The Organization Development Journal - Indigenous Psychindigenouspsych.org/Interest...

We are Pleased to Announce

The Organization Development Journal

2002 Best Article of the Year

Adaptive Leadership: When Change is Not Enough (Part 1) Dr. Jerry Glover, Dr. Gordon Jones, and Dr. Harris Friedman

Adaptive Leadership: Four Principles for Being Adaptive (Part 2) Dr. Jerry Glover, Kelley Rainwater, Dr. Gordon Jones, and Dr. Harris Friedman

Each year a panel of judges evaluates the Feature Articles published in the Organization Development Journal in order to determine the best article published that year. For the year 2002, our panel consisted of Alan R. Lisk Dr. William J. Kohley, Debbie Pastors, Steve Cady and Jennifer Clevidence. We are pleased to recognize the exceptional two-part article written by Dr. Jerry Glover and his co-authors on Adaptive Leadership. In recognition of their distinguished contribution to the field, Dr. Glover and his co-authors received a plaque and a $2,000 cash award. The abstract below provides a summary for each article in the two-part series. Following the abstracts, you will find the articles included. Please join us in congratulating Dr. Glover and his co-authors.

2002 Best Article of the Year Abstract

In Part 1, Adaptive Leadership: When Change Is Not Enough (Summer 2002, Volume 20, Number 2) the authors discuss the need for adaptive leadership. They present a framework, inspired by Piaget’s concepts of assimilation and accommodation, that can be used to analyze the adaptive dynamics of leaders and organizations. In Part 2, Adaptive Leadership: Four Principles for Being Adaptive (Winter 2002, Volume 20, Number 4) the authors discuss four principle ingredients for enhancing adaptive potential: cultural competency; knowledge management; creating synergy from diversity; and holistic vision. The principles are discussed in detail, citing examples of each. In addition, the article presents certain predispositions that the authors believe are essential to enhancing adaptive capacity and briefly compare the adaptive leadership model to other recognized leadership approaches.

VOLUME 20 • NUMBER 2 • SUMMER 2002

15

Abstract

This is the first of a two-part article onadaptive leadership. During the past twodecades, there has been a flurry of interest inorganizational change but little conceptualanalysis about deeper issues related to changeprocesses. In this paper, we address what weconsider to be the most important underlyingissue in this area, namely how to foster effectivechange in organizations through adaptiveleadership. We are influenced by the classicwork of Piaget, applying his concepts ofassimilation and accommodation ascomplementary approaches to leading andlearning in change situations. We also proposethe development of four fundamental skills asimportant for practicing adaptive leadership:namely cultural competency; managingknowledge, creating synergy, and adaptivevision. A variety of cases from our personalexperiences with change are used to illustrateour arguments. We hope this article stimulatesthe questioning of many tacit assumptionsabout organizational change leadership andencourages the more rigorous examination ofchange efforts in relationship to their adaptivecontexts.

In environments of discontinuouschange, thinking outside the box isnot sufficient: It is also necessaryto think about changing the box.

Stephan Haeckel,in Adaptive Enterprise (1999)

IntroductionCoping with change has become a

constant challenge for contemporary leaders.Communities, governments, and corporationsconstantly seek new and better ways to transfertechnology, develop mergers and joint ventures,

AdaptiveLeadership:When Change Is NotEnough (Part One)

Jerry Glover, RODPHawaii Pacific University

Harris FriedmanSaybrook Graduate School and Research Center

Gordon JonesHawaii Pacific University

improve performance, manage diversity, developeconomically, sustain natural resources, protectthe environment, create globally appropriateorganizations, and develop new markets. Thepressures of change can be seen in a varietyof realms—from the business executive senton an expatriate assignment to develop a jointventure in another country to national leadersattempting to combat terrorism. In many casessuch leaders find that traditional organizations,as well as the notions about how to changethem, are not up to the task.

As the complexity and speed of changehas increased, it has become apparent thatjust leading change initiatives withoutadaptation is not enough. It is possible tocreate change without it being adaptive. Every

ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT JOURNAL

16

leader in the world is facing the need to copewith change, but not all leaders are creatingchanges that enable their corporations,governments, or communities to adapt in asuccessful and sustained way. Unless leadersare able to develop abilities that enable themto lead adaptively in complex and rapidlychanging situations, their organizations will beunable to effectively meet the challengesdictated by the modern world.

It should be noted that adaptation has beenat the core of human experience throughoutthe ages. As humans, we have always facedthe “fact of change,” whenever we attempted tofind new ways of adjusting to or mastering ourenvironments. The practice of introducing andmanaging new ideas, technology, and behaviorin organizations is as old as humanity itself.Only the incessant rate of change is unique toout current time.

And with the myriad of challenges facedtoday, such as globalization, technologytransfer, and political turmoil, everyone seemsto be looking for answers. We frequently hearand read about the latest change fad, one morenew “solution” to address all organizationalproblems, which is described enthusiasticallyin corporate boardrooms and in managementbooks. Many organizational leaders attemptto implement these one-size-fits-all initiativesto resolve their problems and managementdilemmas. Failure usually follows, at whichpoint, everyone associated with the changeinitiative denies that they supported theinitiative and runs for the cover of past corporatetraditions and practices.

In our rapidly evolving and often turbulentglobal community, it is well documented thatmost change initiatives fail to achieve desiredorganizational outcomes and performanceimprovements. Even if a leader is able to gethis organization from point A to point B, theenvironment often shifts during the changeprocess so that D or some other ending placebecomes a more appropriate choice by thetime the change has been implemented.

Consequently, the adaptiveness of any changeprocess becomes a crucial consideration. Themost pervasive challenge to leaders todayappears to be that of creating successfulchange that is actually adaptive. It is our beliefthat many change initiatives are unfortunatelymore maladaptive than adaptive, sapping theorganization’s energy and resources. Thefollowing is an example of one such maladaptivechange attempt.

Training, but no change. A U.S. Navyadmiral told us a story of frustration concerninghis efforts to bring about a continuousimprovement initiative among sailors in hiscommand at a naval ship yard responsible forrepairing and maintaining the Pacific fleet. “Idon’t know why nothing seems to be changing!We trained all 2,200 sailors in statisticalprocess methods. Every person in mycommand completed a three-day course duringthe past year,” he explained.

When the admiral was asked what else hehad done to create cultural change, he lookedsomewhat befuddled and responded, “Nothingexcept for the training.” In actual fact, what hehad done was train 2,200 sailors to statisticallychart their dissatisfaction with their workplace.He had confused merely training the sailors instatistics with actually implementing anyadaptive redesign of his organization that mighthave created an environment of continuousimprovement.

Despite the admiral’s well-intendedattempts at creating a useful improvement inhis organization, the culture of the naval shipyard had not changed for the better. Eventhough the 2,200 sailors knew how to use theconcepts and methods of statistical processmethods, they were unable to apply what theyhad learned in the workplace. Systemicblockages, arising from the old ways of doingthings, were still at work. For example, thosesailors who wanted to apply what they hadlearned to solve problems in their workplacewere seldom given the time to do so. Instead,they were told to focus on their “real jobs.”


17

In many cases,organizations are farworse off after a failedchange attempt thanthey were in the firstplace. In this regard,suffering with aninadequate status quomay often be betterthan introducingfurther problems with amaladaptive changeeffort.

Furthermore, many of the non-commissionedofficers were threatened by the new awarenessof workplace problems and actually becamemore resistant to any effective change.

