In the brick and mortar company leaders had the corner office. In the fast-paced world of the 80’s and 90’s leaders had the most frequent flyer miles. In the virtual business world today leaders need to “show up” wherever and whenever they are needed – OnDemand! so to speak. This requires a new type of leadership development within companies – one that is no longer tied to the career ladder or level of authority.

A question for CEOs: You bemoan the shortage of leaders globally, but what are you seeking –

– A way to fill hierarchical positions of authority?

– To instill a leadership ethos in your company?

If it is the latter, your leadership development programs have got it all wrong – dangerously wrong!

Too often leaders are simply the final decision-makers, presenters of budgets and operating plans to the executives above them, or politicians always “running” for re-election as waves of reorganization hit the hierarchy. Developing these “leaders” produces vertical infrastructure – a hierarchy composed of a few taught to govern many. While a hierarchy of executives is necessary, is it sufficient to compete in a networked global economy? Like trickle-down-economics, traditional leadership development is based on the belief that educating executives produces high-performing teams, better decisions, increased productivity, innovative products, and healthy organizations.

Leadership OnDemand!

Now, think of how the body manages itself and all the challenges of living – there is no hierarchy of decision-making and there are no executives, no one is “in charge”, not even the mind. Instead, there is a vast amount of cellular and systemic cross-talk, a cacophony of information creating constant communication about the health, well-being, and intentions of the body. From this mess of information emerge emotions, feelings, mind, thought, and from these medicine, technology, civilization, and social evolution. All of the advances we enjoy today come from a living system, a human being, which operates without a leadership hierarchy. In a world brimming with networks, e-business, global financial grids, social mobs, and cell phone documentaries, leaders of organizations are leading a figment of their imagination.

Premise: The organization, company, or business is not the org chart. Sure those boxes exist (just like your stomach and heart do) and people occupy them. Just as surely that chart does not represent how work gets done, services get delivered, decisions configured so they can be made, or new products imagined and brought to market. Executives take note – within your organization leaders are hard at work stepping up OnDemand! to manage and grow your business. And they are doing it with little or no support or development. Why? Because, their box on the org chart is not designated “leader” and yet they need to lead.

Supporting OnDemand! Leaders

The first way to support OnDemand! Leadership is through open-enrollment development courses. I am not thinking about courses on time management or word processing. This venue is a chance for self-selected, i.e. OnDemand!, leaders to get the learning and development they need to do what they are already doing unaided. The curriculum for these courses must be designed not purchased – which eliminates the need for expensive off-the-shelf programs that get filed away in binders. Hire a program designer, a mix of facilitator and coach, who can work with the internal case studies that show up alongside the leaders who seek OnDemand! Leadership support – cases that cover collaboration, communication, trust, engagement and require the facilitator to provide thought partnering, reflective questions, coaching, and emotional support.

Second, if these courses need to be quickly designed and the content used on-the-spot, jettison the awkward and rigid toolkits for those that are easily applied, work everywhere, provide just enough structure, and are generative (i.e. create trust, conversation, and collaboration). Visual metaphor, narrative, and embodied exercise are tools that can be quickly used by OnDemand! leaders. Like improvisation, these tools are useful in unscripted situations when collective development of an idea or collaborative management of a challenge is required. OnDemand! tools provide leaders with a means of acting without lengthy prior planning but also without a loss of rigorous thinking. Rigor, however, comes from the collective conversation, quality of questions, and openness to diversity of ideas and actions.

Third, OnDemand! Leadership courses are a means of creating meaningful opportunities for people to engage with each other around the challenges they face in real-time. This creates the three conditions from which Communities of Practice emerge[1]: relationships of support, mutual engagement that creates a community of practitioners, a shared repertoire, with which to face current challenges, and sense of shared enterprise, finding their place in the context of the whole. With these organizational learning and OnDemand! leadership spreads.

The value proposition for this new way of developing leaders is compelling –

1- Fewer struggling leaders having to learn on their own through trial-and-error

2- An inexpensive, highly tailored learning and development program that meets the immediate needs of the business

3- Identification of a self-selected group of leaders and the potential to grow your own executives

4- A more robust and resilient organization in which learning to lead is rewarded by providing the means to continuously learn in the context of lived experiences

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[1]Etienne Wenger. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. 1998.

