ADAPTIVE LEADERSHIPJohn RobertoLifelongFaith Associates(jroberto@lifelongfaith.com)

Leadership is the activity of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges (problems) and do the

adaptive work necessary to achieve progress and thrive.

(Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky)

How would you describe the mission of your church today?

What are some of the significant challenges your church faces in living its mission in the 21st century?

Challenges

1. Time – people2. Commitment of the people3. Theology of scarcity – perception we don’t have

resources4. Economy – decline of jobs, poverty, crime(?), out

migration5. Families traveling on weekends6. Need for adult faith formation7. People’s self-confidence – poor leadership,

uncertainty 8. Over-expectations of pastors

Challenges

1. Physical buildings – older, costly, too big2. Unhealthy people – disease, addiction, aging3. Connecting and relating to a new culture that’s

around us4. Growing violence in culture and growing fears5. Lack of imagination – in our community 6. Overextension of children and youth + activities, and

parents’ ability to get them to activities7. Loss of relevance – faith; faith not important +

negative attitude toward faith

Challenges

1. Politicization of faith2. Polarization of faith / rejection of Gospel3. Growing distrust of institutions, esp. not local ones4. Professionalization of clergy “professional Christian”5. Perception that Lutherans don’t know the Bible as well as

evangelicals6. Apathy – congregation7. Retired or tired congregations8. Parents don’t have the self-confidence to teach the faith9. Difficulty in expressing faith10. Relativized truth, based more on emotion and experience

rather than absolute truth

Distinguishing Technical Problems from Adaptive Challenges

Technical problems (even though they may be complex) can be solved with knowledge and procedures already in hand.

Easy to identify. Require change in just one or a few places; often

contained within organizational boundaries Everyday, people have problems for which they do,

in fact, have the necessary know-how and procedures—technical problems.

Adaptive challenges are situations for which solutions lie outside the current way of operation.

Difficult to identify (easy to deny). People often resist even acknowledging adaptive challenges

Require experiments, new discoveries, and adjustments from numerous places in the organization.

Without learning new ways—changing attitudes, values, and deep-seated behaviors—people cannot make the adaptive leap necessary to thrive in the new environment.

Calls for changes of heart and mind—the transformation of long-standing habits and deeply held assumptions and values.

Distinguishing Technical Problems from Adaptive Challenges

You May Be Facing an Adaptive Challenge If. . . the solution requires operating in a different way than you

do now. . . the problem AND the solution require learning. . . the solution requires shifting the authority and

responsibility to the people who are actually affected. . . the solution requires some sacrifice of your past ways of

working or living. . . the solution requires experimenting before you’re sure of

the answer. . . the solution will take a long time. . . the challenge connects to people’s deeply held values. . .

The Adaptive Intervention Process

1. Observe

2. Interpret

3. Intervene

1. Observing events and patterns around you;

2. Interpreting what you are observing (developing multiple hypotheses about what is really going on; and

3. Designing interventions based on the observations & interpretations to address the adaptive challenge you have identified.

Adaptive Design Process

1. DISCERN: Is your church facing technical problems for which technical fixes will be appropriate or are is your church facing adaptive challenges or are is your church facing both?

Adaptive Design Process

2. IDENTIFY: What are the significant adaptive challenges confronting your church?

Adaptive Design Process3. INTERPRET: What you are observing about this

adaptive challenge. Is there any part of this challenge that is new and that might

need a different strategy than what is usually done? Who are the key stakeholders, and how might they be

positively affected or negatively affected? How would they describe the situation and the stakes for them?

How generalized is the urgency to do something or do you have to figure out how to ripen the issue?

What are the adaptive elements of this challenge/situation, and what are the technical aspects?

Is this only organization facing this challenge/situation? What responses are others making?

Adaptive Design Process

4. IDENTIFY INTERVENTIONS that could address the adaptive challenge.

Adaptive Design Process5. DESIGN

INTERVENTIONS based on the observations & interpretations to address the adaptive challenge.

