need techniques. We need Democratizing leadership is risky business.
insight into ourselves and our “work” to help It is a non-stop experiment, unless we blow

Leadership
us learn and let go (i.e. adapt) amidst the up the lab that is ourselves.
tensions that come from uncertainty and
diversity. Thanks for your work over the last four

Adaptive
weeks to keep the experiment alive!”

Adaptive
Rather than seeing this tension as a
condition to be relieved, can we embrace it Now head to your final team meeting, and

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as an energy to hold in our hearts? Refusing finish up the course!

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