Leadership, according to Ronald Heifitz, is defined as the ability to mobilize adaptive work (dealing with adaptive challenges). Adaptive challenges are defined as problems that:
- Have no existing solution.
- Require learning while defining the problem.
- Require learning during implementation of the solution.
- Require a change in behavior.
- Require a change of mental models.
In short, adaptive challenges require a great amount of learning, innovation, creativity, and hard work. A few examples of adaptive challenges:
- Producing more with less (Budget cuts anyone?).
- Providing quality healthcare in the face of ballooning costs.
- Responding to low cost competitors from China.
- Breaking down silos and increasing collaboration in large organizations.
- Transitioning to sustainable business practice and corporate social responsibility.
With this in mind, we created our leadership development program with focus on creativity, learning, systemic thinking, appreciative inquiry, and personal and organization change models.
In our design, not only do leaders learn how to become more creative, but they also learn how to foster this creativity in others; they learn about the conditions for individual and group creativity. Furthermore, they learn concepts such as mental models, and triple loop learning.
We believe leaders cannot bring about change until they are able to change themselves.
Leaders understand our world is interconnected; this is why we help leaders make sense of this complexity with our focus on systemic thinking.
Organizations grow in the direction they measure. Therefore, when organizations focus on their strengths, they grow stronger. This is why, we not only help leaders become aware of their own strengths, but also the strength of others.