This failed attempt to produce a worthwhilechange resulted, as unsuccessful changeefforts often do, in cynicism, frustration, lossof trust, and deterioration in morale amongorganizational members. In many cases,organizations are far worse off after a failedchange attempt than they were in the firstplace. In this regard, suffering with aninadequate status quo may often be better thanintroducing further problems with a maladaptivechange effort.

In recent years, the search by practitionersand researchers for ways to create effectiveapproaches for change leadership has movedaway from the concept of leadership traits asan individually-owned skill that one either hasor does not have (i.e., the natural born leader)or that one learns as an isolated individual.Convential wisdom regarding the concept ofchange leadership has also grown away fromapproaches that only apply to a particularnational or local context. We are increasinglyrecognizing that effective change leadership isa culturally relative process that makes sensebest from the perspective of adaptation to thewidest possible contexts. In this perspective,adaptation is the process by which leaderscontinuously both assimilate information fromthe context of the world and then accommodatetheir organizations to specific contexts in whichthey are embedded.

At its most basic level then, adaptiveleadership is based on being open to thechanges going on around us and then makingeffective decisions in harmony with thesepervasive changes, including implementingthese in appropriate ways. This learning isfundamental to adapative responses. Butadaptation is more than learning, it requiresholistic and culturally relative perspectives.

Those who lead successful organizationalchange efforts may appear to follow certain

generic principles, but do not follow aprescriptive formula or checklist of things to do.Adaptive leaders do not let their pastexperiences and limitations block theirperceptions of new contexts. Since what isadaptive is always context-dependent,balancing the needs inherent at the point intime and space in which the leader mustfunction is essential . This is illustrated in thefollowing case.

“One best way or the highway.”Consider the frustrations of a MBA-trainedexpatriate who attended a managementworkshop conducted inFiji in 1993 sponsored bythe U.S. Forest Service.The expatriate was new toFiji and had been quitevocal during the workshopin expressing his difficultywith the work ethics ofFijian villagers.

During the course ofthe day his story becameclearer to us. During hisfirst week in Fij i, herequested a local villagechief send “three men todo an eight-hour job ofclearing a field.” Each ofthe three men was to bepaid an hourly wage.Early the next morning,the entire group of able-bodied men from thevillage showed up to do the work. Theexpatriate, reasoning that he didn’t need theforty of them, explained to us, “I asked thegroup to select three men to do the work. ThenI asked the rest to go back to the village.”

The chief responded that if all forty mencleared the field, they could complete the workin one or two hours, then go back to the villageto do other work. Further, the chief requestedthat the men not be paid individually. Heexplained to the expatriate that he would take


18

the money for all of the workers and put it inthe village fund, a traditional communal meansfor equally distributing money.

We asked the expatriate what his responsehad been. He proudly told us that he sent thechief and villagers away, only to pay higherwages to the three Fijian Indian contract work-

ers he transportedfrom a nearby city.The process of fortymen doing the workof three men, in onehour instead of dur-ing an eight-hourday, had perplexedhim. He also did notunderstand the pur-pose of the villagefund. He summa-rized his story bycommenting on thework ethic of Fijians,saying, “They are

not motivated to be productive. They don’t seemto have any individual initiative!”

This simple case illustrates the clash ofvery different models of productivity based onopposing values of how to do work. The expa-triate was guided by a cultural orientation basedon the principles of so-called “scientific man-agement.” His explanation of his approach tothe job of clearing the field and organizing work-ers revealed his Western orientation to produc-tivity. The chief, on the other hand, did notcare about the time and motion assumptionsof the expatriate but, instead, saw an opportu-nity to get the work done as quickly as pos-sible, utilizing a collective work group. Eachman had responded to the situation from hisculturally conditioned view of productivity.

Thus, the expatriate manager was unableto think beyond his culturally prescribed modelof productivity. His underlying assumptions andvalues did not permit him to consider employingthe forty villagers to do the job that “should”have taken only three or four men. The

expatriate’s concern with time and laborscheduling actually cost him money and timein the end, as he had to wait several days toimport from the city workers who shared hiscultural prescription. The expatriate was caughtin a cultural trap of his “one best way”(Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 1998). Hisstrongly-held beliefs about productivityprevented him from seeing the possibilities ofadapting to his new environment.

The chief and the villagers were equallyfrustrated. Outside revenue was needed as thevillagers were attempting to participate in thenation’s economic development initiatives.They had hoped that the forestry enterpriseopened on the land leased by the expatriatewould be a new source of cash input for thevillage fund. The school and church neededrepairs. Many villagers also hoped to bringmodern conveniences to the village, for whichthey needed additional money. The expatriate’sreaction to the chief’s proposal discouraged thechief and the villagers, and they viewed futurerequests from the expatriate with suspicion.There was even talk among the elders ofrethinking the terms of the land lease, sincethe land occupied by the expatriate was ownedby the village.

Certainly the expatriate would have beenmore effective in getting the field cleared if hehad been more sensitive to the cultural contextof his decisions. His limited appreciation ofthe local village culture operated to block asuccessful change intitiative. The cultural valuesinfluencing his decision-making and how hechose to implement his decision were notaligned nor adaptive within the context in whichhe was operating. Although he got the job donein the short-term in a way that made sense tohim, the larger problems he created were clearlymaladaptive.

Change Does Not AlwaysCreate Adaptation

It is important to understand the differencebetween mere change in an organization and

The cultural valuesinfluencing his decision-making and how hechose to implement hisdecision were notaligned nor adaptivewithin the context inwhich he was operating.


19

Adaptation alwaysinvolves creativeproblem solving inwhich the changeleaders bring about asuccessful andsustainable alterationin the nature of therelationship betweenthe organization andits environment.

change that is adaptive. Change involves anynew allocation of time, resources, or prioritiesby people within an organization. But changeis no guarantee of successful adaptation ascan be seen by the two examples presented.Adaptation always involves creative problemsolving in which the change leaders bring abouta successful and sustainable alteration in thenature of the relationship between theorganization and its environment. Whenchange does not involve adaptation, the resultmay be only additional activity layered on topof an organization’s existing culture, oftencreating a situation worse than the startng placeas, once more, is illustrated in the nextexample.

Innovation that decreased productivity.A casino hotel general manager in theCaribbean asked the human resources directorfrom the corporate office in Miami to determinethe cause of a “labor issue” in one of theproperty’s restaurants. Upon her arrival, thehuman resources director spoke with thegeneral manager to assess the problem. Thegeneral manager related that, for the past sixmonths, what had historically been a wellmanaged and high quality food outlet in the hotelhad recently become a problematic andtroublesome enterprise. Customer complaintsregarding the service and the attitude of theemployees had greatly increased during thatperiod. Several long-time employees hadresigned. Many others had complained abouthaving too much work to do. There were rumorsof a possible grievance against management.

She next met with the waiters in therestaurant. After gaining their confidence, shelearned from the waiters the source of theirfrustration in the workplace. “We work twiceas hard now. Ever since the new computer (apoint of sale terminal located in the customerservice area) was installed six months ago, wedon’t have the time to do our jobs.”

“But I thought the new technology wasdesigned to make your life easier,” sheresponded.

The waiters explained to her that since thenew computerized system had been installed,they took the customers’ orders, entered themin the terminal in the service area, and thenwent to the kitchen to tell the cooks what theyhad entered in the terminal in the service area.

