April 2010

Adaptive Leadership
Excerpts from Patrick Driessen, "What About Adaptive Leadership," October 9, 2009, <http://patrickdriessen.blogspot.com/2009/10/what-about-adaptive-leadership.html>, accessed on April 14, 2010.

It matters a great deal whether leaders conceive of their organizations as being like machines or like living adaptive systems. It matters because it shapes the roles they and their people play. It matters because it bears directly on their ability to tap human potential. It matters because the times have changed and mechanically-based leadership and organizational practices are not adequate to the adaptive challenges being faced.

The old paradigm speaks to only the most mechanical aspects of how organizations operate, those activities that must be repeated in a standardized way. In the mechanical sphere of operations change and creativity threaten efficiency.

When an organization is led as though it were a machine, people come to be treated as parts of machines: mindless extensions of impersonal processes! When that happens, what is desperately undeveloped is commitment, creativity, innovation, flexibility and a great deal of latent potential. What are the different dimensions? The adaptive view of organizations and leadership presents sharp contrasts along a number of dimensions, which can be best explained by comparing Mechanical (M) & Adaptive (A) views:

* (M) Attention is focused on activities.
* (A) Attention is focused on value-added outcomes.
* (M) Job descriptions are long, detailed and constraining.
* (A) Job descriptions are intentionally broad-based to allow for flexibility.
* (M) Role expectations are narrow and rigid.
* (A) Roles are fluid. Within limits, people are expected to substitute for one another.
* (M) Contacts are confined and communication is channeled by higher management.
* (A) Contacts are open and networks are encouraged to form.
* (M) Policies are mostly oriented toward control, what people can't do.
* (A) Policies encourage people to take a "can do" mindset to find solutions.
* (M) The organizational structure is bureaucratic and fragmented into many departments.

What are the characteristics of Adaptive Leaders? Adaptive leadership reflects the actions of leaders who:

* Think and act to exert strategic influence on their environments. They act to assure that their organizations are well positioned competitively;
* Are proactive, foresee opportunities and put the resources in place to go after them;
* Employ a broad-based style of leadership that enables them to be personally more flexible and adaptive;
* Entertain diverse and divergent views when possible before making major decisions;
* Can admit when they are wrong and alter or abandon a non-productive course of action;
* Are astute students of their environments;
* Can generate creative options for action;
* Build their organization's capacities to learn, transform structure, change culture, and adapt technology;
* Stay knowledgeable of what their stakeholders want;
* Are willing to experiment, take risks;
* Strive to improve their personal openness to new ideas and stay abreast by being lifelong learners;
* Love and encourage innovation from the ranks of their organizations.

Leadership's Role
Excerpt from pullanikkat, "Role of modern corporate leader - Adapt to changes and handle disturbances," December 23, 2009, Business & Jobs, <http://ayushveda.com/blogs/business/role-of-modern-corporate-leader-adapt-to-changes-and-handle-disturbances/>, accessed on April 14, 2010.

The traditional view of leadership is the execution of the skills in analyzing and problem solving, decision making, articulating and directing, motivating and monitoring the status of operations. Although these skills are mandatory for any effective leader, the current context of leaderships demands more to move in the direction of success for any effective business operation.

In a challenging corporate world, executing timely leadership skills is not an easy task. The immediate results, unexpected consequences and its impact on the business should be forecasted before arriving at any decision. The impact of the decision and practices on tomorrow’s world also has to be considered, and this makes decision making for a leader a tough job. Adapting to the changes in the environment and global business operations is not an easy task. As many would be reluctant to adapt to the changes, strong levels of criticism are always attached to any moves for adaptation. Practices that seem ill suited to the changing environment should be eliminated, replacing them with better efficient and attractive ones. Adaptive leadership involves two challenges, tackling the current challenge and meanwhile building adaptability.

Leadership Book: The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World
Description from Amazon.com:

We live in a time of danger and opportunity. Individuals, organizations, communities and countries must continuously adapt to new realities to simply survive. Wanting more, wanting to thrive even under constantly shifting and often perilous conditions, people in all sectors are called upon to lead with the courage and skill to challenge the status quo, deploy themselves with agility, and mobilize others to step into the unknown. Ron Heifetz first mapped a groundbreaking theory of leadership in the seminal book, Leadership Without Easy Answers. Followed by the bestselling Leadership on the Line, he and long-time Harvard colleague Marty Linsky offered a compelling set of arguments and stories to show how to lead and stay alive through the dangers of change. Now Heifetz and Linsky, joined by Alexander Grashow, have distilled the learning from their combined sixty-plus years of leadership consulting, teaching and training around the globe into a practical hands-on guide to making your leadership both more effective and more powerful.

The best leader is the one who has the sense to surround himself with outstanding people and self-restraint not to meddle with how they do their jobs. - Author Unknown