The Practice Of Adaptive Leadership Quotes

Your behavior reflects your actual purposes.

What people resist is not change per se, but loss.

Worry not that your child listens to you; worry most that they watch you.

If you find what you do each day seems to have no link to any higher purpose, you probably want to rethink what you're doing.

Yesterday's adaptations are today's routines.

Your silence creates a vacuum for others to fill The key is to stay present and keep listening. The silence of holding steady is different from the silence of holding back.

The activity of interpreting might be understood as listening for the 'song beneath the words.

Knowing how the environment is pulling your strings and playing you is critical to making responsive rather than reactive moves.

The improvisational ability to lead adaptively relies on responding to the present situation rather than importing the past into the present and laying it on the current situation like an imperfect template.

Stay diagnostic even as you take action.

Authenticity is not possible without embracing the “and” within us. Our minds like to categorize things into neatly labeled boxes. Am I right, or is she right? Let’s stretch our minds to I can be right and so can she. Embracing the “and” is like yoga for the brain. When we train ourselves to hold paradoxes by stretching ourselves out of the boxes our minds create, we stretch into new possibilities and adapt more quickly in a fast-changing world.

Authenticity is our natural state of being. The authentic self is a state of being where we are centered, creative, adaptive, and inspired.

Exercising adaptive leadership is about giving meaning to your life beyond your own ambition.

Being able to shift in light of new information and in light of new opportunities is a skill. Practicing will make you a more confident leader of change, now and in the future.

Don’t believe everything you think. Our minds are thought-creating machines. Most of these thoughts are fear-based. Our authentic self has the power to pick the thoughts that best serve us and those we lead.

Your inspiration taps hidden reserves of promise that sustain people through times that induce despair. You enable people to envision a future that sustains the best from their past while also holding out new possibilities.

You know the adage “People resist change.” It is not really true. People are not stupid. People love change when they know it is a good thing. No one gives back a winning lottery ticket. What people resist is not change per se, but loss. When change involves real or potential loss, people hold on to what they have and resist the change.

Positive energy is unleashed when leaders give themselves permission to connect and express themselves from the core of who they are. When leaders practice authenticity, creativity, engagement, confidence, and a sense of inner resourcefulness emerge.

Most of us want to be authentic. Yet, we are not who we think we are. We are made up of a rich array of facets and possibilities, many of which we ignore because we label them as “bad”. We create a cardboard cutout image of ourselves to look good to others. The discord between who we are and the image we have to live up to slowly kills our aliveness. When we suppress parts of ourselves, it lowers our mojo, sense of fulfillment, leadership effectiveness and impact in the workplace.

Authentic leaders inspire us to engage with each other in powerful dreams that make the impossible possible. We are called on to persevere despite failure and pursue a purpose beyond the paycheck. This is at the core of innovation. It requires aligning the dreams of each individual to the broader dream of the organization.

The most common leadership failure stems from trying to apply technical solutions to adaptive challenges.

You know best who you really are by watching what you do rather than listening to what you say.

Applying the right procedures and policies to asset management allows IT to create a realistic budget with few surprises, and keep best practices to adapt to “continuous changes.

A rigid structure does not give room for adaptability and change. A rigid structure turns people into slaves of rules, procedures, policies, and practices.

When we limit ourselves by being the person we “should” be, we limit our aliveness. We may achieve success but not fulfillment because we are not living out all the important truths about ourselves, truths we need to slow down to excavate.

Your goal should be to keep the temperature within what we call the productive zone of disequilibrium (PZD): enough heat generated by your intervention to gain attention, engagement, and forward motion, but not so much that the organization (or your part of it) explodes.

The overriding function of management is to provide order and consistency to organizations, whereas the primary function of leadership is to produce change and movement. Management is about seeking order and stability; leadership is about seeking adaptive and constructive change.

To diagnose a system or yourself while in the midst of action requires the ability to achieve some distance from those on-the-ground events. We use the metaphor of “getting on the balcony” above the “dance floor” to depict what it means to gain the distanced perspective you need to see what is really happening.