“Wait a minute,” she responded. “Why doyou have to go to the kitchen to tell the cookswhat order you placed in the terminal? I thoughtthey had a visual display terminal in the kitchento tell them the orders you placed from theservice area.”

After a few anxious moments, one of thesenior waiters revealed the waiters’ secret toher. “Yes, that is true, butthe cooks can’t read.”

She discovered thatthe technology-consultingfirm that had installed thepoint of sale computersystem had not botheredto assess the skills of therestaurant staff. Instead,they installed the terminal,met with the restaurantmanager to “train him” inits use, and then left.Meanwhile, the cookswere concerned that theywould lose their jobs dueto their inability to read.Their long-term friends, thewaiters, had been coveringfor the cooks to protectthem from management.

The general manager and restaurantmanager had been unable to understand whythe problems had developed in the workplace.They had introduced a new technology to keepthe restaurant in vogue with current trends inaccounting and information systems, but theyhad failed to discover important informationabout their workers beforehand. As a result, asystem designed to increase productivity hadproduced the opposite outcome. Change hadoccurred, but it had not helped the organization


20

For the first time, wehave evolved ourknowledge of humanorganizations andleadership to such ahigh level that we cancontrol our veryculture andconsciously adapt it tobe compatible withconstantly changingenvironments.

adapt. In fact, productivity had been on thedecline because of the maladaptive way inwhich the the new technology had beenimplemented.

Managing our extensions. Ours is aunique opportunity in human history. For thefirst time, we have evolved our knowledge ofhuman organizations and leadership to such ahigh level that we can control our very culture

and consciously adaptit to be compatible withconstantly changing en-vironments. If we thinkdeeply on the issuesfacing us, we have greatpromise for designingways to beneficiallyadapt. However, adap-tation will not come eas-ily to us if we are not pre-pared to rethink ourideas and practices con-cerning leadership andtake a proactive pathtoward our futures.

Edward Hall, in hisclassic book BeyondCulture, cautions us notto become overdepen-dent on technologicalextensions for solving

our problems. “There are two related crises intoday’s world that we must recognize. The firstand most visable is the population and environ-mental crisis. The second, more subtle butequally lethal, is humankind’s relationships toits extensions, institutions, ideas, as well asthe relationships among the many individualsand groups that inhabit the globe.” Hall feelsthat “if both crises are not resolved, neither willbe” (1976: 1).

Hall warns us that technology alone willnot solve our problems. Despite our faith intechnology and our growing reliance ontechnological solutions, he does not feel thatthere are technical solutions to most of the

problems confronting human beings.Furthermore, even those technologicalsolutions that can be applied to environmentalproblems can’t be applied rationally untilmankind transcends the intellectual limitationsimposed by our institutions, our philosophies,and our cultures.

Most of the adaptive problems we now faceare the result of going beyond our humancapabilities through creating what Hall calledour extensions, i.e., our innovations, both socialand technical. Extensions include creativesolutions to organizational problems in whichthe solution involves a recombination of oldways into new forms. For example, all newtechnology innovation involves suchrecombination of existing knowledge. Even newforms of governance or social organizationinvolve extensions, though these are not oftenrecognized as such. Reconciling seeminglyopposing values of stakeholders can also beseen as a form of extension. In other words,Hall (1976) believes we create extensionswhenever we move beyond our existingbiological and cultural limits, whether thoselimits are social or technological.

If we understand how our extensions affectthe world in which we operate, then we may beable to create conscious adaptive processesthat ensure a sustainable future. It is crucialfor adaptive leaders to recognize that innovationsthrough extensions have not always led toadaptive outcomes for humankind andespecially that short-term change solutionsoften lead to long-term adaptive problems. Ourmost basic adaptive dilemmas stem fromproblems with our extensions, e.g., warfare isa result of human extensions and pollution oftenresults from extensions of new technology.

Maladaptive extensions may enable usimmediately to go beyond our limits, but in thegreater context cause us to create a culturaltrap for ourselves. How humans manage theirextensions may determine whether our futureevolution is adaptive—and whether we indeedsurvive as a species. Adaptive extensions are


21

To be truly adaptive,an organizationmust have afundamentally newstructure; its leadersand employees mustcommit themselvesto very differentbehaviors andresponsibilities.

processes that go beyond our biological andcultural capacity in ways that are sustainablefor all stakeholders and enable organizationsto harmoniously fit into the widest contexts inwhich they are embedded.

Extensions often permit human beings tosolve problems in satisfactory ways, to evolveand adapt at great speed without changing thebasic structure of the human gene pool. Onepurpose of an extension is to enhance aparticular function of the organism: the knifedoes a much better job of cutting than the teeth.Language and mathematics enhance certainaspects of thinking. The telescope and themicroscope extend the eye, while the cameraextends the visual memory system. TheInternet extends our capacity to communicateacross large distances and our ability toorganize information.

It is easier to see this in our materialtechnology, but this is equally applicable to oursocial and organizational forms. If humans canlearn to create new ways of organizing andleading that foster adaptation instead of culturaltraps, that process would become a socialextension that could have enormousimplications for our sustainable futures. Wewould be creating an extension that enabledus to manage our extensions adaptively. Wewould go “beyond our culture” as Hall hassuggested in his book.

Likewise, leaders do not become adaptiveleaders by merely reading a book on the topic.They cannot add a list of “adaptive tasks” totheir daily routines. Adaptive leaders mustmake fundamental changes in their basicperspectives, values, and behaviors involving theway they manage information and people.

Challenges of AdaptingIn the latter half of the twentieth century,

many leaders began to realize that things werenot the same as they had been during theColonial and Industrial Eras. For the past threedecades in particular, the most recent wave ofglobalization has exerted a major influence in

reshaping our ideas about leaders and whatmakes them effective.

First of all, adaptive leaders need tounderstand culture and how it shapes the waywe do things. To be truly adaptive, anorganization must have a fundamentally newstructure; its leaders and employees mustcommit themselves to very different behaviorsand responsibilities. Traditional organizationscannot just add, “adapting” to their current setof goals or capabilities. They must becomeadaptive organizations, with different cultures.That new culture must be opento future changes that arepredisposed to self-renewal andredesign (Haeckel, 1999).

Furthermore, adaptiveleaders know how to assimilateinformation from the apparent“noise” in their environmentsand then find ongoing ways toaccommodate their organiza-tion to outside changes. Ad-aptation is essentially systemicchange. But it is more thanthat. It involves a leadershipresponse that enables an orga-nization to cope successfullywith ever-shifting internal andexternal environmental de-mands. During continuousperiods of change, adaptiveleaders must be open to signals from their en-vironments to be able to make fundamental andcontinuous changes in their organizations.

Thirdly, adaptive leaders need to be ableto cope with cultural differences. Diversity,combined with changes created by rapidlyevolving technological, political, and economicclimates, has created many dilemmas andchallenges for contemporary leaders in allnations. It has become increasingly obviousthat the world is very diverse, populated bymany groups of people with different ways ofdoing things. Leaders must be able to interactwith a variety of people who do not always share


22

Adaptation . . .requires afundamental changein how we see theworld and the systemswe have in place torespond to it.

their way of seeing the world or their view ofhow to organize and manage.