Listen to the Environment

Experiment & Innovate

Evaluate & Learn What

Works

Modify Programs &

Plans

Generating Ideas: Mindmapping

Script the Moves1. Design Phase:

• Project Statement: Description + Target Audience + Materials Needed • Develop a task force• Consult - focus group to give feedback

2. Pilot Phase• Find a target audience• Implement and get regular feedback• Develop leaders through the project

3. Evaluation Phase 4. Modify and Launch for Larger Audience

Projects

1. Conference-wide collaboration

2. Mission – focus out3. Spiritual but not religious4. Connecting with God and

others5. Diminishing resources6. Families7. Being and living church8. Engage neighborhood

with Gospel

9. Diminishing attendance at worship

10. Growing small congregation

11. Impact of voice of love12. Diversifying message13. Telling faith stories14. Diverse demands, seek

balance15. Wed eve diverse

programming

Whole Family LearningSeasonal Programs

Family VBS

Family Camp

Family Service

Intergenerational Experiences

1. Intergenerational Worship2. Intergenerational Learning3. Intergenerational Events (arts festivals, music and

concerts, drama)4. Intergenerational Service5. Intergenerational Retreats & Camps6. Intergenerational Mentoring (Reverse Mentoring)7. Intergenerational Leadership

New Forms of Worship

New Forms of Faith Formation

Online Faith Formation Centers

Online Faith Formation Centers

Online Faith Formation Centers

Online Faith Formation Resource Center

Online Parent & Family Resource Center

Share ItBlog/Facebook Question

After Worship Sharing@Home Conversation

Activity

Study It“Taking Faith Home”

Sermon Video + Study GuideDaily Readings

Scripture Commentaries Online Bible Study

Live ItLiving the Message DailyLiving Christian Practices

Service/Mission IdeaAction Project

Pray ItWeekly Table Prayer

Praying with the SaintsAM & PM Prayer

Lectio Divina

Sunday Worship

Sunday Worship All Week - Online

Internet Café & Classes

Equipping People for Outreach

Preparing People for Outreach/Invitation six-week, small group experience pray each day’s scripture and prayer exercise and

work with a prayer partner study a chapter of the book with their small

group

Invitation to Small Group Experience a no-obligation experience of spiritual discussion,

prayer and community for people who aren’t connected with a church

church members invite their friends into a four-week small group experience with short study chapters, an individual prayer journal, prayer partner activities, and group exercises

www.gracenet.info

www.freshexpressions.org.uk/stories/playhouse

Family Center: The Wesley Playhouse

Church-Sponsored Job Fair

Soup Kitchen & Food Bank

Recovery Ministries

Adaptive Design Process

6. THINK HARD ABOUT YOUR FRAMING. Thoughtful framing means communicating your intervention in a way that enables group members to understand what you have in mind, why the intervention is important, and how they can help carry it out. A well-framed intervention strikes a chord in people, speaking to their hopes and fears. It starts where they are, not where you are. And it inspires them to move forward. Think about the balance between reaching people above and below the neck. Some groups and some people need data first, before the emotion. For others, it is the reverse. Connect your language to the group’s espoused values and purpose.

Adaptive Design Process

7. HOLD STEADY. When you have made an intervention, think of it as having a life of its own. Do not chase after it. The idea will make its way through the system, and people will need time to digest it, think about it, discuss it, and modify it. If you think of it as “yours,” you are likely to get overly invested in your own image of it. Once you have made an intervention, your idea is theirs. The key is to stay present and keep listening.

Adaptive Design Process

8. ANALYZE THE FACTIONS that begin to emerge. As people begin to discuss the intervention, pay attention to who seems engaged, who starts using the new language or pieces of your idea as if it were their own. Listen for who resists the idea. Use these observations to help you see the contours of the factions that various people represent on the issue.

Adaptive Design Process9. KEEP THE WORK AT THE CENTER OF PEOPLE’S

ATTENTION. Avoiding adaptive work is a common human response to the prospect of loss. Avoidance is not shameful; it is just human. Expect that your team will find ways to avoid focusing on the adaptive challenge in doing their diagnosis as well as in taking action. Resistance to your intervention will have less to do with the merits of your idea and mostly to do with the fears of loss your idea generates.

Adaptive Design Process Get allies. You need to share the burden of keeping the work

at the center of people’s attention. Understand. Try to understand the impact of new directions

on the constituents behind the people in your working group, and how the pleasure or displeasure of those constituents is going to play out in the behavior of the person. Then think about how you can help that person with their problem, e.g., presenting the idea to their group or making sure the person receives credit for making the new idea happen.

Threat & Loss. To help the members of your team who are worried about their own people, interpret their group’s resistance in terms of threat and loss. Dealing with the fears of loss requires a strategy that takes these losses seriously and treats them with respect.

