Friend or foe: Getting the problem right is the first problem
Today the biggest problems we face are complex, adaptive problems. These are problems that seem to have no stopping point, lack an obvious solution and often pay a return visit to see if we have learned anything about how to handle them.
Figuring out how to address complex problems (also known as wicked problems) calls for different skills than most people who choose to lead possess. We don’t know what to do.
What we think we know is that the problem has “an answer.” Figure out the answer; take action and the problem is solved. This approach can work well when we face a technical problem. At technical problem is a problem with a known answer.
Complex adaptive problems are often confused as technical problems by people who lead. This mistake turns into its own problem and compounds the issue. This is because once we think we know the solution, we deploy resources to fix it. People, materials, processes and structures are engage to attack the culprit and put out the fire. When all this fails, the leader loses credibility with the team. This is a leadership setback.
Messing up the problem diagnosis happens for several reasons:
- The problem is often new territory for us so we lack experience
- The problem is recurring and shows no sign of going away
- There is usually conflict embedded in the problem. Conflict that involves people
- It looks as if we need to learn new skills just to understand the problem
- We may be caught out not knowing the “answer” and be seen as incompetent
- And more…,
In today’s world where the future is unknown and unknowable, most of the technical problems have been identified. Those of us who choose to lead are faced with two challenges that as leaders we either address or we get marginalized.
1) Not only do we not know the answer to the problem, we often don’t even know what questions to ask.
2) We have to change our approach to leading and that means we will experience some loss of familiar skills. We will need to absorb this loss in order to move ahead. If we resist the loss, we will not go forward.
All this because we undervalued the skill of problem diagnosis in today’s complex world.
ACTION: Make time everyday for a week to reflect and write notes to yourself on the problems you faced that day. What was the nature of the problem? Was it technical or complex? How do you know that?
Self-reflection is the first move to building up problem diagnosis skills.
The Dojo and Building Adaptive Capacity Starts Here
Adaptive Leadership is the activity of mobilizing teams and organizations to move from a stable but ineffective state through disequilibrium and back to a stable state where the work now being done is addressing the most pressing conditions and challenges of the time.
Adaptive Leadership is also an iterative process. Leaders and teams take an action, gather feedback, learn from the results and take another action with better understanding. The iterative process is assisted by the employment of eight frameworks that have proven to be effective in doing adaptive work. You may discover others. The list below is a great beginning point for building the competence to be an adaptive leader. We will explore these frameworks in more detail within the next 30 days.
Eight Adaptive Leadership Frameworks for Action
1. Getting on the balcony – this is a perspective strategy. The metaphor is to remind the leader to remove herself from the action (the dance floor) and gain a viewpoint that is above the fray. By making this shift, one gets a better feel for what is happening inside the people system and how well actions are being implemented. This strategy can temper the urge for the leader to rescue people or strategies. Getting on the balcony is a back and forth movement during the action.
2. Frame the challenge – an important early move for a leader is to define an issue as a technical problem or an adaptive challenge. Getting this correct enables the leader to speak to the opportunity, convey urgency, provide useful perspective and acknowledge the effort that will be required to deal with the issue. Framing the challenge values a leader’s capacity to be a storyteller, to engage followers, to enroll them in the work that is ahead. But the leader is clear that if he misdiagnoses the challenge, all the storytelling skill in the world will not help.
3. Give the work back to the people – work means all the responsibility, accountability, initiative and confidence needed to do the job. The leader pushes back some of the difficult work and decisions that need to be made if progress is to be made. The leader is challenging and encouraging followers to take risks and initiative and to get into action. This is also a strategy that encourages the contrarians to go ahead and explore new ideas with cover provide by the leader.
4. Manage work avoidance – this is first an observation strategy. Working on hard challenges often requires being out of equilibrium and off center, while experimenting with new ways of doing the work. This is an uncomfortable state for many people but it is required if progress is to be made on adaptive challenges. This strategy is oriented to check that people are working on the real issues versus working on the safe work they know how to do but is not relevant to the challenge they are facing.
5. Resist seduction of your authority – here is a strategy designed to address issues of ego and fear. Specifically fear of failing due to being incompetent. The role of leader offers many temptations including being the hero; being the one who has the answer and the power to implement a solution. Followers understand the effect ego and fear can have on the leader and they may sometimes attempt strategies that play on those aspects of the leader to avoid doing the real work themselves. Checking to see to whom does the work belong and putting that work in that place is adaptive work. It is important to recognize and resist the temptation to rescue people by taking the challenge off their plate. Leave it there and provide leadership support.
6. Orchestrate conflict – adaptive work is new work and it is forged under pressure. Conflict is a very useful ingredient that contributes to making progress on adaptive challenges but it needs to be use judicially. The adaptive leader advocates creating a space for the conflict to unfold inside. The leader’s job is to get the right people in the space to have a conversation and then to facilitate that conversation and control the temperature of the space. Sometimes the temperature needs to be turned up and sometimes it needs to be turned down. The leader needs the sensitivity and skill to do both.
