Skill 1: Spotting the need to change
In contrast to Microsoft, Steve Jobs spent a lot of time scanning for new technologies that could disrupt their market. He spotted the potential for digital music early and asked Apple engineers to get ready to build a digital music player as soon as there was a chip powerful enough to carry a ‘1,000 songs in your pocket.’ The iPod was launched in 2001. In 2004 Sony launched a phone that could also play music, and Jobs immediately foresaw phones would replace the iPod. When Jony Ive showed him an early prototype of a touch screen tablet, he instructed his team to immediately pivot from the tablet project to working on shrinking it to produce a touch screen phone.
Adaptive leaders recognise it is easier to spot outdated assumptions in others than it is in ourselves. They encourage people to challenge themselves and their peers with data. The key skill here is open dialogue. Creating an environment where people share their thinking to surface the assumptions we are making and encouraging peers to challenge where appropriate. This is very different from typical team discussions, where we are trying to influence others to see things our way. Rather than being about who is right or wrong, the focus is on using the cognitive diversity of the team to develop a more accurate shared view of the environment. An example we often reference in MF is how Pixar have systemised the use of constructive dialogue through their ‘brains trust meetings’. Every 4-6 weeks that a team is working on a movie, they invite 15-20 peers not working on it into a room to critically assess what they’re doing.
2. Name elephants – encourage people to challenge the status quo
When organisations fail or stumble, there is usually an abundance of evidence in advance that they are in trouble. But hierarchy and a lack of psychological safety to challenge the status quo means the need for change often becomes a proverbial ‘elephant in the room’. An adaptive challenge which lots of people see, but don’t talk about. It’s hard to believe no Microsoft engineers foresaw the importance of phones as a computer platform. The question is what stopped them being listened to?
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Adaptive Leadership : Building your capacity to thrive in a disruptive environment
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