Adaptive Leadership and Cultures

I was invited by Ali Juma to present on the 'Inner Game of Change' podcast.  During this 45 minute podcast, we discuss a range of topics around culture, including capacity building, cultural evolution and considerations for leaders and practitioners. 

The Adaptive Cultures community have created this important guide for leaders who are grappling with emergence from crisis and navigating the complexity that will inevitably unfold through this journey. The guide takes us through these various stages, exploring the following key themes:

1. Making sense of our emerging world
• How do we best make sense of the emerging world?
• How can we build insight and capability to continue to evolve our businesses, organisations and institutions in the face of current and emerging challenges?

2. Enabling deeper learning
• How can we balance the focus on business and organisational continuity with organisational reinvention, regeneration, adaptation and evolution?
• What new community and customer needs may emerge and how can we be at the forefront to co-create new ideas and solutions?

3. Embracing disruption
• How can we lean into disruption as an opportunity for evolution and co-creation, letting go of things that no longer serve us?
• What (authentic) acts of caring and service to our clients and community and support for our suppliers at this time may generate deeper trust and more strategic partnerships into the future?

4. Evolving new patterns of leadership
• What new kind of leadership is the world calling for? What new levels of thinking and being are necessary? How has the crisis amplified this calling?
• After the crisis has peaked, how can we continue to lead from a higher level of consciousness, rather than reverting to old ways?

5. Leading from purpose
• How can we amplify our sense of purpose and use it as a guiding light?
• How could sensing into our emerging world and possible futures illuminate a more expansive purpose?

6. Overcome forces of reversion
• How can we establish new adaptive practices and processes that enable us to continually evolve?
• How can we pay attention to the forces of reversion, and recalibrate towards ongoing progress and evolution?

You don't win friends when you challenge a system that is doing its best to maintain the status quo... Purposeful networks are an important enabler and support for practitioners taking on the challenging, sometimes risky and often lonely work of culture transformation/evolution. 

This wonderful case study explores how the Siemens Energy Services business developed and implemented a targeted roadmap for evolving its culture and enabling their transformation agenda. 

The team used the Adaptive Cultures methodology to create a shared understanding of the aspirational culture required to deliver on their strategy and to create a roadmap to bring the aspirational culture to life. 

I like the way a highly technical team were able to do and embrace real culture work. I think a strength of the Adaptive Cultures framework is that it creates a tangible connection between purpose, strategy and culture (as the capacity to deliver adapt and grow). It also drives the creation of practical solutions that can be owned by leaders. Importantly, it opens up the inner work required to build the capacity of leaders.

You can learn more about the Adaptive Cultures Framework here - https://adaptivecultures.co/about/framework/

You can also join the global community - https://adaptivecultures.co/community/

This brochure provides an overview of the Adaptive Cultures methodology. I've been undertaking practitioner certification through 2018/2019. I really value the combination of inner (practitioner) and outer (organisation/client) journey, the connection between purpose/strategy and aspirational culture (evolution), as well as the idea of culture as capacity (to deliver, grow and adapt). The program and practitioner community are challenging and supporting my growth. I highly recommend it. 

I'm using the accreditation program referred to in this article to unlock my potential as a culture practitioner. The program is challenging me to increase my own adaptive capacity, which in turn will better enable me to influence that of the people and organisations I support. The needle on my discomfort meter will continue to be in the hot (but productive!) zone, but I'm supported by some incredible people, so I couldn't be more excited about the possibilities.