Feedback Form
Home Features Mastermind Forums About Advertise Blog Network Contact Be An Author

BOOK REVIEW: The Practice of Adaptive Leadership (By Ronald Heifetz Et Al, Harvard Business, 2009)

BOOK REVIEW: The Practice of Adaptive Leadership (By Ronald Heifetz Et Al, Harvard Business, 2009)

Dealing with change and problem solving–these tasks are at the core of what leader/managers do. But there are two distinctly different types of challenges that precipitate change and bring on problems for managers. The authors of this enlightening book lay these out right at the beginning:

  1. Technical challenges – problems that can be pretty clearly defined and can be addressed with known solutions or ones that can be developed by a few technical experts. These fixes can usually be implemented using the organization’s current structures and procedures. No big impact on people here.

  2. Adaptive challenges – these forces require significant (and often painful) shifts in people’s habits, status, role, identity, way of thinking, etc.

    For example, how do we change to put more decision authority in the hands of our front-line employees? Or, high tech communications and teleworking are transforming us into a virtual company but people feel they are losing touch with one another and with the corporate center.

Most managers come up through organizational ranks primarily on the strength of their professional or technical knowledge. Their strong suit is tackling technical challenges and solving them through analysis, logic, and experience.

This default response pattern will not work nearly as well on adaptive challenges, however, because these are less clear. They tend to impact the organization as a whole system of interrelated processes and human elements. They require the involvement of many or all stakeholders, especially employees, to come up with and implement an optimal solution. They call for an “adaptive leadership” which mobilizes people and units that frequently have different needs, priorities and perspectives toward new ways of working and ways of thinking.

This book is a roadmap for individuals at any level who want to lead “adaptively” in response to a complex change that is being faced. Rich with suggestions and examples, it divides the topic into three logical sections:

  1. How to diagnose your organization (it’s current structure, culture, political dynamics and ability to adapt) and the nature of the challenge you face.

  2. How to mobilize the system (interpreting the challenge, acting politically, surfacing and managing the inevitable conflict, experimenting, and making effective interventions to generate change.)

  3. Seeing how you, yourself, are part of the system (as a leader, you have your own needs, vested interests, fears, perceptions and biases, connections with key others in the organization, etc., that will influence how you look at the problem and forge potential responses)

I am going to highlight just a few of the authors’ ideas that particularly caught my attention and convinced me to recommend this book.

On the “Balcony” and “On the Dance Floor”
The two perspectives an adaptive leader must have. The “balcony” (looking down on the “dance”) is where you get a larger perspective of what you’re facing and how you are doing with your response. From here you do your observing of patterns, reflecting, option thinking, analyzing and monitoring of the change.

When you take action and make an intervention, you have stepped onto the “dance floor” and are participating in the “dance.” For example, you convene a meeting, announce a strategy, create a task force, restructure, reassign some staff. The point is you need to shift back and forth frequently as you plan and execute your response to the adaptive challenge, experiment with strategies and assess the results, solicit input from opposing factions and deliberate on how best to deal with them.

The “Productive Zone of Disequilibrium”…with your “Hand on the Thermostat”
Since this is an adaptive challenge you face, you will, of necessity, be taking your people outside their comfort zone. But how much “heat” should you create for them? The authors’ answer: as much as they can take! You want to get their attention and keep the change moving forward without causing them to totally resist. With keen observation, the adaptive leader keeps adjusting the “thermostat” (applying more pressure for change or backing off temporarily) just enough as the process unfolds. This surely must be where leadership becomes an art.

“Authorizers”
We all have authorizers. They are anybody who grants us the authority (formal or informal) to lead. Your boss is an obvious one. She gives you your job description and decides whether to intervene when she feels that you have gone outside your mandate. Your staff, by their willingness to respond to your leadership, are authorizers too. A group of recalcitrant employees can really limit your influence to get things done.

If you decide to exercise adaptive leadership and you are not positioned at the executive level, here are three things you need to keep in mind about authorizers:

  1. A big reason people resist your push for changes in their behavior, procedures, ways of thinking, etc., is that they feel loyalties to certain of their authorizers. For example, a resistant sales team may feel obligations to their own Vice President who is on record as opposing moving from a geographical to a product line organization.

  2. How much latitude you have to intervene is greatly influenced by your authorizers above you. Being an adaptive leader means pushing the edge of your authority and taking chances, then asking for forgiveness (vs. permission) later on.

  3. On top of this, adaptive leadership is all about challenging people’s expectations and comfort levels. That, of course, can include the expectations and tranquility of those powerful authorizers above you in the chain of command.

