Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics

Purpose and possibility

• The illusion of the broken system
• Distinguishing technical problems from adaptive challenges
• Distinguishing leadership from authority
• Living the disequilibrium, observing, interpreting, and intervening
• Experimenting and taking smart risks smartly
• Engaging above and below the neck and connecting to purpose
• Living life as a leadership laboratory
• Resisting the leap to action and discovering the joy of making hard choices

Diagnosing the system

• The elegance and tenacity of the status quo
• Diagnosing the system and discovering structural implications
• Determining the technical and adaptive elements
• Identifying the four adaptive challenge archetypes
• Recognizing the political landscape and uncovering values that drive behavior
• Sharing responsibility for the organization's future
• Valuing independent judgment and building leadership capacity
• Institutionalizing reflection and continuous learning

Mobilizing the system

• Reframing the group's default interpretations
• Generating a diversity of interpretations
• Designing effective interventions
• Keeping work at the center of people's attention
• Managing authority figures
• Protecting and engaging the voices of dissent
• Creating a holding environment
• Nurturing shared responsibility for the organization
• Developing leadership capacity
• Institutionalizing reflection and continuous learning

Seeing yourself as a system

• Identifying your loyalties
• Knowing your tuning
• Broadening your bandwidth
• Understanding your roles
• Identifying your scope of authority
• Articulating and prioritizing your purposes
• The story you tell yourself

Deploying yourself

• Staying connected to your purposes
• Integrating your ambitions and purposes
• Engaging courageously
• Inspiring people
• Being with your audience
• Speaking from the heart
• Running experiments
• Growing your personal support network
• Creating a personal holding environment
• Renewing yourself