When we first step out into the space of Adaptive Change, we are never sure what our experience will be. As we encounter Adaptive Strain, the red line of the organization, we experience Personal Strain, our personal red line.

Personal Strain arises from the complex interactions between our emotions, feelings, attitudes, desires, and goals. We usually experience Personal Strain through our inner dialogue, the way we explain “reality” to ourselves. Our internal narrative of change is where resistance first arises, triggered by either externally or internally generated psychological and emotional forces.

Triggers of Resistance

My experience as an organizational change agent suggests that resistance to change is primarily due to the Red Line that change produces. Resistance arises when Destabilizing and Stabilizing Forces clash. Once triggered, resistance, a natural defense mechanism, places the transformational effort first and foremost on the shoulders of leaders and change agents.

Paradoxically, when we try to induce change in others, regardless of the process used, they resist. Yet, when we focus on changing ourselves, adapting our behavior to the challenges faced, a community of change agents is formed that collectively drives Adaptive Change.

Peter Block writes about this paradox in his book, The Answer to How is Yes. Seeking to change others is a “wish to control” that positions the organization or change agent as “knowing what is best for others.”

“People resist coercion much more strenuously than they resist change. …[They] will choose to change more readily from the example set of our own transformation than by any demand we make of them.”

Managing the organizational Red Line requires leaders to take on the tough questions that change produces.

How have others successfully changed? This question assumes that there is a “right way” to proceed through change and that someone, other than me, knows how to do this! In fact, no one does – organizational change is a collaborative journey mapped anew each time it is taken. Any worthwhile or necessary change effort has to emerge from the conditions that cause it. This requires significant customization of any “established” or “proven” process to the current Status Quo and may produce different processes in different parts of the organization. Paradoxically, this doesn’t require more work or control or planning, it requires less – opening up space for self-organization to occur.

How are we going to do this? This is the question leaders need to ask to generate conversations that support creativity, confidence, and transformational ideas. Collective conversations generate the path forward, one step at a time, while decreasing resistance. This does not mean conversation eliminates anxiety, fear, or loss and grief – they don’t. They do put them in the context of the whole, the collective, the community. I am not going through the mental/emotional challenges of change alone, unnoticed or unsupported. And there is know-how in the collective, actions emerge from the conversations – moving the organization forward one step at a time.

When Destabilizing Events are made obvious, our Strengths are conserved, and a Future Vision is clearly articulated we all know why we have to change. The Red Line is stabilized by our Passion, Purpose, and Principles.

Questions for Leaders

Conversations that propel us forward during change focus on questions that are:

Appreciative in nature, What makes us uniquely capable of moving through this change?

Engage the individual in the work of the collective – What am I contributing to the change effort?

Are highly personal – What am I willing to personally commit to doing differently?

Focus on what is working – What have we achieved thus far?

Without losing sight of the work still to be done – What choices or challenges are we putting off or ignoring?

Adaptive Change is not the time to default to problem- solving, it requires us to identify solutions to the challenges we face. Ultimately, the first Exit Ramp is avoided by Following Yes! A descriptive used by Peter Block and Margaret Wheatley, Following Yes! we find our way to the opportunity that waits when we release the past and embrace the future. We can’t know what the future will bring and we can’t wait for the “right time” to act. We can only act on what is, knowing that our actions constantly produce a new situation with new choices and the ability to act yet again. When leaders take on the responsibility for their personal change and are able to manage their Personal Red Line, others join them in the journey.

Leaders spend a significant amount of time on roles and responsibilities, goal-setting, and determining who is accountable for what. They spend much less time defining the outcomes they desire, negotiating the conditions of satisfaction that will achieve these outcomes, and coordinating the commitments of those who report to them. Yet, by focusing on these three activities of leading, they enable others to set their own priorities and independently figure out how to get things done. Empowerment realized!

But do you, as a leader, trust those who report to you enough to send them off unsupervised, with just a promise they will get something done? At a time when trust in organizations is at an all-time low, how can leaders get stuff done and generate trust? And if you check up on them are you leading or micromanaging? Enter Fernando Flores and his Commitment Management Protocol, a means of coordinating action through the intentional negotiation of conditions of satisfaction. Lest you think that this is a new management rage, Flores’ protocol has been used in business for at least the last 20 years.