Signs that the challenge is Adaptive
Ron Heifetz and his colleagues offer some great indicators that the challenge you have taken on is indeed an adaptive one, one that triggers an emotional response in people:

  • People’s talk about the situation sounds increasingly like complaining.

  • The situation festers or reappears following a short-term fix.

  • Current, perhaps long-held, values or truths in the organization seem to be getting in the way.

Finally, this book drives home the point that adaptive challenges are about people changing…

  • Often they must shift their behavior from what up to now has been guided by by deeply-worn neural pathways. They may have to learn new skills, take on new roles, adopt new beliefs, honor new values, and so on.


  • Then there is the adaptive leader himself who must be acutely aware of what is going inside him–his own doubts, feelings of incompetence, fear of failure, and apprehension about possible retribution or punishment for stands he takes.

If you have never read a book on dealing with change, I would start with William Bridges’ Managing Transitions. It lays out a simple framework for the (human) transition process, from “Endings” through the “Neutral Zone” to “New Beginnings.” Once you understand Bridges’ basic roadmap, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership is a great next step.

Adaptive leaders are courageous leaders. And in this increasingly complex world we need a lot of them.





BOOK REVIEW The Practice of Adaptive Leadership By Ronald Heifetz Et Al Harvard Business 2009 - To learn more about this author, visit Ian Cook's Website.

Like this article? Share it with your friends

Article Feedback
 Article Feedback No article feedback found.
  Leave Your Feedback
article feedback

Article Feedback
Dianne Crampton

Dianne Crampton is an executive leadership coach, team culture consultant, author and president of TIGERS Success Series, Inc. Dianne has been helping CEO's and Executives connect their employees to their core values and goals for over 20 years using the trademarked TIGERS team culture process, which stands for trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success. To download a free white paper on behaviors that build strong teams and behaviors that will predictably tear them down go here.

Dianne's contribution to the 2010 Pfeiffer Consulting Journal (an imprint of John Wiley and Sons Publishers) entitled TIGERS Hearted Teams is available in November 2009.  Her new book TIGERS Among Us: 5 Winning Business Team Cultures And Why, Three Creeks Publishing will release in March 2010.  To receive publishing discounts, subscribe to the free TigerTracks Newsletter here.

- Visit Dianne Crampton's Website

David Acheson
David Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns.  David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website

Leanne Hoagland-Smith
Are your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website

Dave Kurlan
Dave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website

David Barr
David Barr is the President of Venture Opportunities, Inc. David has been a professional business broker/intermediary since 1980 focusing on General Business Brokerage and Mergers and Acquisitions representing client transaction value from $400,000 to $20,000,000. Mr. Barr has handled the sale of over four hundred and fifty companies. David earned a university degree from the State University of New York majoring in economics and business. David holds the Mergers and Acquisition Master Intermediary and the Certified Business Intermediary designations from the International Business Brokers Association. He is also a Senior Business Analyst and a Texas licensed Real Estate Agent. For more information about David and Venture Opportunities, visit www.bizdealmaker.com. - Visit David Barr's Website

Anne Barr
Anne Barr has over 26 years experience in sales and marketing, six years as a franchisee. She has assisted over 367 business owners and purchasers to achieve their goals in career change, transition and exit strategy. She holds the designation of Certified Franchise Executive from the International Franchise Association, Certified Business Intermediary from the International Business Brokers Association and Board Certified Broker from the Texas Association of Business Brokers. Anne is active in professional organizations, networking groups and volunteers for non-profit entities. As owner/operator of four successful businesses, Anne has proven people skills and enjoys helping clients find the right "fit" in business ownership. Visit www.FranchiseOpportunitySpecialist.com for more information about me and my company. - Visit Anne Barr's Website

Casey Gollan
Casey Gollan, Business Coaching & Mentoring Programs. Add $1 Million to $10 Million in the next 1 to 3 years. Since 1996 Casey has to added hundreds of millions of dollars to businesses. Watch a free video see client results Business Coaching website. - Visit Casey Gollan's Website

Kim Castle
With nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website


To learn more about the Evan Elite Author Program please contact us.

About The Author


Ian Cook
(Visit Ian's Website) Ian helps managers become the "best bosses" their employees ever had.

Through his keynote presentations, highly interactive training workshops, team building facilitation and individual coaching, he helps his clients develop strong leaders at all levels of their organization.

Ian works primarily with managers, mid-level to executive. His programs introduce cutting-edge skills and concepts around

- transforming managers into leaders
- fostering superior team performance.