Leaders make themselves and others comfortable in a changing world. They eagerly explore new ideas, approaches, and cultures rather than shrink defensively from what lurks around life's next corner. Anchored by nonnegotiable principles and values, they cultivate the "indifference" that allows them to adapt confidently.

Leadership is a difficult practice personally because it almost always requires you to make a challenging adaptation yourself. What makes adaptation complicated is that it involves deciding what is so essential that it must be preserved going forward and what of all that you value can be left behind. Those are hard choices because they involve both protecting what is most important to you and bidding adieu to something you previously held dear: a relationship, a value, an idea, an image of yourself.

Introverts typically . . . • Process information internally. It is normal for them to continuously contemplate, generate, circulate, evaluate, question, and conclude. • Are rejuvenated and energized by rest, relaxation, and down-time. • Need time to process and adapt to a new situation or setting, otherwise it is draining. • Tend to be practical, simple, and neutral in their clothing, furnishings, offices, and surroundings. • Choose their friends carefully and focus on quality, not quantity. They enjoy the company of people who have similar interests and intellect. • May resist change if they are not given enough notice to plan, prepare, and execute. Sudden change creates stress and overwhelm.

Over time, the structures, culture, and defaults that make up an organizational system become deeply ingrained, self-reinforcing, and very difficult to reshape. That makes sense when things are going well. But when something important changes—as with the economic and financial crises that began in 2008, or in more normal times when a new competitor enters the industry, the organization’s founder leaves, customers’ preferences shift, or new laws are passed—the system’s tenacity can prevent it from adapting, from learning to thrive in the new context.

As Plutarch said of Socrates: [He] did not set up desks for his students, sit in a teacher’s chair, or reserve a prearranged time for lecturing and walking with his pupils. No, he practiced philosophy while joking around (when the chance arose) and drinking and serving on military campaigns and hanging around the marketplace with some of his students, and finally, even while under arrest and drinking the hemlock. He was the first to demonstrate that our lives are open to philosophy at all times and in every aspect, while experiencing every emotion, and in each and every activity. As with teaching and leadership and philosophy, so too with parenting. You can be a parent anywhere. You can be a parent every minute of every day to anybody and everybody. You can be that parent in the same way that Socrates taught—by example, by getting down to their level, by being open, and by adapting to the situation at hand.

Authenticity is a practice we choose in each present moment. It is not a plan or a destination to get to. The choices we make in the now are most important because in a fast-changing world, flexing to what’s happening now, and creating from it is a critical leadership skill.

Authentic leadership is leading adaptively from your core, choosing who you’re most inspired to be to serve the greatest good in this moment.

Through this book we will introduce you to the works of COL John Boyd, USAF, whose brilliant work forms the basis of what we do.  Col. Boyd passed on in 1997, but his legacy continues to grow, particularly on how to develop leaders of character to out-perform their opponents. Fred and I have spent a good part of the last decade developing ways to teach people how to practice Boyd’s OODA loop (more on this in the book).

Along the way after introductions to putting Boyd’s, Sun Tzu and Clausewitz (two other brilliant military (human conflict) thinkers) as well as other’s thoughts to practice, we begin introductions to actually implementing these ideas in the classroom along with examples of how they translated to the street. Over the course of the book, these real-world examples compile to actually form a real world Program of Instruction (POI) for a course that was implemented successful in a large police force just a couple of years ago.

Authentic leadership is a whole body experience. Our bodies have a lot more to teach us about ourselves than our thoughts.

If we try to emulate the leadership style of others we perceive as successful, we end up being second-rate versions of someone else.

Authenticity requires us to slow down. Fast times require us to slow down. To be effective, we need to slow down our pace of thought and action and focus on managing our attention. To be authentic leaders we need to act from intention and choice rather than from habit and impulse.

Authentic leadership is the full expression of ”me” for the benefit of “we”.