Words Create Actions

Commitment Management begins with the leader actually knowing what outcome they seek rather than the means of achieving it. For example, if the desired outcome is the 2012 Brand Strategy, are you clear on what that entails? Often leaders “know it when they see it” or “know what it isn’t.” This produces needless re-working and countless iterations of a document or set of activities that could be clarified at the onset. Knowing what purpose the end product fulfills helps you define what it needs to contain and sets the scope of the work to be completed.

Once you know the outcome you desire you can request an individual or group to be accountable for the work. This step of the protocol helps leaders think about who to engage with rather than simply assigning it to the person or group normally “responsible” for the activity. Whoever is accountable becomes your thought partner in negotiating the conditions of satisfaction. Negotiation is critical to a successful outcome, so choose wisely and negotiate until you both feel comfortable with the terms.

The conditions of satisfaction are the key to creating trust and empowerment. When the conditions of satisfaction are clear and not ambiguous, those accountable can commit to performing the work. How the work gets done is now the responsibility of those doing it and not the leader who requested it. As they perform the tasks that they are accountable for, employees assess their progress against the conditions of satisfaction and are able to renegotiate them if need be. This means that leaders hear about new ideas and innovation or challenges and problems sooner rather than later.

These five steps – defining the outcome, requesting the work, accepting accountability, negotiating the conditions of satisfaction, and committing to deliver – encourage creativity, experimentation, and innovation, build trust, and place accountability where the work gets done.

How It Actually Happens

Jake (VP Marketing): Nancy, the shifts in the economy make me think our brand strategy for product X is out of date. Will you take a look at that and let me know what you think about it?

Nancy (Business Strategy Team Leader): Absolutely. What type of information do you want to see?

Jake: Probably the regular competitive analysis, market landscape…is there something else you had in mind?

Nancy: Well, if I knew how you intended to use the assessment I could better prepare it.

Jake: I can imagine a couple of things I would use it for: I have a new product manager for that brand who is coming from another part of the business and it would get him up to speed, plus that brand has some competition on the horizon three years out and I want some fresh thinking on how to maintain our market share, I also want some new data to take to the executive council meeting next month.

Nancy: Let me talk to my team and send you an outline of how we think these three outcomes can best be achieved. If I send it to you tomorrow do you have 15 minutes to chat about it on Thursday?

Jake: Yes, Jeannie can schedule something.

Notice the level of transparency that the conversation generates naturally. By not saying: “Sure” and heading off thinking she knows what Jake needs Nancy has begun the negotiation process and can talk with her team before actually committing to the conditions for satisfaction. Additionally, Jake has an informal thought partner who helped him clarify the purpose for his request.

I spent July 4^th with my brother – an oil man his whole career. Over the weekend I got a lesson in hydrocarbon geology that seems useful for leaders.

Geology of Talent

It turns out that gas and oil doesn’t sit underground in huge lakes waiting to be pumped out. Who knew? I thought: dead trees and vegetation, eons of new soil and rock, pools of oil and gas, “sip” it out with an oil rig. Instead, there are “lakes” of porous rock which hold the oil like a sponge, stuck under a layer of impervious rock that won’t let it move. Only when a fracture occurs, or a well is drilled, does the oil “flow” – always following the path of least resistance down a pressure gradient.

Like gas and oil, the business news is full of talent pool crises and shrinking reserves. But, what can you do about it? Do you make a Deepwater Horizon play and bring in external executive teams at high cost and unknown risk? Or is there another way to bring talent to the surface?

As a leader you have an identified pool of talent in your organization along with a reservoir of untapped talent, waiting to be “fracked” and brought to the surface. Typically, we think of talent “pools” as organizational lakes of capacity that are continuously sucked upwards when we need new energy in marketing, innovation in R&D, or to fill a power gap in finance. But what if the accessible pool is actually low hanging fruit – talent (oil) that has already found its way to the surface through the semi-permeable layers of organizational culture, old-boy’s networks, and annual reviews.

Fracking the Organization

As I now understand it, having only completed oil exploration 101, one resolution to the dilemma of stuck oil is to drill a horizontal shaft off of the vertical well so it passes through the porous oil reservoir. Then you “frack” the rock and let the oil flow to you so you can pump it vertically to the surface. Ignoring all the political and ecological arguments for the moment, can this provide business leaders with a technique for adding value to their company?