Finally, adaptive leaders need holistic andsustainable visions. Adaptation is not a processof adding more to what we are currently doing.Instead, it requires a fundamental change inhow we see the world and the systems we havein place to respond to it. The very nature oforganizations, including their informationsystems, customer interface, and productdevelopment, need to be reconsidered.Perhaps the first step is to be able to recognizethe nature of the organizations we have andrecognize their shortcomings when our contextschange. The following case illustrates thisneed.

Are you sailing a square ship? Manycontemporary leaders have difficulty innavigating and adapting to the often unsettledwaters of change. When hindered by aninappropriate and perhaps outmoded design,an organization will not perform well and maybe further burdened by the misdirected andmaladaptive efforts of leaders.

Imagine that you have been appointed themanaging director of an ocean shippingcompany in the Mediterranean. Upon arrival atthe company’s operations in Athens, youobserve that your flagship is struggling to leavethe habor. To your amazement, you can alsosee that the hull of your flagship is square. Youare further amazed that no one else on thecompany wharf seems to notice the flagship’ssquare design. Instead, the crew and officers,as well as a tugboat, are all working very hardto get the ship and its cargo out of the harbor.To you it is obvious that the ship is restricted inits movements by its ineffective and inefficienthull design. No matter how hard the crew maywork to improve the performance of the ship, itsimply won’t move at a reasonable rate ofspeed.

What would you do to respond to thesituation? Find a motivational speaker for thecrew? Increase the training budget for the crew?Downsize your crew? Apply pay-for-

performance? Bring in a consultant with stillanother management fad? Unfortunately, these“remedies,” which are often used bycontemporary leaders as change initiatives,would have little impact on the real cause ofthe ship’s performance, its design. In fact,applying such remedies may divert attentionand resources from fixing the real problem.

This case has great relevance for manygovernment, community, and corporate lead-ers who likewisefeel frustratedwhen they attemptto change their or-ganizations tomeet the demandsof participating inthe new globaleconomy. Insteadof realizing thattheir real problemis a “square” ship,they focus on theinability of em-ployees or otherstakeholders to produce expected results. Theyimplement the newest management fad insteadof adapting organizational systems and prac-tices to fit stakeholders and contextual needs.Their maladaptive failure results in problems forboth the leader and the organization.

In summary, if we want to create moreadaptive leaders, we need to rethink ourfundamental notions of leadership andorganization. In particular, skills andperspectives relating to culture competency,knowledge acquistion and use, reconcilingdiversity issues, and holistic and sustainablevision may provide a useful frame of referencein reconceptualizing our understanding ofadaptive leadership. We believe that theseconcepts are essential elements for the toolkitsof adaptive leaders and that they should betaught as the basic curriculum core in university,corporate training, and other educationalprograms.


23

When we learn byassimilation,according to Piaget,the lectures andbooks ofconventional schoollearning aresufficient.

A Model for Understanding AdaptionIs there a basic social and organizational

dynamic that explains adaptation? We believeso. Throughout our years of research andexperience with the concept of adaptation, wehave noted a common process that appearedto be shared by adaptive leaders. That commonprocess is based on a simple adaptivedynamic.

Our model for explaining adaptation isinspired by work of Jean Piaget, the noteddevelopmental psychologist. Piaget (1971)provides us with insights into humandevelopment, specifically about how we learnas we grow and mature. We believe, as doothers who have addressed the issue ofadaptation (De Geus, 1999), that Piaget’sexplanations of individual learning can bemodified to help us better understand thedynamics of adaptive leadership.

Piaget’s concepts enable us to assess theways in which leaders perceive and interact withtheir environments. We have expanded hisconcepts of assimilation and accommodationto help us to explain why some leaders andorganizations are adaptive and some are not.

Piaget describes the concept of learningby assimilation to mean taking in informationfor which the learner already has structures inplace, enabling him or her to recognize andattach meaning to the information beingreceived. The activity most people have in mindwhen they think of learning is being exposedto facts and assimilating them intellectually.When we learn by assimilation, according toPiaget, the lectures and books of conventionalschool learning are sufficient. When a teacherin a conventional classroom lectures tostudents, they are expected to assimilate theinformation being provided by that teacher.Such learning involves an additive process, withfacts, figures, and other details beingremembered by the students.

In many organizations, the informationused in making decisions about operations isbased on assimilation. Arie De Geus (1997),

an early proponent of the “learning” organiza-tion concept, has taken Piaget’s model of learn-ing and applied it to organizational settings.He provides the example of bank managers whoinstantly recognize and respond to an increasein the interest rate to illustrate assimilation. Thebank has procedures and structures in placeto give meaning to this signal. The organiza-tion, at all levels, is ready to “digest” it—to cometo conclusions and to act on it in decisionsabout deposits, loan transactions, money mar-ket operations, and all other bank business.

Also, De Geus explains that in companieswhen an expert or a consultant teaches, he orshe stands up in a management meeting anddoles out wisdom. Thus, attendees are taughtto see the world accordingto the current organiza-tional culture, its values,and practices. Rarely willinformation that does notfit the existing beliefs andvalues be accepted, sincethe goal of such training isto reinforce the existingculture.

Complementary to theconcept of learning byassimilation is anotherconcept described byPiaget, learning byaccommodation. In thistype of learning, the learner undergoes aninternal change in the structure of his or herbeliefs, ideas, and attitudes. De Geus furtherdevelops this concept in organizational settings.He sees learning by accommodation as anexperiential process by which the learner adaptsto a changing world through in-depth trials inwhich the learner participates fully with bothintellect and heart while not knowing what thefinal result will be. One example he offers isthat of an expatriate executive who spend yearson assignment in another country and cultureand who may have difficulty with repatriationbecause he or she has developed a different


24

way of perceiving the world due to thatexperience.

Learning, as described by Piaget andinterpreted by De Gues, becomes adaptivewhen both assimilation and accommodation areincluded in the process. Assimilation of relevantinformation accompanied by accommodationto that assimilated data need to occur togetherfor successful adaptive responses to happen.This interrelationship between the environmentand the learner actually makes the learner grow,survive, and develop his or her potential. Whensomeone assimilates without accommodatingor accommodates without assimilating, thelearning is unlikely to lead to an adaptiveresponse.

Piaget’s concepts of assimilation andaccommodation therefore have considerablevalue when applied to the understanding ofdecision-making in organizational and naturalsettings. We have developed a matrix that

explains the variation in processes for learning,leadership, and adaptation in organizations.

Figure One illustrates the interaction ofassimilation and accommodation in four typesof adaptive situations. Note that the mostadaptive response is the one that makes useof both high assimilation and highaccommodation in the leader’s learningapproaches. In other situations, when leadersrely on only assimilation or onlyaccommodation, they inhibit their adaptivecapacity. When leaders do not rely on eitherassimilation or accommodation, they becomeimmersed in a maladaptive cultural trap andtheir organization probably will not survive inthe long term. The following three casesexemplify the failure to utilize fully bothassimilation and accommodation in achievingadaptation, followed by a case in which adaptivechange did occur.

Figure 1Leadership Responses to Change

Assimilation

Low High

Low

Accomodation

High

Maladaptivecultural traps

NaturalSelection

SerendipityMaximumAdaptivePotential


25

When leaders andorganizations getcaught in culturaltraps, they are unableor unwilling tochange. Despite thesignals they receivefrom theirenvironment, theyremain the same,convinced that the waythey have always donethings is the “one bestway.”

