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Leaders are increasingly facing a new class of Problem, what scientists call a Type 2 or Adaptive problems, which requires reshaping of one’s ecosystem
Leaders are increasingly facing a new class of Problem, what scientists call a Type 2 or Adaptive problems which requires reshaping of one’s ecosystem (p.18-22). This is distinct from the kind Machine-level optimization problem most managers have faced in the more predictable era of 20th century management. Adaptive Challenge and The Leadership Challenge - (focusadventure.com).
Hence the need for some form of practice around shaping Living Systems to meet adaptive challenges. Hence the need for Panarchy and our tools for network thinking, design and orchestration.
All Leaders need the ability to face the context of disruption directly, rather than act as though there are any “machine boundaries” for society at large next-level leaders recognize that Society like all living systems does function in an embedded context. This is the Age of Interdependence (the globally networked age). You had to be a hippy in the 70s to see it. Today you have to be hiding under a rock to not see it.
Operational versus Adaptive Challenges
A New Wicked World of Adaptive Challenge
Each leap to a new technology presents leaders with it an adaptive challenge which forces leaders to rethink old assumptions, imagine new futures and create unprecedented operating models etc. In short it requires us to become transformational thinkers and systems designers.
Borrowed from biology the notion of Adaptive Challenge is that it is a cruel paradox of both business and biology that when an organism or organization is well suited to its environment it becomes poorly suited when that environment changes. Said another way it forces the organism or organization to transform.
Lisa Wardle, an executive at Nike, framed this challenge beautifully when she asked us what we now call the Nike Challenge: How do we evolve our Leadership as fast as technology and the world around us?
The question strikes at the heart of what it means to be a leader today. Yet, it's not uncommon for us to run across leaders whose faces glaze over when confronted with the complexity, speed and scale of new technology. Yet, creatively addressing this challenge is precisely that which is going to save them from obsolescence or worse.
This challenge is not limited to business leaders. Walking dead or Next-Level Leader applies to leaders of all stripes. Stanford Professor Boligi Srinivasan predicts that when the internet revolution is over, the only pre-internet institution to be left standing will be the Chinese Communist Party (exact quote is on first appearance on Tim Ferris Podcast in q1 of 2021).