Back to your organization, what upcoming project (ready to be assigned to an identified high-potential) can you use to frack your organization? You need a project that drills through the established talent development process (the impermeable layer) and tunnels horizontally across the deeper layers of the organization and into the reservoir of talented people who can’t get promoted because “there is nowhere to go”. The low pressure solution for them is to flow out of your organization and into another one. Use your project to frack the talent reservoir – look for those attracted to the challenge, fresh faces hungry for the chance to contribute. Let those who show up strut their stuff, provide them with personal mentoring, ask for input and ideas, and listen. See who shows up, then give them the ball and let them run. Make your project low pressure enough to encourage flow toward you, this way you won’t attract just the highly competitive, frustrated, or jaded folks already hammering on the glass ceiling. A couple of projects a year and your Talent Well will keep the Talent Pool full.

Tips for Fracking

• Look for Know-Why: It is easy to find organizational know-how, can you find those that know-why? People that know-why better anticipate and respond to challenges and opportunities. They are quicker to understand the context of the situation and identify who can contribute to the solution. Individuals who know-why use the golden circle and act from purpose, aligning how and what to why.
• Find hidden networks: Once you identify your reservoir of talent ask those who come forth who they know, who they talk to, and who they seek advice from. These patterns of local interaction show you the size of your reservoir and give you clues where to frack it with the next project. Try to establish a community of practice that supports the flow of your Talent Well.
• Train leaders already in the Talent Pool: What better way to promote a culture of leadership than to let acknowledged leaders identify and develop those below them? As future leaders they need to grapple with the frustration of those trapped in an organizational stratum that appears to have no upside. Learning to lean into tough decisions, navigate uncertainty, and inspire others will help their career as well as that of others. Coach them to maintain the Talent Well and your pools of reserves will never run dry.

This morning my inbox contained a special invitation that I want to pass on to women reading this blog.

The Berkana Institute invites you on a Walk Out Walk On Women’s Learning Journey to South Africa, November 1 – 12, 2011, to explore the role that women are playing in recreating community, government, and themselves.

I took this journey, with Meg Wheatley and 24 other phenomenal women from around the world, in 2006 – meeting women leaders who are changing the lives of others and their communities in the midst of what most would call poverty and without power, resources, or authority. It was transformational for me.

Women are playing the pivotal role in creating change. And in community after community, women as informal leaders have stepped forward to solve local problems without waiting for formal authority or resources. They have walked out of limiting beliefs about themselves and their communities and walked on to create sustainable solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems. Women of all ages have used their ingenuity and caring to figure out how to work with what they have to create what they need.

Berkana Institute Brochure

Lessons from the Fisherwomen of Cape Town

Sahra Luyt (far right in the picture) lives on the water near Cape Town. As a child she was taught to fish by her father and she brought this skill to the women of her township, creating the South African Fisherwomen’s Association (SAFWA) in 2000. Sahra’s leadership began when she got a captain’s license and began to fish the waters off the coast commercially (the boat in the picture is used by the fisherwomen to fish up to 5-miles out to sea). She trained other women to fish and captain and now 150 women are self-employed as commercial fisherwomen. As women became able to support their families, the word spread and 500 members now offer a soup kitchen and other benefits to the community.

Worldwide women reinvest 70% of their earnings back into the community and the Fisherwomen are no exception. In addition to increasing education and healthcare in their township the Fisherwomen operate as a whole, each part contributing in different ways. They explained that they do this to protect their income, as individuals are not guaranteed a fishing license from year to year. When we visited, the total group income was divided among all the members regardless of how it was generated and provided financial stability for each member’s household.

More remarkable than their egalitarian community is their willingness to take on their government over rights that they feel are fundamental to their survival. As more Fisherwomen earned their captain’s credentials, they applied for more fishing licenses and got them. That is until the government determined that these licensing should go to men rather than women and began to discriminate against the group. Twice they sued the government for discrimination and twice they won.

Today the Fisherwomen face new challenges to their livelihood and rights as business women. Due to climate related change in water temperature, government regulated fishing quotas and seasons hamper their ability to catch good quality fish. The Fisherwomen are engaging the government again in order to integrate self-employed fisherwomen into the system and provide social support such as a pension fund, maternity benefits, and unemployment insurance.

Bringing it Home

Let me offer all readers of this blog, women in particular, the following simple yet powerful lesson from Meg during our learning journey: Follow YES!