Ian began his training and consulting firm, Fulcrum Associates Inc., in 1988, following seventeen years of corporate experience in both the high-tech manufacturing and transportation industries. He has a Bachelor of Commerce from McGill and a Masters degree in the field of Human Resources Management from Cornell University. Ian holds the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation and is a presenter to Vistage International groups.

Ian Cook is a Platinum author on EvanCarmichael.com
About The Author

View Author Blog
Build Best Bosses - Musings about Leadership from Ian Cook.
Build Best Bosses
View Author Blog

View Author Video
View Author Video

Free Downloads


Ian Cook's

Complete
List Of
Leadership
Articles

Name
Email
If you enjoyed this article, get Ian Cook's Complete List of Leadership Articles For FREE!

More Ian Cook
BOOK REVIEW The Extraordinary Leader Turning Good Managers into Great Leaders By John H Zenger Joseph Folkman McGraw Hill 2002 ISBN 0071387471
BOOK REVIEW Mindset The New Psychology of Success By Carol S Dweck Random House 2006 ISBN 1400062756
You Gotta Getem To Wanna 6 Roles the Modern Leader Plays
BOOK REVIEW Influencer the Power to Change Anything By Kerry Patterson et al McGraw Hill 2008 ISBN 9780071484992
Choice Accountability The Bedrock of Superior Performance
BOOK REVIEW Quiet Leadership Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work By David Rock HarperCollins Publishers 2006 ISBN 9780060835903
BOOK REVIEW Why Should Anyone Be Led by YOU What it Takes to be an Authentic Leader By Rob Goffee Gareth Jones Harvard Business School Press 2006 ISBN 1578519713
A Lesson For Managers From The World Of Sales
Want Greater ROI From Your Meetings Six Questions That Will Make The Difference
Dealing With Resistance The 4 2 Method
Free Downloads

Referred by: http://upwardaction.com



 
 
 


Evan Elite Authors
Linda Richardson  
John Power  
George Ludwig  
Evan Elite Authors

Become An Author
Have you written articles that would be of value to entrepreneurs? Become an expert on our site by publishing them! Expose yourself to a wide audience, drive more traffic to your website and get more sales! Click Here for details.
Become An Author

Evan's Latest Video
Modeling the Masters: Learn the true secrets behind Walt Disney's business success factors & grow your company! Video produced by Phanta Media
Evan's Latest Video

Business Opportunities
"Learn straight from Evan how you can Make a Full Time Income (And More) from a Website"

How to Start An Online Business

Click Here To Learn More
Business Opportunities



Evan's Newsletter
Get advice & tips from famous business owners, new articles by entrepreneur experts, my latest website updates, & special sneak peaks at what's to come!
Name:
Email:
Evan`s Newsletter

Free Downloads
FREE Realestate CSS Template Icon FREE Realestate CSS Template
Marketing ScoreCard Icon Marketing ScoreCard
Romance to the Dance Icon Romance to the Dance
Tips for QuickBooks Backup Icon Tips for QuickBooks Backup
Your Marketing Mindset Icon Your Marketing Mindset
Free Downloads - Complete List

Entrepreneur Tools and Guides
Top 50 Diversion Blogs
Top 50 Diversion Blogs
Top Diversion Blogs of 2009
 
Write The Press Release
Write The PR
Press Release Builder
 
Entrepreneur Tools and Guides

SEO For Africa
SEO For Africa
Lavodi Group Kinshasa, The Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Lavodi Group
Kinshasa, The Democratic Republic of the Congo
SEO For Africa

If I Were A Startup...
Brian Scudamore, $200k to $8 Mil in 5 years
Brian Scudamore
$200k to $8 Mil in 5 years
Razor Suleman, $143k to $5.4 Mil in 5 years
Razor Suleman
$143k to $5.4 Mil in 5 years
If I Were A Startup... - Complete List

Famous Entrepreneurs
Philip Knight, Nike
Chris Gardner, Gardner Rich
Chris Gardner
Gardner Rich
Famous Entrepreneurs - Complete List

Entrepreneur Advice
Tom Peters, In Search Of Excellence
Tom Peters
In Search Of Excellence
Paul Kedrosky, Venture Capitalist
Paul Kedrosky
Venture Capitalist
Entrepreneur Advice - Complete List

Popular Articles
(Premium Authors)

     SEO and the Entrepreneur
By Clint Dixon
     An SEO is the next Lawyer in your life.
By Clint Dixon

Have A Suggestion?
Toronto Salsa Classes / Toronto Salsa Lessons Email us your ideas on how to make our website more valuable! Thank you Sharon from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for your suggestions to make the newsletter look like the website and profile younger entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez and Sean Combs!
Have A Suggestion?

More Evan Carmichael
More Information