harvard business ron heifetz 081809 final v2

The Survival Guide for Leaders:Tactics for Tough Times

August 18, 2009

Angelia Herrin

Executive Director, Harvard Business Publishing

© Copyright 2008 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.

Ron Heifetz

Cofounder and Principal,

Cambridge Leadership Associates

Founding director of the Center for Public

Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School

Bestselling Author:


Who We Are


Executive Education

MBA Program

HarvardBusiness

School

Harvard University

Harvard BusinessPublishing

Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis?

© Cambridge Leadership Associates

Two Phases of Crisis Leadership

Emergency Tasks:

•Presence•Speak to people’s experience•Maintain poise•Drive the prepared organizational responses•Improvise as needed to the extent that’s possible


Adaptive Phase

Goals:• Tackle the immediate adaptive challenge• Build an adaptive culture

Tasks:• Catalyze adaptation• Embrace disequilibrium• Generate distributed leadership


The Adaptive Context


Today’s

Leadership

Tasks


Catalyze Adaptation

• From “best practices” to “next practices”• Confront loyalty to legacy practices• Distinguish the essential from the expendable• Run numerous experiments


Helping people develop “next practices” that will enable the organization to thrive in a new world, even as they continue with best practices necessary for current success.

Catalyze Adaptation


Catalyze Adaptation


Embrace Disequilibrium

• Keep your hand on the thermostat• Depersonalize conflict• Create a culture of courageous Conversations


Keeping people in a state that creates enough discomfort to induce change but not so much that they fight, flee or freeze



Generate Leadership

• Acknowledge interdependence• Distribute leadership responsibility• Protect voices of leadership without authority• Leverage diversity


Giving people at all levels the opportunity to lead experiments that will help the organization adapt to

changing times.

Generate Leadership


Generate Leadership


Area of Focus Technical Adaptive

Direction: Provide Problem Definition and Solution

Identify the Adaptive Challenge; Frame key questions & issues

Protection: Protect from external threats Disclose external threats

Order:Orient people to

current roles

Disorient current roles; resist orienting people to

new roles too quickly Orientation

Conflict Restore order Expose conflict or let it emerge

Norms Maintain norms Challenge norms or let them be challenged

Leadership With Authority


The Personal Challenge

You won’t achieve your leadership aims if you sacrifice yourself by not taking care of your needs.


Getting up on the Balcony


Use Partners


Distinguish Role From Self


Listen


Manage One’s Hungers


Anchor Oneself


Purposes

Beyond Measure


Contact: Ron Heifetz

Cambridge Leadership Associates

[email protected]

p. 617.576.5766

www.cambridge-leadership.com


Discuss Adaptive Leadership in your Organization

Change Management Center

Q&A…………………Thank You!


To learn more about The Change Management Center or to receive a demo please contact:

Barrett Coakley

Harvard Business Publishing

[email protected]

www.harvardbusiness.org/corporate

For further reading on Adaptive

Leadership, please see the July-

August issue of HBR:

Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis

By Ron Heifetz, Alexander Grashow

and Marty Linsky.

harvard business ron heifetz 081809 final v2

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