To me this means:

• Follow the possible. Take the resources that show up rather than wait for something different or more “perfect” to show up. What can you do as a leader with what you have?
• Follow connections. Who do you know who can assist you, teach you, support you, or move your efforts forward. I call this “kicking the stone down the road.” With each connection you advance even if you can’t immediately see how it will take you to your goal.
• Follow the law of two feet. This comes from Harrison Owen, the originator of Open Space Technology. When you find yourself in a situation where you are neither learning nor contributing use your two feet to take you somewhere that you can.

I recommend this trip as a means of developing women’s leadership here in the United States. America’s women leaders are faced with: changing their businesses as owners, their roles as employees, and their communities as members, our children as mothers, our future as educators, and our society as government agents.

To learn more or to sign up, please contact Lauren Parks at lauren@berkana.org or call (617) 422-6231.

In Skills for Leading the Fall (May 11, 2011) I wrote about a learning cycle for leaders that has three components:

Self-Awareness: Understanding the forces acting around you and within you, observing your behavior and using this to course correct.

Self-Discipline: The discipline to be “who” you need to be at the moment to deliver the results you seek.

Self-Direction: Taking the action where it needs to go – operating as both an observer of the larger system, being on the Balcony, and a leader on the Playing Field.

Today I am going to link this to the actions of leading, which I categorize along three dimensions: Doing, Thinking, and Relating.

One leader, who we will call Sam, experienced his leadership as Doing when I first met him: achieving results, making tough decisions, and having authority over others. His leadership style was Pacesetting: focused on his personal achievements, operating from an “expert” stance, and defining success by results only. During this period Sam’s leadership was based on his technical know-how and his ability to personally get things done. This worked well until he became a team leader.

As a team leader Sam’s Pacesetting style was derailing him…fast. With coaching Sam began to experience his success as occurring through the success of others. The Relating dimension of leadership activities emerged and Sam began to see himself as a coach instead of an expert. He shifted his attention to developing others using relationship to create collaboration, effectiveness, and trust. Not only did Sam’s team benefit emotionally, their results improved as their relationships with each other improved. Sam began to show up on the corporate talent radar and within the year he was promoted, specifically for his ability to bring forth a high-functioning team.

Now, when Sam spoke of himself, it was as a results oriented leader of people. This allowed Sam’s Doing to shift from tactical to strategic, which was of particular interest to him. As his team broadened their perspective and used their diversity to accomplish stretch goals they became acknowledged as high-performers. Again Sam was promoted, becoming the leader of a product with a globally dispersed brand team but no direct reports.

In this new role, Sam recognized quickly that too much Doing with too little Relating was threatening his new team’s performance and motivation. Initially frustrated with his lack of power and authority, Sam focused on the Thinking dimension. He began his tenure by meeting and listening to the majority of team members. Then, taking all this as food for thought, he designed a two-day meeting that brought the whole group (around 80 people) together in conversation rather than presentation. It was a stretch for the group and Sam had to tailor the meeting in real time to ensure the mix of Doing-Relating-Thinking was working.

Over the year he spent much of his time thinking and reflecting before acting (Doing and Relating). In this way Sam added multiple new perspectives and actions to his leadership playbook. For example, there were times when he took the perspective of general manager, CFO, and even CEO. At other times he led from the perspective of one of the line functions or external stakeholders. The outcome? You guessed it, Sam was promoted to a position that required him to intentionally weave together all three dimensions.

Lessons for Leaders

Using Self-Awareness Sam intentionally chose which leadership activities to focus and act on in the moment – Doing, Relating, or Thinking.

Using Self-Discipline he continuously integrated the three dimensions so that his leadership balanced organizational functioning (Relating), performance (Doing), and innovation (Thinking).

Using Self-Direction Sam developed himself while guiding the direction of those he was leading.

Now that you’ve met Sam reflect on two questions:

• How do you define the Doing, Thinking, and Relating activities of leadership?
• How do your actions as a leader depend on your definition of these?

Over the last 20 years numerous business and management authors have identified awareness as a key success factor for leaders. One way to broaden your awareness uses a 4Quadrant approach to frame your perspective, thinking, behavior, decisions, and actions. Unlike the BCG 2×2 matrix, these four quadrants metaphorically capture the four topographies of an organization: ME, WE, CULTURE, COMMUNITY.

