I’ve been thinking about real-life use cases for adaptability.
One is knowing when and how much to “adjust the dial” when something you’ve been doing needs to change.
A friend of mine recently had her first baby, and this weekend we talked about the seismic adjustment of being fully responsible for another human being. I commented that you need to learn constant vigilance when the baby is born, and you need to unlearn it during the emptying nest phase. Dial up, dial down. Both require adaptability.
(It reminds me of a running joke in our family that on Mother’s Day, moms go from wanting the gift of less time with their kids to more time with them, depending on their parenting stage).
Fast forward to later in life — I recently read advice aimed at older people to “add more threads” to the tapestry of their lives as they retire and age — referring to more hobbies, people, conversations etc. It reminded me that I’ve been through busy stages where more threads were the last thing I needed (dial down), but at other times, I might need to weave in more (dial up).
What does this concept look like for organizational leaders? I think it requires three things:
- Noticing. If we are flying on autopilot, we are unlikely to see when our former ways of doing things aren’t serving us well anymore.
- Openness. We need to be willing to make the necessary change, even if we aren’t yet sure how.
- Unlearning. The ability to consciously choose to lay down old ways of doing things in order to take up new ways is an adaptability skill. (It’s like deleting an old operating system or software package on our computer rather than keeping the old and new systems running at the same time, which ultimately slows down performance.)
Jim Brown’s recent book The Imperfect CEO is structured around an extended story that illustrates this process within a leadership team beautifully. It captures the nuance and angst of leaders needing to make a change but experiencing resistance to it at the same time. Have a look!