Build an Adaptive Culture

1. Elephants on the table are named.2. Responsibility for the organization is shared.3. Independent judgment is expected.4. Leadership capacity is developed.5. Reflection and continuous learning are

institutionalized.

Leadership is the activity of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges (problems) and do the

adaptive work necessary to achieve progress and thrive.

(Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky)

Adaptive Leadership Principles

Adaptive leadership is specifically about change than enables the capacity to thrive. New environments and new dreams demand new strategies and abilities, as well as the leadership to mobilize them.

Adaptive Leadership Principles Successful adaptive changes build on the past

rather than jettison it. A challenge for adaptive leadership, then, is to engage people in distinguishing what is essential to preserve in their organization’s heritage from what is expendable. Successful adaptations are thus both conservative and progressive. They make the best possible use of previous wisdom and know-how. The most effective leadership anchors change in the values, competencies, and strategic orientations that should endure in the organization.

Adaptive Leadership Principles

Organizational adaptation occurs through experimentation. Those seeking to lead adaptive change need an experimental mind-set. They must learn to improvise as they go, buying time and resources along the way for the next set of experiments.

Adaptive Leadership Principles

New adaptations significantly displace, reregulate, and rearrange some old DNA. Leadership on adaptive challenges generates loss. Learning is often painful. Leadership requires the diagnostic ability to recognize these losses and the predictable defensive patterns of response that operate at the individual and systemic levels. It requires know-how to counteract these patterns.

Adaptive Leadership Principles

Adaptation takes time. It takes time to consolidate adaptions into new sets of norms and processes. Adaptive leadership thus requires persistence. Significant change is the product of incremental experiments that build up over time. And cultures change slowly. Those who practice this form of leadership need to stay in the game, even while taking the heat along the way.

Adaptive Work as Spiritual Work

What Heifetz describes as adaptive work is, at its heart, spiritual work. It involves the central dynamics of the

spiritual life and of transformation, which includes loss, risk and trust, even death and resurrection. Our sacred

Scriptures, sacraments and our symbols are all powerful resources for adaptive challenges and adaptive work that we face at this time. No program, effort at restructuring, or ‘right’ leader alone will meet this challenge. It involves

our own changes of minds and hearts.” (Anthony Robinson, Leadership for Vital Congregations)

Adaptive Change People don’t resist change per se. People love change when they know it’s a good thing. (No

one gives back a winning lottery ticket.) People resist loss. When change involves real or potential

loss, people hold on to what they have and resist the change.

The common factor generating adaptive failure is resistance to loss. A key to leadership , then, is the diagnostic capacity to find out the kinds of losses at stake in a situation.

Adaptive leadership leadership almost always put you in the business of assessing, managing, distributing, and providing contexts for losses that move people through these losses to a new place.

Adaptive Change Adaptive leadership is a process of conservation and

loss. “Of all that we care about, what must be given up to

survive and thrive going forward? “Of all that we care about, what elements are

essential and must be preserved into the future, or we will lose precious values, core competencies, and lose who we are?”

As in nature, a successful adaption enables an organization or community to take the best from its traditions, identify, and history into the future.

A CASE STUDY

The Adaptive Intervention Process

1. Observe

2. Interpret

3. Intervene

1. Observing events and patterns around you;

2. Interpreting what you are observing (developing multiple hypotheses about what is really going on; and

3. Designing interventions based on the observations & interpretations to address the adaptive challenge you have identified.

The Case of the Symphony Orchestra

The Case of the Symphony OrchestraThe mission of the Symphony Orchestra is to. . . . set the highest possible standard for excellence in

musical performance at home and around the world provide superior education and community

programs enrich, serve, and shape cultural life throughout the

local communities maintain financial stability and gain public

recognition as a means of ensuring its ability to fulfill its mission.

The Case of the Symphony Orchestra Diminishing financial resources, decreased individual

contributions, public support, and government support Reducing the budget and restructuring the organization Reducing number of contracted weeks for musicians

with a corresponding decrease in wages and benefits Rising ticket prices in a “recession” economy Increasing competition in the local entertainment

sector with new venues and organizations Increasing competition with other platforms for

classical music: iTunes, online music services, cable and internet broadcasts, YouTube

The Case of the Symphony Orchestra1. DISCERN: Is the Symphony facing technical problems

for which technical fixes will be appropriate or are they facing adaptive challenges or are they facing both?