If I were to ask you about let’s say coaching a high school football team for your local high school and told you the only time you were needed to be there as coach, was on game day. That is right no practice during the week, just take the team and win is all we ask. How do I prepare them if I cannot practice you ask? Well sir they have been trained and practiced in their freshman, sophomore and junior years. You will be the varsity coach and the team knows the game and how it’s played, all you need to do is set up the game plan on game day and organize your team so they win! Ludicrous! How can I be expected to develop the cohesion necessary to put a winning team on the field, without practice, despite their prior training and the three-plus years’ experience? Yes it is ludicrous. Yet this is exactly what we expect of law enforcement, security personnel and other first responders tasked with responding to and winning in crisis situations.

The German Army, which practiced Maneuver Warfare better than any other Army, sought after most in their leader development the strength of character in its officers. They defined Strength of Character as The ability, even the joy in seeking responsibility, and in making decisions under all circumstances, in the face of peers, superiors, subordinates and most of all in the face of the enemy. It is the ability to do what is right despite the consequences to one’s self or career.2

Our being is more important than our doing. We are human beings, acting as though we are human doings. In our frenzied doing, we are often not conscious of our state of being. Yet our deepest impact comes from our state of being because it is at the root of our intentions, our choices, and our behavior.

Winning takes constant superior situational awareness and a willingness to step outside the lines of traditional training. It requires each of us to use individual insight and innovation in applying what we have learned in training and through our experiences to what we know.  Applying what we know then takes consistent and constant practice and “practicing what we preach” to our daily duties.

On the job training and experience is often stated as “the way” to learn the job of policing. What does this mean to us cops? Does it mean with time on the job we’ll get better at what we do, automatically, or magically from working shift after shift and handling call after call? Every time we race to the scene and charge towards the sounds of danger and come out safe with suspect in custody, mean that we have somehow gotten better just by being there and participating in the dangerous encounter? Or is there something more to this concept of “on the job training” we should be doing to leverage every experience no matter how small or big to improve our performance? When I think of on the job training I do not envision an environment where you show up for work and fly by the seat of your pants and hope things work out as you think they should. No, what I envision by on the job training is that you learn from every experience and focus on leveraging the lessons learned to make you better at the job. Law enforcement officers are members of a profession that does not routinely practice its tactical skills. Only constant violent conflict and violent crime, a condition to objectionable, to even contemplate, would allow such practice. Thus the honing and developing of law enforcement peacekeeping skills must be achieved in other ways.

After Action reviews help develop communication, trust and unit cohesion and helps in a team approach to developing best practices in a variety of situations.  A key component to remember in conducting both TDGS and AAR is a candid open dialog, in an effort to learn. Anything less and you are only fooling yourself.

A Change in Culture, Top down and Bottom up! There can be no true problem solving without decentralization of control and individual initiative. To change from a culture of “tell me what to do to one that breeds and nurtures creativity, innovation, adaptation and time critical decision making,” we must move, really move from centralized control to a decentralized form of leadership. We have been talking about decentralized control in policing for years now, since the onset of “community policing” initiatives. True! But that's the problem we have been “talking about it, and that is all.” We need to be practicing it. Get beyond the talk and walking the talk if we truly want to see results that meet the challenges we face in policing. Yes there have been some organizations in law enforcement who have taken this approach seriously and the results show the value of frontline decision making. It takes constant practice to master these cultures!   The action taken by leadership needs to be more than written mission statements and words.  It takes action, action over time through learning, education, and training. Not just in the formal sense but in the real world sense of learning from everything we do at all levels of the organization and throughout the community on a daily bases.

the book is organized into five parts: an introductory part and four content parts, displayed in the matrix in figure 1-1, which captures the four essential practices of adaptive leadership. While the four practice parts of the book come after one another in linear sequence, the matrix is meant to highlight that you need not read or use the book that way.

To be effective, we have to slow down the speed of our thoughts and focus on managing our attention.

Practice holding labels lightly as leaders so you have greater range in your behaviors and are more adaptable and effective in a greater range of situations.

Authentic leadership is about leading from the core of who we are to inspire each of us to our best contribution toward a shared mission.

Authentic leadership is at the root of cultures of great innovation, engagement, outstanding client experiences, and growth.