ME

In this quadrant everything is personal and subjective. ME is the place from which we all act, perceiving the moment, interpreting it, turning it into the Ladder of Inference that produces our behaviors. Leadership awareness begins with you, in the form of mindfulness, presence, and getting on the balcony to observe your actions and interactions. ME is also the quadrant where you become aware of others as individuals – seeing them in the moment and not disguised by past behaviors, accomplishments, or titles.

Self-awareness creates emotional clarity and understanding of the root cause of our actions, decisions, and behaviors – the story behind the story of our most common behaviors. Few of us are completely “present” to our emotions and feelings, so starting with ME grounds us and places us in the situation at this moment (space and time), preparing us to consider the other three quadrants before we act. With Self-Awareness we can also develop our Self-Discipline and Self-Direction.

WE

Awareness of the team or group dynamic is the second quadrant and this is often the focus of leadership development. Leading from WE builds organizational capacity, connecting people by creating cohesion between groups and leveraging the strengths and interpersonal relationships within the group. In this quadrant, leaders actively and intentionally generate individual and organizational learning.

The foundation of this quadrant is conversation. Awareness in the WE Quadrant begins with identifying what kind of conversation you are having. Is it a discussion, focused on accountability, tasks, and right action? Is it a dialectic, identifying the creative tension of thesis and anti-thesis and forging the way to synthesis? Is it dialog, inquiry that builds on reflection and takes into account imagination and mystery? From conversation, leaders shape internal and external cooperation and collaboration to become competitive advantage.

CULTURE

Culture is a leader’s silent partner and either a powerful ally or covert opponent. When you leave the room culture remains to direct the actions and behaviors of others. Culture is the context in which you lead your organization, the fabric of every work day. It defines organizational values and beliefs, meaning and sense-making, and sets the boundaries of Us/Them, In/Out, Authority/Force. Culture holds the organizational narrative, the stories we tell about ourselves. In this way it creates “the context in which the truth may be perceived as the truth¹.” When you admonish a key contributor to: “Go ahead, take a risk. Stretch until you get your hand slapped.” culture determines if they believe you.

By becoming aware of this quadrant you are able to sculpt culture as you go through your day. What should be amplified or reinforced in this situation? What should be dampened? Is this behavior enabling or restricting? The CULTURE Quadrant is where leaders of leaders have their greatest impact. Here is where you develop the leadership of others and create organizational identity.

COMMUNITY

Awareness in this quadrant operates on the enterprise level, the interface between the company and society (local, regional, or global). The first step in understanding this quadrant is to define the system of which you are a part. We commonly see the organizational system as composed of its internal parts and external partners, but companies are also parts of a larger whole. How are your actions impacting the whole? How does your enterprise contribute to the functioning of the greater good?

Being aware in the COMMUNITY Quadrant is less about politics and power and more about purpose and interdependence. In this quadrant leaders expand their networks, tap into internal and external Communities of Practice, and take advantage of weak links to grow their organization from the outside in. Are we aligned to purpose, ours and a higher systemic purpose (for example: sustainable markets, balanced growth and resource management, health and well-being on a societal or global level)? At this level leaders are confronted with the dilemmas of doing business in an increasingly interdependent world, one where subprime lending practices can stop ships from sailing and US employment is driven by a European financial crisis and an earthquake half way around the world.

It takes seconds at act habitually, but we may have to live with the results for months or years. Take a breath…consider the 4Quadrants, and then act.

1 – Harrison Owen, The Power of Spirit, How Organizations Transform. Pp. 162

Innovation is a hot topic these days. From what I have seen, organizations have been outsourcing innovation for the last 10-15 years. It began with a reliance on ad agencies and then shifted to “design” companies like IDEO and JUMP. Now the business airwaves and media announce the need for more innovation, faster and more radical than ever before, and the literature of full of “how to innovate” books and articles.

It seems easy to say we want to innovate, but it feels like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, you are leaving all you know behind for a visit to Chaos. Confronted by all the mystery and disorder that precedes innovation, our challenge as leaders is to help people make meaning of the journey. As Dee Hock describes, “Making good judgments and acting wisely when one has complete data, facts, and knowledge [control] is not leadership. It’s not even management. It’s bookkeeping. Leadership is the ability to make wise decisions, and act responsibly upon them when one has little more than a clear sense of direction and proper values; that is, a perception of how things ought to be, an understanding how they are, and some indication of the prevalent forces driving change.” In this sense, innovation is the end product of a disruptive cycle of Adaptive Change.