Maladaptive Leadership:Cultural Traps

Paul Bohannan (1995) describes culturaltraps as the condition in which our cultureprevents us from seeing the need for adaptingto changes in our environments. Cultural trapsare a term we use to describe what happenswhen the leader and organization employ lowassimilation and low accommodation learningprocesses in their decision making strategies.When leaders and organizations get caught incultural traps, they are unable or unwilling tochange. Despite the signals they receive fromtheir environment, they remain the same,convinced that the way they have always donethings is the “one best way.” A leader who isclosed to learning from both assimilation andaccommodation will eventually become caughtin a cultural trap, regardless of how successfulhe or she has been in the past.

IBM in the 1980s. IBM’s history providesa classic example of a “cultural trap.” Foralmost three decades, many leaders viewedIBM as a model business. The image of cadresof pinstripe suit-attired executives symbolizedIBM’s homogenous organizational culture.

The company’s successful track record andperformance in the 1960s and 1970s waslegendary. Then the environment changed inthe mid-1980s. Personal computers were onthe verge of a market explosion, while IBMcontinued to focus its efforts and strategies onthe mainframe business. IBM’s leaders wereunable to see the need for change in their corebusiness. The leaders considered onlyinformation that fit their previous view of the worldaround them.

The results were devastating for thecompany. It has taken more than a decade forIBM to recover a position of prominence in theindustry, and even now, it is not the marketleader it was prior to the 1980s. Thehomogeneous and close-knit IBM culture hadbeen so successful in the past that it createdits own cultural trap.

Leading Change By Chance:“Natural Selection”

“Natural selection” is a term used todescribe what occurs when leaders collect alot of information from their environments (highassimilation), but do not use it to make anyreal changes (low accommodation). In suchhigh assimilation and low accommodationdecision making, leaders often are very wellinformed, but for whatever reason take littleadaptive action.

Much like its biological counterpart, natu-ral selection in human organizations involvespassive adaptation, withleaders unwilling or unableto make fundamentalchanges in the way thingshave been done in the past.Additive changes, such asdownsizing or even increas-ing staffing, are common-place in such organizationalsettings. But more sub-stantive changes in sys-tems, values, and beliefsare not accepted norsought. In such situa-tions, downsizing be-comes a ‘last resort’ forleaders who have not re-sponded to the informationthey have been receivingabout the need for changesin their organizations.

Slightly less disablingthan a cultural trap, natu-ral selection leaves the adaptive success of theleaders and organization to chance. Leaderswho operate by natural selection can have vol-umes of information telling them that the worldaround them is changing, but still they do noth-ing. Outside forces control his or her adaptivedestiny, due to the lack of accommodative prac-tices. If the organization proves incompatiblewith the environmental changes, then it maycease to adapt and may not survive.


26

Predicting tourism growth in paradise.A marketing vice president of a regional airlinethat had experienced considerable growthduring the past decade presented an analysisof the economic growth of a small island nationbefore a group of financial and accountingexecutives at a conference.

His positive outlook for the growth of thenation’s tourism was supported by polishedgraphics illustrating recent years’ growth trends.The numbers of inbound passengers had grownin a linear fashion, and his speech left no doubtthat this growth would continue. Thegovernment of the nation had made tourism amajor focus in recent years and had committedseveral million dollars to advertising the nation’sattractions in global markets. Visitors ravedabout the beauty of the nation’s beaches andthe weather. The local people were increasinglyemployed in resorts and other tourist-relatedenterprises.

The vice president conveyed to the audiencethat his airline had just completed a strategicplan, which included purchasing new aircraftand establishing new routes to importantinternational markets. When asked by amember of the audience what the future held,the presenter could only say positive thingsabout the future.

Five days later, a political coup replacedthe government. A new government was formedto satisfy the majority ethnic group’s desire forgreater political representation and equaleconomic access. The consequences fortourism in the small nation were drastic.Tourists, fearing violence in the aftermath of thecoup, cancelled their reservation in droves. Theairline load capacity went from ninety percentbefore the coup to twenty percent after it. Resortoccupancy was around twenty percent; someresorts even closed. The bright futuredescribed by the airline executive only five daysbefore the coup was no longer in sight. Thenation’s leaders began thinking and acting inbasic survival mode.

The airline executive had assumed that thepast would predict the future in developing thestrategic plan. Despite the voluminous amountof data collected, the perceptual process of theairlines’ leadership did not let them see whatwas coming. The leaders ignored the socialunrest that had been signaling the possibilityof a coup. In fact, they had been oblivious tothe signals they were receiving from thecommunity, choosing to see their linear modelsand projected future as reality.

Also, they did not accommodate theirdecision-making structures to consider the typeof data they actually needed, i.e., they failedto accommodate even though they wereassimilating all of this information. Had theleaders been more open to data that did not fittheir mindsets, they might have been able todevelop other scenarios and responses. Naturalselection took over as the environmentchanged, but the airlines executives andtourism leaders did not cope with the needs ofvarious stakeholders in the destination. Theresult was maladaptive for the airline.

Change For The Sake Of Change:Serendipitous Adaptation

This third type of learning and decision-making approach involves constant change inthe absence of appropriate or sufficient inputor feedback. The leader who employs thisapproach is fortunate if, by chance, the changeinitiative he or she selects actually fits thecontext, including stakeholders andorganizational needs.

This condition, which we call serendipity,occurs when the leader employs highaccommodation and low assimilation in makingdecisions. Leaders bring in one changeintitiative after another, but seldom are aware ifany real adaptation has occurred. Change isthe mantra of leaders in the boardroom and theworkplace. Unfortunately leaders may bechanting change without any enduring concernfor whether and how the change initiative


27

actually fits the organization and itsstakeholders.

If the leaders in serendipitous adaptationget lucky, the change they implement mayactually help the organization accommodateitself to demands for adaptation. But thisfortunate adaptative process will not assimilateinformation from the environment to providefeedback from stakeholders. Sometimeschange may not even be what is needed tohelp the organization adapt. And how oftencan luck be relied upon?

Marketing in Eastern Europe. Anelectronics firm with its home office in the U.S.made a major investment in developing itsoperation in Eastern Europe. However, marketshare in Eastern Europe had been decliningas word of the company’s “bad” reputationspread. The Eastern European marketingdirector, an American who had arrived fromChicago less than six months earlier, hadinitiated a number of changes as soon as hearrived. A performance management systembased on quotas and individual performanceevaluations was his main focus in the massivechange process. He terminated several of hisdistributors’ contracts for poor performance inmeeting the prior year’s annual quotas. Evenhigh performers among the Eastern Europeandistributors were uncertain of their status withthe company.

The vice president of international marketingfrom Chicago headquarters was very concernedby his company’s declining sales in this veryimportant region. He made a special trip tovisit the newly appointed Eastern Europeanmarketing director and also interviewed severalof the distributors to get at the source of thedifficulty.

His discussions with distributors revealedthat that the new regional marketing directorhad disrupted their trust and relationships withthe company. The distributors complained,“We work on the basis of relationships, andterminating the low performers disrupted thoserelationships.” They also pointed out that their

region was different than Chicago where thenew regional marketing director had beensuccessful in building markets for thecompany’s products. When the vice presidentrelayed the comments of distributors to the newmarketing director, he dismissed thedistributors’ comments by stating, “Marketingis marketing, no matter where you are. If thedistributors can’t perform, then we have to findindividuals who can.”