The metaphor of the early American explorer fits policing and the complex problems we face on the street daily. As we search for peaceful outcomes to the situations we encounter numerous unknowns despite the similarities, in the types of incidents and crises we observe day to day. Standard operating procedures, policy and procedure practices are all very useful when we have standard problem and things go as we plan but what happens when things deviate from the standard and go outside the normal patterns? Here is where we must rely on resilience and adaptation, our ability and knowhow. Experienced people using their insights, imagination and initiative to solve complex problems as our ancestors, the early American explores did.  As we interact with people in dynamic encounters, the explorer mentality keeps us in the game; it keeps us alert and aware. The explorer mentality has us continually learning as we accord with a potential adversary and seek to understand his intent to the best of our ability. An officer who possesses the explorer mentality understands that an adversary has his own thoughts objectives and plans, many which he cannot hear, such as: “I will do what I am asked,” “I will not do what I am asked,” “I will escape,” “I will fight,” “I will assault,” “I will kill,” “I will play dumb until...,” “I will stab,” “I will shoot,” “he looks prepared I will comply,” “he looks complacent I will not comply, etc.” The explorer never stops learning and is ever mindful of both obvious and subtle clues of danger and or cooperation.

When the fight starts you do not have time to stop and think about the fundamentals.” ~Chet Richards, Certain to Win 1   Chet Richards wrote an interesting piece “Developing the Touch”, in which he asks the question, if Fingerspitzengefühl (fingertip feel) can be taught, why do so few people have it? He goes on to make two key points: First, Fingerspitzengefühl is a skill, so although most people can get better at it, some are going to get a lot better. Second, it’s a strange kind of skill, not for performing complicated or even dangerous tasks mystically well, but for sensing what is going on among groups of people in conflict and then influencing what happens.2 Chet’s points got me to thinking about, why is it we in law enforcement often times have difficulty applying what we know to a given situation? How do we get better at it? The answer lies in creating and nurturing our abilities in “Operational Art” taking what you know and being able to apply it to a given set of circumstances to affect your strategy and to bring an end to a potentially violent occurrence using appropriate tactics. To do this takes awareness, discipline, adaptability, skill development and strength of character to focus our efforts on the task at hand to meet our overall intent. You cannot learn this by sitting in some training class listening to an instructor give you a checklist formula on how to solve a particular set of problems. As Chet states: The first problem in learning Fingerspitzengefühl is that you can’t learn it by yourself. You have to have at least two groups of people to practice with — your team and some opponents.2 Our training must involve interaction with an adversary, red teaming comes to mind. Red Teaming is an approach to understanding our adversary and the methods they use. To develop a fingertip feel and maneuver we must possess numerous skills and be able to apply those skills individually and collectively if we are to be as effective as we need to be, to win

Win-win solutions are ideal but not common with strategic choices. When we hear someone talk "win-wins," we wonder if anything really lasting is going to change.

To summarize: organizations are technical instruments, designed as means to definite goals. They are judged on engineering premises; they are expendable. Institutions, whether conceived as groups or practices, may be partly engineered, but they have also a “natural” dimension. They {22} are products of interaction and adaptation; they become the receptacles of group idealism; they are less readily expendable.

Leadership’s role is to develop individuals who understand and practice integrity, courage, initiative, decisiveness, mental agility and personal accountability. These fundamental qualities must be aggressively cultivated which in turn allows for an atmosphere of adaptability at the lowest level, on the street. “I am here now in the situation that requires a decision…”  I AM EMPOWERED, SUPERENPOWERED TO DECIDE and ACT!

While technical problems may be very complex and critically important (like replacing a faulty heart valve during cardiac surgery), they have known solutions that can be implemented by current know-how. They can be resolved through the application of authoritative expertise and through the organization’s current structures, procedures, and ways of doing things. Adaptive challenges can only be addressed through changes in people’s priorities, beliefs, habits, and loyalties. Making progress requires going beyond any authoritative expertise to mobilize discovery, shedding certain entrenched ways, tolerating losses, and generating the new capacity to thrive anew.

We ought to practice democracy in the correct manner, but not to impose it to those who are still adapting to the correct leadership within their states.