To innovate is to intentionally let go of the “way things are” and welcome “the way they could be.” Breakdown is the first step toward innovation, an intentional release of established habits of thought, expectations, assumptions, and beliefs in order to embrace “not knowing”. The concept of surfing the “edge of chaos” sounds exciting until you get there and leave control at the door. In Adaptive Change we call this the Fall.

Fortunately, Breakdown doesn’t last. As we confront the mess, we naturally make meaning of it, allowing order and Breakthroughs to emerge – the “ah-ha” moments that we love to experience. The journey from Breakdown to Breakthrough, the Cauldron of Change, is a period of stress (high enough to motivate and mobilize, and potentially immobilize), uncertainty, and unpredictability. There is no clear way forward, we are reduced to trial-and-error experimentation. This is a period that requires a rapid and straightforward learning cycle, one that encourages experimentation and taking smart risks as you learn your way forward. Sense-Test-Adapt, a biomimetic cycle that is just what it says, propels you forward as order emerges from the chaos. The faster you cycle the faster you learn.

Breakthroughs get you out of Chaos and into Complexity – you are half way home but you are still not “in control”. Complexity requires Imagination, which takes you beyond creativity and taps into mystery. Mystery allows us to explore “things in our environment that excite our curiosity but elude our understanding. [1] In the complex domain hunches and ah-has pull us forward by removing extraneous information and linking up ideas to form a system of inquiry. In this way novelty is morphed into a myriad of possibilities.

With all these possibilities we begin to follow our hunches to their logical conclusions, picking one or two and applying all our knowledge, know-how, technology, etc. to understand them. In this way we make the imagined “real”, manifest as products, programs, services, and art. Making “manifest” is the phase I call Innovation. Innovation without the journey through chaos and mystery is evolutionary at best, incremental most often. Innovation as the conclusion of the full cycle is revolutionary, tapping into our most creative spaces and pulling forth something remarkably different from where we started.

Do’s for leading innovation

• Foster an environment of imagination, exploration, acceptable risk, and “what ifs.” Meet the Devil’s Advocate at the door and refuse them entry.
• Give people time to think, toys to spark off, and diverse partners to play with. The resource needs and costs of Innovation rise over time. Resources that drive early innovation, Breakdown, Breakthrough, and Imagination, are mainly emotional and psychological support. No leader can afford to ignore these intangible costs for the foreseeable future.
• Relax when things seem out-of-control, it is part of the process and can’t be skipped. Focus people on moving their “crazy ideas” forward and making sense of them.
• Apply the innovation cycle to your leadership development…hummm, now that’s a thought!

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[1] Roger Martin, The Design of Business, p9.

The book I find most useful during Adaptive Change is The Practice of Adaptive Leadership by Ron Heifetz, Alex Grashow, and Marty Linsky.

When Destabilizing Events arise our first response is to act, and in some cases this is the best response. But those cases are actually rare. In order to truly understand the adaptive potential of the situation so that you can emerge from the change with a better system design, leaders need to begin the journey in reflection (pp 44). Go slow at the beginning so you can go fast at the end.

There is much to reflect on during the Fall. And getting this first phase of the change cycle “right” is essential to the whole journey – it sets the tone and the mood of the entire organization. Therefore, I start with Part 4 of the book – See Yourself as a System.

Beginning here emphasizes that everyone is a system and leaders must work within a system of systems. Leaders who begin Adaptive Change by acknowledging their own personal learning agenda have a leg up on those that plunge in and begin to direct the action. The more open you are to your learning the faster you can move from the Balcony to the Practice Field, the better you model the learning cycle for others, and the greater your ability to adapt in real time. There are many learning cycles in the literature, but I have developed and use a very simple one that contains only three phases: Self-Awareness, Self-Discipline, and Self-Direction.

Self-Awareness: This combines taking the observer role with situational and personal insights to understand the forces acting around you and within you. Self-Awareness requires you to be emotionally and mentally available to yourself and how you are interpreting and behaving in the moment.