The Case of the Symphony Orchestra2. IDENTIFY: What are the significant adaptive

challenges confronting the Symphony Orchestra?

The Case of the Symphony Orchestra

3. INTERPRET: What you are observing about this adaptive challenge.

Is there any part of this challenge that is new and that might need a different strategy than what is usually done?

Who are the key stakeholders, and how might they be positively affected or negatively affected? How would they describe the situation and the stakes for them?

How generalized is the urgency to do something or do you have to figure out how to ripen the issue?

What are the adaptive elements of this challenge/situation, and what are the technical aspects?

Is this only organization facing this challenge/situation? What responses are others making?

The Case of the Symphony Orchestra4. IDENTIFY INTERVENTIONS that could address the

adaptive challenge.

The Case of the Symphony Orchestra

Interventions1. Total Access: time shifting and space shifting the

concerts, allowing patrons to enjoy them at a time and place of their choosing – Digital Concert Hall. This also affords the opportunity to simulcast live concerts in multiple venues throughout the region.

2. Concert Enhancements: online tools, such as video introductions to performances (by conductors and guest artists), program notes, synchronized listening notes, and other supplemental materials to enrich the concert experience.

The Case of the Symphony Orchestra

Interventions3. Musician Connections: bonding audiences to

musicians, in and out of the concert hall, through the use of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, as well as other Web 2.0 platforms. Example: YouTube Symphony

4. Excellence: at a time when the marginal cost of content distribution is virtually nothing, competition can be global. In such an environment, across-the-board excellence is a prerequisite for survival.

The Case of the Symphony Orchestra5. DESIGN

INTERVENTIONS based on the observations & interpretations to address the adaptive challenge.

Listen to the Environment

Experiment & Innovate

Evaluate & Learn What

Works

Modify Programs &

Plans

An Adaptive Design Process

6. THINK HARD ABOUT YOUR FRAMING. Thoughtful framing means communicating your intervention in a way that enables group members to understand what you have in mind, why the intervention is important, and how they can help carry it out. A well-framed intervention strikes a chord in people, speaking to their hopes and fears. It starts where they are, not where you are. And it inspires them to move forward. Think about the balance between reaching people above and below the neck. Some groups and some people need data first, before the emotion. For others, it is the reverse. Connect your language to the group’s espoused values and purpose.

An Adaptive Design Process

7. HOLD STEADY. When you have made an intervention, think of it as having a life of its own. Do not chase after it. The idea will make its way through the system, and people will need time to digest it, think about it, discuss it, and modify it. If you think of it as “yours,” you are likely to get overly invested in your own image of it. Once you have made an intervention, your idea is theirs. The key is to stay present and keep listening.

An Adaptive Design Process

8. ANALYZE THE FACTIONS that begin to emerge. As people begin to discuss the intervention, pay attention to who seems engaged, who starts using the new language or pieces of your idea as if it were their own. Listen for who resists the idea. Use these observations to help you see the contours of the factions that various people represent on the issue.

An Adaptive Design Process9. KEEP THE WORK AT THE CENTER OF PEOPLE’S

ATTENTION. Avoiding adaptive work is a common human response to the prospect of loss. Avoidance is not shameful; it is just human. Expect that your team will find ways to avoid focusing on the adaptive challenge in doing their diagnosis as well as in taking action. Resistance to your intervention will have less to do with the merits of your idea and mostly to do with the fears of loss your idea generates.

An Adaptive Design Process Get allies. You need to share the burden of keeping the work

at the center of people’s attention. Understand. Try to understand the impact of new directions

on the constituents behind the people in your working group, and how the pleasure or displeasure of those constituents is going to play out in the behavior of the person. Then think about how you can help that person with their problem, e.g., presenting the idea to their group or making sure the person receives credit for making the new idea happen.

Threat & Loss. To help the members of your team who are worried about their own people, interpret their group’s resistance in terms of threat and loss. Dealing with the fears of loss requires a strategy that takes these losses seriously and treats them with respect.

Build an Adaptive Culture

1. Elephants on the table are named.2. Responsibility for the organization is shared.3. Independent judgment is expected.4. Leadership capacity is developed.5. Reflection and continuous learning are

institutionalized.