Fifth: in the professions of law, medicine, and education, a new brand of leadership, and to some extent, new leaders will become a necessity. This is especially true in the field of education. The leader in that field must, in the future, find ways and means of teaching people how to apply the knowledge they receive in school. He must deal more with practice and less with theory. Sixth: new leaders will be required in the field of journalism. These are but a few of the fields in which opportunities for new leaders and a new brand of leadership are now available. The world is undergoing a rapid change. This means that the media through which the changes in human habits are promoted must be adapted to the changes. The media here described are the ones which, more than any others, determine the trend of civilization.

When eBay entered the Chinese market in 2002, they did so by buying the leading Chinese online auction site—not Alibaba but an eBay impersonator called EachNet. The marriage created the ultimate power couple: the top global e-commerce site and China’s number one knockoff. eBay proceeded to strip away the Chinese company’s user interface, rebuilding the site in eBay’s global product image. Company leadership brought in international managers for the new China operations, who directed all traffic through eBay’s servers back in the United States. But the new user interface didn’t match Chinese web-surfing habits, the new leadership didn’t understand Chinese domestic markets, and the trans-Pacific routing of traffic slowed page-loading times. At one point an earthquake under the Pacific Ocean severed key cables and knocked the site offline for a few days. Meanwhile, Alibaba founder Jack Ma was busy copying eBay’s core functions and adapting the business model to Chinese realities. He began by creating an auction-style platform, Taobao, to directly compete with eBay’s core business. From there, Ma’s team continually tweaked Taobao’s functions and tacked on features to meet unique Chinese needs. His strongest localization plays were in payment and revenue models. To overcome a deficit of user trust in online purchases, Ma created Alipay, a payment tool that would hold money from purchases in escrow until the buyer confirmed the receipt of goods. Taobao also added instant messaging functions to allow buyers and sellers to communicate on the platform in real time. These business innovations helped Taobao claw away market share from eBay, whose global product mentality and deep centralization of decision-making power in Silicon Valley made it slow to react and add features. But Ma’s greatest weapon was his deployment of a “freemium” revenue model, the practice of keeping basic functions free while charging for premium services. At the time, eBay charged sellers a fee just to list their products, another fee when the products were sold, and a final fee if eBay-owned PayPal was used for payment. Conventional wisdom held that auction sites or e-commerce marketplace sites needed to do this in order to guarantee steady revenue streams.

the abilities to innovate, to remain flexible and adapt constantly, to set ambitious goals, to think globally, to move quickly, to take risks.

Intrapreneur leaders present solid leadership attributes such as “full open communication,” “creativity,” “confidence,” “resourcefulness,” “decisiveness,” “ownership,” “digital readiness,” “self-adaptation,” and “resilience.

British writer George Bernard Shaw as having said, "Reasonable people adapt themselves to the circumstances. Unreasonable people adapt the circumstances to themselves. Progress depends on unreasonable people." I think it is appropriate to mention this quotation again here because it highlights the dilemma that confronts us when we seriously consider making fundamental changes in how we live, how we work, our business culture and our practices for coordination. It suggests that if we expect anything to change, we need to be unreasonable. More specifically, we need to make unreasonable commitments. If we only commit to what we think is reasonable or feasible, we are, by definition, making commitments to more of the same—to living in the cultural drift. "Reasons" are, by definition, products of past experience and common understandings for why things happen and what is or is not possible. Being unreasonable is not the same as being unrealistic. Being unreasonable means acting in a manner that is inconsistent with conventional wisdom and common sense. Any example of significant change began with someone making a commitment to a possibility that was viewed as unreasonable or impossible at the time. Commitment is the difference between living in a context of responsibility for creating the future versus living in a context of reasonableness in which we must cope with whatever the circumstances give us.

What results from these practices is that my clients begin to work with one another mindfully and intentionally. They become willing to see different perspectives or challenge one another healthily. They intuitively began to use dialogue skills as a pathway to co-create new possibilities. They take collective action that yields lasting results because, through the process of collaboration, they have learned how to align and adapt under constantly changing circumstances.

There is no such thing as a dysfunctional organization, because every organization is perfectly aligned to achieve the results it currently gets.