Self-Discipline: It is not enough to just observe the systems around you – you need the discipline to be “who” you need to be to deliver the change you seek. This means being present, understanding the roles you can assume to drive the “Big Picture of the Moment.[1]”

Self-Directed: When you understand the roles you are playing in the moment you can direct the action, taking it where it needs to go in the present situation. At this point you are an observer of the larger system, again moving between the Balcony and the Playing Field and integrating what you learn for the “whole system” that you are working with.

Like the toggle switch on your computer, this cycle – Self-Awareness- Self-Discipline- Self-Direction – moves you from the system of self to the larger system and back to the system of self. The faster you can move through this cycle the more present, reflective, and adaptive you can be.

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Karl Weich and Kathleen Sutcliffe, Managing the Unexpected, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2007.

When leading Adaptive Change, you have the opportunity to design the journey initiated by Destabilizing Events so that you can reach the future you desire. Because the actual path you take is unknown and can’t be predicted your leadership provides direction but you cannot control the process. As each person, team, or division moves through Adaptive Change, the organization experiences divergence and convergence. Your ultimate success depends on your ability to lead a portfolio of change. Regardless of your scope of leadership, your actions widely impact other people, functions, and clients.

I once tried to graphically capture this portfolio concept and it is worth looking at the mess that change creates. Without trying to explain this picture, you can see the mess. Clearly we are working in a connected, interdependent system.

Look at the left side of this picture, the place where Destabilizing Events pull us away from the Status Quo, the organization reacts by initiating transactional change, and the Red Line is induced – we call this initial phase of Adaptive Change “The Fall.” It is like stepping off a cliff and being both weightless (exhilarated) and speeding toward some unknown “down there” (scared breathless).

Most leaders are totally unprepared for the mess that occurs at the beginning of Adaptive Change. It is hard to see any patterns in the graphic, let alone a single overarching theme, and, for those of you down in the mess, the way forward is anything but clear. Yet there is something beautiful about it. But when things are unclear and we feel that rock in the pit of our stomach, what do we reach for?? Command and Control – the Alka-Seltzer of management!

So here is an alternative way to lead the system during the Fall – Appreciative Inquiry[1]. There are many ways to use Appreciative Inquiry (AI), and many practitioners out there using it if you want some help. For Adaptive Change I use a version developed by Bruce Flye.

Conversations for the Fall

During the Fall, everyone needs a rudder so they can navigate the mess, leaders included. This iterative AI cycle is that rudder. Using it in the form of a conversation, you can continuously find your way forward through the mess.

Going all the way back to the PDCP change initiative I believe the key to success was the conversational format I used. As the facilitator, I asked questions and then created the space (context) for them to be answered (content) by the teams I worked with. I learned early on (mainly because I was overwhelmed with meetings) that the teams had to own the work. I left every session empty handed and they took the flip charts and created the outputs.

Lest you think this was easy, give it a try. I often spent the first half hour trying to convince the group that they even had opportunities, aspirations, and a vision. Because people are operating from a predictive and often negative mindset, change and the future seem too “squishy” – certainly not something you can plan toward. Mess, yes. Squishy, no.

Go in to these conversations prepared with stories such as the 1960’s “man on the moon” challenge or the beginnings of Amazon. Jeff Bezos[2] has built a company on rapid prototyping Adaptive Change. Ask them how Oprah Winfrey[3] constantly stayed ahead of the competition without mastering Adaptive Change. As a leader you will have to hold the organization’s feet to the fire and you can only do this if you take a positive stance. AI lets you do this. The AI conversation can be held anywhere and everywhere in the organization. The output generated provides the directional leadership that people and the organization need to navigate the mess that they are experiencing.

The conversation goes something like this:

Inquire: Begin by identifying the positive, set the stage for engagement and look for who is already succeeding.

Imagine: Explore the Vision that is pulling you forward. Let people dream and connect with each other; this includes other parts of the organization, community, and stakeholders.

Innovate: Take what you have Imagined and make it real. Innovation requires sensing the environment, testing your ideas, and adapting them as they are implemented using rapid prototyping.

Implement: I often ask groups to write down 3 things they can do in 30 days. Help people find the obvious next step and do it. When that is finished, the next step always shows up.

This brings you back to Inquire and off you go on another conversational cycle.

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[1]http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/

[2] http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/bez0bio-1

[3] http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/win0bio-1