Do you have a technical challenge at hand? Or is it an adaptive challenge?

 

Learning how to convert leads, configuring your ERP software or how to land an aeroplane with a stuck nose wheel are examples of largely technical challenges, and their accomplishment is certainly important to you or the nervous passengers contemplating a crash landing.

​

Many, if not most, of the challenges we face in an ever-increasing complex world - and will face tomorrow - require something more than incorporating new technical skills into your current mindset. We are facing “adaptive challenges,” and they can only be met by transforming our mindset, and ourselves.

 

"The biggest error leaders make is when they apply technical means to solve adaptive challenges. In other words, we may be unable to bring about the changes we want because we are misdiagnosing our aspiration as technical when in reality it is an adaptive challenge. Distinguishing adaptive challenges from technical ones again brings our attention back from the “problem” to the “person having the problem.”[#]

​​

Transformations in essence are an adaptive challenge and less of a technical one. However, when your management team in charge is insufficiently aware AND they lack skills & relevant experiences you often get a deadly combination where you get stuck in the land of promises and broken hopes, a vacuum between now and never.

 

Just like you, I understand the reality of complex organizational settings, and how immune people are to change. There are so many things to address, that people can selectively focus on easily seen elements from the past which feel familiar. How does that help you on your transformational journey?

 

Do reach out now, as I’m totally open to listening to how I can support business leaders and their teams #unstucking themselves?

​

# Leadership Without Easy Answers, 

Ronald A. Heifetz