Skill 2: Master our response
Don’t be a boiled frog
You can’t ignore the need to add value for today, getting permission to be here tomorrow may well depend on it. But adaptive organisations do a better job of prioritising adding value for tomorrow.
When facing a crisis, once we’ve bought ourselves some time, it is critical we then follow up with a broader process of adaptation to prevent the crisis happening again. Failing to do so is comparable to a patient who fails to see that cardiac surgery is only a temporary solution if they don’t also make changes to their lifestyle. Constant firefighting is not a good indicator of an adaptive organization. It highlights that we’re not tackling the underlying issues. The metaphor of the boiled frog is based on the idea that whilst a frog will immediately jump out of hot water. If you first place it in cold water, and only gently heat it, it fails to notice the building heat and dies. Thankfully this is not true, which is good news for frogs, but the metaphor is still a useful one for us humans. With situations where we have more time to adapt, there is a very real danger that we squander the opportunity to do the adaptive work while we have the time to do so. It’s not that we haven’t spotted the need for change, it’s that we’re not treating it with sufficient urgency. We also avoid adaptive work because the return on investment feels less certain. Every leadership team we’ve worked with faces the challenge of balancing the need to add value today with adding value for tomorrow.
“…there is a danger that we squander the opportunity to do the adaptive work while we have the time to do so.”
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Adaptive Leadership : Building your capacity to thrive in a disruptive environment
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