7. Intervene, regulate stress and hold steady – homeostasis or comfort zones are no place for organizations to stay when faced with difficult challenges. That is exactly where most people want to inhabit when faced with difficult situations. An adaptive leader manages this comfort zone by staying grounded when the heat rises, knowing when to let the pressure build for the sake of something new to be forged and knowing when to back off for the sake of the health of the group. This is difficult work but a required skill to lead others through hard patches.
8. Think politically and find partners – a realist’s strategy. The adaptive leader does not forget that politics and relationships are still valuable chips in the game of leading organizations. He advocates “digging wells of water before you are thirsty.” Build people connections, help others to do the same and stay engaged on a regular basis with that network of people. The adaptive leader understands that relationships are primary and everything else is derivative.
Luis Urzua: The “Made” Leader
Chile’s mining accident and the amazing rescue of the 33 miners has owned a piece of our attention since August 5th when the ordeal began. The successful rescue process of has birthed many heroes. Rightly so.
The man most in the spotlight has been Luis Urzua, who emerged from underground as a role model of leadership and who is being compared to Jim Lovell of Apollo 13 fame and Captain Chesley Sullenberger, who landed US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River last year. Mr. Urzua probably has earned his seat at this hero table based on the testimony of fellow miners who have described his leadership decisions over the 60 days the group spent stuck underground.
The Daily Mail of London calls Mr. Urzua a “born leader” as have others in their descriptions and depictions of the events. This is poor journalism. Mr. Urzau has been working in the underground mines for three decades. He’s learned a few things about people and how he and they respond to tough conditions. He didn’t just emerge in the moment to lead 32 other men through this disaster. He’s been preparing for years. Just like Commander Lovell and Captain Sullenburger.
Which means that there are no born leaders.
This Hollywood myth of the born leader is toxic in today’s world. The level of challenge that groups of people, organizations, countries and governments face are so complex that to believe and hope that there is a knight on the white horse just about to crest the hill and save us all is one contributing factor to the turbulence that has strafed the planet, the economy and societies for the last few years.
Besides who has time to site by the empty cradle waiting for the next “chosen one?” There is work to be done. We need more leaders like Mr. Urzua. The great news is that everyone has the opportunity to lead and now days, also the responsibility to lead.
Luis Urzua did well because he first recognized that the cave-in was a wicked problem and therefore had no easy answer. From there he regulated the stress on his team, framed the challenge and devised a plan that was ambitious and achievable. He put his team’s needs before himself. He killed off his ego and included his team in the thinking and planning of their survival. He did this because the most useful scenarios for surviving lived in the community of 33 minors and not in 1 leader.
His work as a leader is a testament to adaptive leadership. It is this kind of leader we will need in the years ahead. I suspect we will need a few million of these leaders if the global community is going to make it. We know we have at least one in Chile.
Mind the Gap
My work has several influences. I’m proud to stand on the broad shoulders of many wise people who have researched and cultivated smart points of view that help people and organizations be effective. I’ve noticed that some of the best work is about closing gaps.
Chris Argyris introduced us to the “Espoused Theory” vs. the “Theory In Use.” But his real work was about helping us deal with the mess taking place in the gap between these two theories.
Robert Fritz takes us into the practice of creativity and innovation by asking us to define our “Vision” and detail our “Current Reality.” He tells us that by understanding these two perspectives clearly, we build structural tension that seeks resolution. If actions are designed and taken in the direction of our Vision, we stand a better chance of achievement. He even says we don’t have to feel so great about ourselves, possess high self-esteem or be happy. A clearly identified goal, honest assessment of the current reality and a willingness to act will be enough.
Ron Heifetz of Harvard and Adaptive Leadership fame explains that a leader must be able to distinguish a technical problem from an adaptive challenge if she is to lead effectively these days. An adaptive problem is the gap between the values a person or organization stand for and thrive inside and the hard realities they face. Specifically that gap is produced by the current lack of capacity to realize the values and execute.
Lots of gaps.
The reality is that each of these accomplished men has an accurate read on effectiveness. It is the closing of the gap that is the real work. In order to close the gap, something must change and that change must be permanent. As in forever.
Never again.
Finite.
Who’s in for that work?
Giving up something forever, something that has been a part of me for most if not all of my life is big stuff. It is also a loss. A loss of familiar (even if it’s unhealthy, familiar bad habits provide a strange comfort). Heifetz is accurate when he says “People don’t fear change, they fear the loss of familiar.”
So if you are working to close a gap in your personal life, or if you are a leader tasked with a leading a change effort, beware: if you fail to assess what is not essential and needs to go away forever (the loss), DO THAT ASSESSING FIRST.
If you don’t, most likely you will find yourself muddling around in the gap and if you are leading others, you will have disgruntled company with you in your gap.