It’s Time To Think About Leadership Differently

Adaptive Challenges

Have you ever wondered why things are a bit more difficult at work recently? Do the types of challenges your team faces every day somehow just seem harder and more complex? Does it take longer to get things done because you can’t get people’s attention on the real issue? Well, it’s true. And it’s not just you. Complexity is increasing and these adaptive challenges require leaders to think differently about solving them.

With the acceleration of rapid, disruptive change in the world, in technology, and in connectivity, challenges are becoming increasingly complex. It’s no longer enough to do things better, faster, or cheaper when our challenges require us to do things differently. We must adapt in ways we’ve never had to before. And all this adapting is not easy. It can cause us to lose things we have grown attached to. And it can cause people and organizations to make trade-offs on what was important in the past. These kinds of challenges also require leaders to think and act differently.  

Adaptive Leadership

Adaptive leadership requires leaders to think differently to manage the complexity. Traditional leadership defaults to someone in charge telling people what to do, but in the face of adaptive challenges, this approach fails miserably. Getting people to adapt requires a more inclusive style of leadership. Leaders must mobilize people to collaborate to solve problems or opportunities when there is not a clear path forward because these challenges are bigger than any one person’s expertise. This is a new skill.

Overcoming Adaptive Challenges

With the increasing pace of change, the challenges leaders and teams face are becoming increasingly adaptive. Here are a few examples of how adaptive challenges push organizations to think differently.

TECHNOLOGY:

An organization must transform from the inside out to leverage new technology and the data it provides.

• Challenge: A commercial real estate firm had to rethink building relationships when customers’ buying decisions became more data-driven and less relationship based. As the competition increased the amount of information they provided customers, the deep, long-term relationships that their sales reps had took a back seat to the market data their customers demanded. The Sales team struggled to adapt to the needs of their customers after decades of building ‘deep relationships’ … the traditional approach was no longer relevant.
• Impact: Imagine the trade-offs required by the salesperson whose history is no longer as effective as analyzing data or using technology. This changes in the ideal candidate HR must now recruit. Imagine the shifts in incentives, organization structure, and training that will also be required, and the de-motivation of people who were valued for something that may no longer be relevant.

MARKET DISRUPTION:

A team must deal with a market disruptor.

• Challenge: Imagine the leadership team of a small retail store needing to find new revenue streams as Amazon enters their market, or a large multinational bank having to compete with new, more nimble, accessible and lower cost payment options like Square or PayPal.
• Impact: Their expertise in brick and mortar stores that once brought them success will no longer sustain a future where their customers are online and can shop from anywhere.

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS:

A team must build a future bigger than any one leader’s previous vision.

• Challenge: A company grown by acquisition reaches the tipping point where they can’t increase the value beyond the sum of the acquired companies without consolidating, finding synergy, and creating an aligned organization. Incresing complexity will require everyone to deal with losses and shifts as they integrate.
• Impact: Skill sets will need to change, and again for some, the things that got them where they are will not get them the results they need in the new organization.

LIMITED RESOURCES:

A team is suddenly asked to deliver more with less.

• Challenge: Where the team was able to “get by” before, the margin of error and free time is now shrinking with the increase in complexity. Often, when resources get tight, it exposes an employee who is not taking full ownership for their role.
• Impact: A leader in this situation stands to lose their credibility, suffer losses in team performance – as well their own sanity – if they cannot motivate and lead everyone on their team to take personal responsibility for their results.

Ready To Think Differently?

All of these examples of complexity are adaptive challenges LeaderShift Insights® has worked on that required an organization to abandon its traditional leadership style to find a solution. Adaptive challenges demmand solutions that require us to think radically differently – while seeking to understand and mobilize stakeholders in ways we never have before. These adaptive challenges require more than “business as usual” solutions.

If you can use some help mobilizing your team around adaptive challenge, call us. It’s what we do.