LDXXXIX Labs Team Tool Kit

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 February Lab Work
Revisiting Adaptive Leadership “Big Ideas”
 Knowing your passion is critical when leading

→ Requires leaders to “get on the balcony” and to know your own biases
→ Emphasis on adaptive challenges vs. solving technical problems
→ Leadership happens at all levels, regardless of position
→ Requires learning from stakeholders not authority
 Work that engages the “gut” and addition to the “head”

 Leaders understand and embrace the resistance that comes with LOSS

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 Design Thinking

Stay
Here
Today!

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 Framing February’s Lab Discussion
1. Reflect to practice “getting on the balcony”:
 Reflect on your site visit(s): What did you observe?

 Share other stakeholder perspectives gathered so far..

 Reflect on what might be emerging as Adaptive challenges and how they

distinguish themselves Technical challenges.

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 Framing February’s Lab Discussion
2. Go Deep to practice “empathizing” within the context of
adaptive leadership “big ideas”:
 Who are stakeholders who are not in positions of authority to seek out?

 Who are the uncharacteristic leaders you can seek out?

 What logistical planning do you need to do today to practice even more

empathy by the March session?

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 Where is this all leading?
April Presentation Guidelines
 Provide specific examples of how the Team was able to “Get on the
Balcony” with the information brought forth through site visits and
other outreach methods practicing the “empathize” step of design
thinking.

 Provide specific examples of Adaptive challenges the Team

discovered and explain how they differed from the Technical
challenges found along the way. Adaptive challenges can
materialize at the individual, organizational, and/or ecosystem
levels.

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 Where is this all leading?
April Presentation Guidelines - Continued
 Develop an action plan to tackle one or more of the Adaptive
challenges. The plan should include a strategy(s) to deal “head on”
with the resistance that will come with loss. Identify all who stand to
loose in the change process. As leader, talk about how you will
confront, navigate or mitigate loss that any stakeholders may face.
 Since Adaptive challenges are difficult because they require
people to change their ways, consider what might be: conserved,
discarded, or reinvented.

 Bonus: Identify any leverage points: Pent-up energy for change,

Bright spots, and Ripple effects.
 Bonus, Bonus: Have conversations with those who stand to lose in the
change process.

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Adaptive Leadership – How Success Looks

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 What Adaptive Leadership is good for

• Adaptive leadership involves the paradoxical

embrace of relentless optimism about the prospect
for changing the world and brutal realism about the
obstacles to doing so.

• The biggest mistake that people make in trying to

lead change is that they treat adaptive challenges
as if they were technical problems.

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Adaptive vs. technical challenges
 “A technical challenge is a problem that we readily recognize how
to solve—the work is ensuring effective execution. We know what
questions to ask, and we have tools and solutions to address the
issue.”

 “The adaptive challenge “is the problem we do not recognize or

fully understand, for which there are no easy, ready solutions. The
adaptive challenge requires us to ask new questions and reframe
problems; it requires learning, creativity and flexible thinking in
order to be addressed successfully.”

Source: From Greenwich Leadership Partners’ whitepaper “From Financial Sustainability to ‘Thriveability’: Why We Need to Change
the Conversation, referencing Rob Heifetz in The Practice of Adaptive Leadership. Greenwich Leadership Partners: Old Greenwich, June
28, 2017.

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Why adaptive challenges are difficult
Adaptive challenges are difficult because their solutions require people
to change their ways.

Unlike known or routine problem solving for which past thinking,

relating, and operating are sufficient for achieving good outcomes,
adaptive leadership demands three very tough, human tasks:

 figuring out what to conserve from past practices,

 figuring out what to discard from past practices, and

 inventing new ways that build from the best of the past

Source: Heifetz, Ronald, Alexander Grashow, Marty Linsky. The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, p. 69

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LD Labs: Team Presentation “Bonus”

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 Adaptive Organizations
5 Characteristics

1. Elephants in the room are named.

2. Responsibility for the organization’s future is shared.

3. Independent judgment is expected.

4. Leadership capacity is developed.

5. Reflection and continuous learning are institutionalized.

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The Zone of Productive Disequilibrium

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Adaptive Leadership

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