This case illustrates a manager who wasconcerned with change, but in a serendipitousway. He had attempted to implement changeinitiatives, notably the performancemanagement system, but had not been opento the messages he was getting from the fieldoperations. His attempts at accommodationwere thwarted by his reluctance to listen to thedistributors. Once again, the result wasmaladaptive change.

Adaptive LeadershipMaximum adaptive leadership potential is

possible when we can combine high assimilationand high accommodation processes. Leadersmake decisions and create accommodativechanges based on careful and continuousreview of information they receive from theenvironment.

Leaders with adaptive potential scan thehorizon constantly, looking for signals theymight use to accommodate themselves andtheir organizations to challenges from theirenvironment. They don’t change for the sakeof changing. Change is appropriate to thecontext, stakeholders, and organizational need.In other words, these leaders operate from astate of perpetual accommodation andassimilation. They use the information theyreceive from assimilation processes to makedecisions that permit them to accommodatetheir organization to the challenges of a specifictime and space.

Bill Gates in China. Gates, an icon ofthe information age, provides an example of an


28

organizational leader who did not let previoussuccess in other countries get in the way ofpotential success in a new context. Microsoft’sinitial efforts to build relations in the Peoples’Republic of China and expand into that country’slarge market were not as successful asplanned. Thus, when a Chinese leader toldGates to “spend some time in China to get toknow the country,” Gates, his wife, and anothercouple toured China for a month, biking in thecountryside to become familiar firsthand withthe Chinese ways of doing things.

Gates benefitted from the experience and,as a result, rethought his strategy fordeveloping Microsoft in China. For example,he revised his approach to include: 1) traininglocals so that Microsoft could employ them tomanage their interests in the PRC; 2)overlooking different values on intellectualproperty with the longer-term vision of marketdomination in the PRC context; and 3) adaptingMicrosoft to the PRC’s ways of doing businessfor long-term competitiveness.

Adaptive leaders, such as Gates in thisexample, effectively use assimilation andaccommodation in their decision-makingprocesses and are able to respondappropriately in a variety of situations.Sometimes they create changes, but in othersituations they simply maintain what has beendone in the past. Adapting does not alwaysrequire changes. In some cases, adaptationinvolves finding ways of using the past to get tothe future.

The Inca Empire. Before Europeancontact, the Incan empire was one of the mostpowerful and wealthy in the Americas. In the14th century, the Incas controlled a territorymore than 1,500 miles long in what is nowEquador, Peru, and Chile. The Sun King wasthe Incan political ruler and also a primary deityof the Incan religion in a highly centralized andvery efficient nation-state.

When newly arrived Spanishconquistadors, under the leadership of JuanPizarro, captured the Incan King outside the

Incan capital, the result was an almostimmediate and complete surrender of thepowerful and militarily effective Incan nation toa handful of Spanish. Due to the highlycentralized structure of the Incan empire, therewere no alternative means of organizing andmanaging the society once its king and deitywere removed.

Prior to the arrival of the Spanish, the Incanculture had served its people and state well.However, when the context changed with theintroduction of the Spanish and their lack offear and respect for the Incan deity, the Incanculture no longer had adaptive potential. Itspast success and that of the culture that hadevolved around it was the very cause of its failureto adapt to the loss of its deity and ruler. TheIncas could not overcome the void in decisionmaking and leadership created by the captureof their leader. They were caught in a culturaltrap that the Spanish used, perhapsunknowingly, to their advantage.

The Incan case illustrates how devastatingthis failure to question of existing premises canbe. It also illustrates the maladaptive influencethat an ideology can have over a group ofhumans when the circumstances that had madethat ideology previously adaptive have changed.In this case, an entire nation was caught in atrap originating from restrictions inherent to itsculture. Since the Incan king was thought tobe supernatural as well as human, his captureleft the Incas without any options foraccommodation to the Spanish invasion.

Questioning what is “true.” It is impor-tant for adaptive leaders to be able to thinkdeeply and widely about the issues facing theirorganizations. Questioning premises that wemay not know we hold is a very necessary skillfor such thinking, but is definitely not easy.Before Copernicus, people did not know thatthey held the kind of ideas about the structureof the universe that we today associate withPtolemy; they were convinced that their oldperceptions of the earth, sun, and moon were“correct.” It took centuries for Copernicus’s


29

ideas to be generally accepted(Bohannan,1995).

Questioning old premises createsdiscomfort both in ourselves and in the peoplearound us. We are usually loath to do it evenwhen we know how. We must reassureourselves that the social order and we will bothsurvive when our premises are in question.

Culture is so firmly embedded in all formsof human organization and so slow to changeon its own that it usually serves to perpetuatethe status quo. The key challenge for leadersis to proactively shift the culture into alignmentwith the new demands of constantly evolvingcontexts. Following are illustrations of somepremises that are based on cultural beliefs thatmay need to be adapted to new contexts inthe future.

Is growth good? One specific assumptionthat is implicit in many of our currentunderstandings bears a resemblance to thetype of trap that devastated the Incas, namelyassumptions about the unquestioned benefitsof growth. Many leaders, particularly those whohold Western perspectives, see growth as anatural process. Growth is considered goodand is one of the goals of those leaders. Stockmarkets, GNPs, and corporate profits, forexamples, are evaluated in a growth mindsetdespite the fact that the world and its resourceshave limits.

Yet history shows that growth has notalways been adaptive. The world is full ofexamples of places that initially experiencedrapid growth as tourist destinations only to entereventually into a state of decline. Governmentleaders, investors, area communities, andtourism executives have made profits for aperiod of time only to find later that theypopularity contributed to their own demise.Locals initially see tourism as the “goose thatlays the golden eggs,” only to find that “all thatglitters is not gold.” Tourists find that advertisingpromises do not meet the reality they deliverupon arrival at the destination. Crime rates riseand security services replace previously

unlocked doors. Crowded and polluted beachesreplace paradise. The implications of this tacitassumption of the value of growth are illustratedin the following example.

Assessing tourism and development.The Bahamas is a nation where tourism hasbeen the primary source of investment andeconomic development since 1960. It isestimated that 80 percent of that nation’s grossnational product is directly or indirectlyassociated with tourism.

Two of us were involved in a nation-widestudy of the Bahamian tourism product in the1980s (Glover and Friedman, 1982). Thisnational assessment of the tourism industryfor the Bahamian government involvedinterviews with managers, employees, unionleaders, and guests on six of the islands andwas sponsored by the Bahamas Ministry ofTourism and the Bahamas Hotel TrainingCouncil. The study revealed that only 16 percentof the visitors to the Bahamas expressed adesire to return for a second holiday visit.Government and business leaders becameconcerned with the problem. They werespending millions of dollars to promote theisland as a tourist destination, and apparentlythe product was not meeting the expectationsof first-time visitors.

Closer examination of visitor exit data foundthat the return rate was much higher —as muchas 50 percent—for the more remote and lessdeveloped islands. Even though overall visitorsatisfaction levels were low for the nation,dissatisfaction appeared to be much greater inthe more developed tourist areas of Nassau andFreeport than they were in remote islands ofAbaco, the Exumas, or Andros.

The results revealed that employees in themore developed resort destinations feltalienated from their work and had little senseof identity or ownership of the tourism industry.Many had moved from their families andcommunities in the outer islands to live in theheavily populated Nassau area and performedmenial service work in hotels or other tourist-


30

related establishments. The neighborhoodwhere they lived was known as “Over the Hill”and was a typical urban slum with theassociated problems of crime, juveniledelinquency, pollution, and shabby housing.

Fifty-three percent of the tourismemployees interviewed expressed generaldissatisfaction with their jobs. A majority alsoappeared to resent the changes, resulting fromtourism development that had happened in theirnation. Many were concerned that the moneyfrom tourism did not appear to stay in theBahamas. There was general dislike for theexpatriates who managed the larger resorts.This dissatisfaction manifested itself in theestablishment of a middle management union,comprised of Bahamians who held departmenthead and supervisor positions. This union wasa constant source of irritation to outsideinvestors and expatriates working in Bahamiantourism.

In the remote islands, conditions were quitedifferent. Local villages contained close-knitfamilies and communities that provided workersfor the resorts. Locals appeared to genuinelyenjoy the tourists who visited their island.Although foreign investors owned some of themore remote resorts, locals owned many smallcottage industries and guesthouses. When wediscussed tourism with locals, they expresseda generally positive attitude toward the guestswho visited their communities.

The Bahamas experience with tourism hasa moral. Tourism, especially in islanddestinations where the people and the naturalenvironment are a major part of the product, isessentially a social experience. As a socialexperience, tourism cannot be isolated fromthe community in which it is developed. Theproduct includes the local people, their culture,and their hospitality. When the tourism industrydoes not recognize and treat local culture andtradition as an asset, development willeventually erode this very product that madethe destination successful in the first place.

There are numerous other commonly heldpremises that can prohibit adaptation. One suchpremise that seems to be particularly subjectto such tacit assumptions in Western culturesthat value “progress” concerns the belief thattechnological advancement is always a positivefactor. Technological changes thus may beheralded as answers to many problems andare often accepted without question as totallygood. However, we often discover that aparticular technological extension has sideeffects on the very people and environment itwas designed to serve. Automobiles areessential to individuals in Los Angeles. Theyuse them to cover large areas of urban territoryin relatively short periods of time. However,one only has to fly into Los Angeles on asmoggy day to realize the maladaptive featuresof the automobile.

In addition, computers and the Internethave brought many new technologicaladvantages. However, there have beendownsides as well. Viruses have created havocin corporate operations; customers often havedifficulty in finding a human voice associatedwith customer service functions oforganizations; and the “haves and have not” gaphas been made even more clear by thedifferential access of different nations andsocioeconomic groups to the benefits ofcomputers.

In summary, adaptive leadership does notcome easily and requires us to continuouslyuse assimilation in order to be in touch withour environments, watching and listening forsignals of change. It also requires us to bewilling to accommodate, even in areas wherewe may be convinced that the status quo andour assumptions are unquestionable. Only thencan we find fundamental ways to buildadaptation into how we organize and live ourlives. In Part Two, we will explore perspectivesand skills for developing adaptive leaders.

Catch the pigeon but watch out forthe wave.

Samoan proverb


31

ReferencesBohannan, P. (1995). How Culture Works. New

York: The Free Press.Collins, J. and Porras, J. (1984). Built to Last.

New York: Harper Collins.De Geus, A. (1996). The Living Company.

Boston: Harvard Business School Press.Farkes, C. and De Backer, P. (1996).

Maximum Leadership. Henry Holt andCompany: New York.

Glover, G. and Friedman, H. (1982). A StudyOf Attitudes And Perceptions OfManagers, Employees, And Guests In TheBahamas Hotel Industry (monograph).Nassau, Bahamas: Bahamas Ministry ofTourism.

Haeckel, S. (1999). Adaptive Enterprise.Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Hall, E. (1976). Beyond Culture. New York:Anchor Books.

Hampden– Turner, C. (1990). Charting theCorporate Mind. Cambridge: The FreePress.

Hofsteede, G. (1980). Culture’sConsequences. London: Sage.

Piaget, J. (1952). The Origins of Intelligencein Children. New York, NY: InternationalPress.

Piaget, J. (1971). The Biology of Knowledge.Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Schmidheiny, S. (1992). Changing Course: AGlobal Perspective on Development andthe Environment. The MIT Press:Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Thurow, L. (1992). Who Owns The Twenty-FirstCentury? Sloan Management Review,Spring, 47-59.

Trompenaars, F. and Hampden-Turner, C.(1997). Riding the Waves of Culture.London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

Trompenaars, F. and Hampden-Turner, C.(2001). 21 Leaders for the 21st Century.Oxford: Capstone.

Notes:1) The authors wish to acknowledge the

importance of the assistance and ideas ofDr. Fons Trompenaars to the developmentof this article.

2) The content of this article is taken from aforthcoming book by the authors entitledAdaptive Leadership: When Change Is NotEnough.


32

Dr. Harris Friedman is Professor ofPsychology and Organizational Systems atSaybrook Graduate School and ResearchCenter in San Francisco. His research primarilyfocuses on empirical approaches withintranspersonal psychology. He will assume theco-editorship of The International Journal ofTranspersonal Studies in 2003. He alsoconsults with corporations and governmentagencies in facilitating organizational changeefforts. He and his wife manage a naturepreserve on which they live in Florida.Contact information:1255 Tom Coker Road SWLaBelle, FL 33935E-mail: [email protected].

Dr. Gordon Jones is professor ofcomputer science and information systemsat Hawaii Pacific University and has servedas academic dean and dean of professionalstudies. His current research efforts explorethe impact of technology on the culture,structures and functions of multinationalcorporations. He also consults in the areasof: strategic planning, technology transfer,and knowledge management.Contact information:E-mail: [email protected]

Dr. Jerry Glover, RODP, is a Professorin the Organizational Change GraduateProgram at Hawaii Pacific University. Jerry isan internationally recognized speaker,consultant, and researcher in the areas ofchange and development, organizationalculture, and trans-cultural management. Hismost recent work is focused on developingperspectives and skills for adaptive leadership.Contact information:Professor, Organizational ChangeHawaii Pacific UniversityHonolulu, Hawaii 96813Phone: (808) 591-1092E-mail: [email protected]


18

AdaptiveLeadership(Part Two):Four Principles for BeingAdaptiveJerry Glover, RODPHawaii Pacific University

Kelley RainwaterHawaii Pacific University

Gordon JonesHawaii Pacific University

Harris FriedmanSaybrook Graduate School and Research Center

Abstract

In Part One (“Adaptive Leadership: WhenChange Is Not Enough,” Summer 2002, Volume20, Number 2) we discussed the need foradaptive leadership. In this article, Part Two,we discuss four principle ingregients forenhancing adaptive potential: culturalcompetency; knowledge management; creatingsynergy from diversity; and holistic vision. Webelieve that these four principles, whenconsciously developed by a leader ororganization, will enhance their abilities torespond more adaptively in a contempory globalcontext.

“Assimilation and accommodationare not two separate functions butthe two functional poles, set inopposition to each other, of anyadaptation.”

Jean Piaget,in Biology and Knowledge (1971: 173)

We believe that our adaptive leadershiptheory, described in Part One, provides a usefulmodel for leadership, given the context of theworld we live in today. Over the last two decades,the pace of change and level of complexityexperienced by organizational leaders has beenunprecedented. Never before have leaders andtheir organizations been faced with so muchinformation, choice, diversity, competition, andtime pressure. Leaders’ attention is shiftingmore and more toward acquiring knowledge,developing globally-appropriate strategies,stakeholder-based economic and communitydevelopment, discerning and meeting customerneeds, creating more responsive and effectivegovernments, tracking marketplace changes,implementing change, transferring technology,and monitoring workplace demands. Long goneare the days of simply worrying aboutemployee productivity, motivation, and thesupervisor-employee relationship.

Traditional theories and practices forleading (such as trait theory, leadership styletheory, situational leadership theory, andcontingency theory) were createdpredominately in the 1950 and 1960’s andprovide only partial guidance to leaders of today.These approaches, which Burns (1978) callstransactional leadership models, focus solelyon the exchanges which occur between leadersand their followers (Northouse, 1997). Eventransformational leadership theory, which wascreated in the 1970’s and which Burnsdistinguishes from transactional models, stillfocuses on the leader in relation to his followers.

Our adaptive leadership theory, however,focuses on more than just the traditionalconcern for the leader-follower relationship.

VOLUME 20 • NUMBER 4 • WINTER 2002

19

Piaget’s concepts ofassimilation,accommodation, andequilibration providea foundation toenable us to assess theways leaders perceiveand interact withtheir environments.

Although our theory acknowledges theimportance of the leader-follower relationship,in addition we focus on leaders’ relationshipwith the contextual environment. Contextualenvironments within which leaders and theirorganizations operate are considered insynchronic and diachronic perspectives. It alsofocuses attention on and speaks to the processby which leaders change or do not change inresponse to interactions with their environment.Within the perspective of our adaptive leadershiptheory, leaders make decisions and act with aconscious understanding of how their behaviorsare broadly relevant to time and space, not justfor one organizational setting within a singularmoment of time. Prevalent leadership modelsin the popular management literature seldomaddress these synchronic and diachronicdynamics of human adaptation in theirexplanations, which we see believe is afundamental shortcoming of these approaches.

Unlike traditional and transformationalleadership theories, our adaptive leadershiptheory does not advocate certain behaviors orstyles as prescriptions dealing with specificsituations. We leave room for the creation ofperspectives, behaviors and solutions that areappropriate for changing times, evenperspectives and solutions that have not yetbeen conceptualized.

Our research and experience has led usto conclude that there are several criticalelements involved in the understanding of sucha pervasive and universally applicable conceptas adaptation. First of all, a model is neededthat can be applied holistically to explain thedynamic interaction of biology, culture, andenvironment on leadership. Secondly, thepredisposing influences on adaptive decision-making need to be identified and included inany conscious attempts to increase ouradaptive capacity. And finally, we need toidentify relevant principles, knowledge, andskills that can be used to improve and enhanceour adaptive potential as leaders in today’scontemporary global context.

Applying a Holistic ModelIn Part One, we presented a model, based

on the work of Jean Piaget, which can beapplied holistically to understand adaptation.We believe, as do others who have addressedthe issue of adaptation in organizations (e.g.,De Geus, 1999), thatPiaget’s explanations ofhuman developmentcan be modified to helpus better understandhow leaders and theirorganizations developadaptive capacity. Hiswork as a biologist ledhim to develop a veryuseful dynamic modelof the human adaptingand learning process,the dynamics of whichwe have applied in anexpanded form toissues concerningleadership and organizational development.

Piaget’s concepts of assimilation,accommodation, and equilibration provide afoundation to enable us to assess the waysleaders perceive and interact with theirenvironments. He describes the concept oflearning by assimilation as taking in informationfor which learners already have cognitivestructures in place, enabling them to recognizeand attach meaning to the information beingreceived. Learning by assimilation can beillustrated by the lectures and books used inconventional classrooms. Information taken infrom those sources is passively added to thatwhich is already known.

Intertwined with the concept of learning byassimilation is another concept Piagetdescribes as accommodation. In this type oflearning, the learner undergoes an internalchange in the structure of his or her beliefs,ideas or attitudes. Accommodation is a muchdeeper level of learning that may very wellengage the intellect and the heart of the learner


20

(De Geus, 1999). Experiential learning, in whicha learner actively struggles with acquiringknowledge, typically is more of this sort.

It is important to realize that human adap-tive processes involve both assimilation and

accommodation. One orthe other by itself is notsufficient for successfuladaptation. Piaget notesthat human adaptationoccurs through the ever-present dynamic of as-similation and accom-modation as we interactwith our environment. Herefers to this dynamic asequilibration. The de-gree to which leaders areable to achieve this dy-namic equilibration pro-cess largely dictatestheir ability to adapt invarious contextual cir-cumstances of changing

environments. Thus, if a leader attempts toadapt to changes using only assimilation oronly accommodation, he or she will most likelynot be successful. Instead, a dynamic inter-play or mix of the two learning types is needed.

Equilibration is the key to successfuladaptation (1971). We should note that inorganizational settings, our conception oflearning by assimilation and accommodationis not just that it occurs within an individual, asin Piaget’s work with children, but refers morebroadly to the learning of the organization as awhole – including its individual members. Thisis the theoretical underpinning of our approachto adaptive leadership.

In Part One, we discussed four adaptiveresponses that resulted from varying degreesof the assimilation and accommodationdynamic. Each type of response is presentedbelow with a corresponding example from theauthors’ experiences in working with leaders.

Response Type 1: The Cultural TrapThis type of response occurs when a leader

experiences a low level of assimilation and alow level of accommodation in response tochanges in their environment (Figure 1). In acultural trap-type response, the leader andorganization are closed to options other thanthe status quo. Their culture, forming the basisfor their beliefs and how they do things, operatesto close off any thought of options to the statusquo. Information from the environment is eithernot accepted or not processed. There is nodesire or awareness of the need to modify howthings are currently being done, even when theenvironment has changed and dictates newleadership and organizational responses.Equilibration is not achieved, as neitherassimilation nor accommodation is present inthe leader’s response to the environment.

An excellent example of this “head in thesand” response is the CEO of a biotechcompany who “refused to discuss the word‘culture’” as he was finalizing the acquisition ofanother biotech firm of similar size. He wasunable to take in the information (assimilation)about the impact of culture on acquisitionsuccess and took no action (accommodation)to mitigate culture-clash risks. Two years afterthe disastrous decision, he was forced to divestthe acquired company. His company’s stockhad reached an all-time low and the board askedfor his resignation.

Response Type 2: Natural SelectionThis type of response occurs when a leader

experiences a high level of assimilation and alow level of accommodation in response tochanges in their environment (Figure 2).Information is coming into the organization, butlittle is being done with it. In natural selection-type responses, equilibration is not achieveddue to the low level of accommodation. Leadersare able to collect a good deal of informationfrom their environments, but they are unable or

It is important torealize that humanadaptive processesinvolve bothassimilation andaccommodation.One or the other byitself is not sufficientfor successfuladaptation.


21

Figure 1Cultural Trap

unwilling to make any real changes to the waythings have been done in the past.

This was all too evident for the president ofa home and garden retail company who had agreat deal of difficulty making adaptivedecisions. Although he was aware of hislimitations and had been coached concerningthe issues, he was still unable to make timelydecisions to initiate systemic changes in hisorganization in response to changes in theenvironment. His inability caused a great dealof frustration and missed opportunity for theorganization.

Response Type 3: SerendipityThis type of response occurs when a leader

experiences a low level of assimilation and ahigh level of accommodation in response to

Figure 2

Natural Selection

changes in their environment (Figure 3). Whenusing this type of response, the leader proceedswith making substantive change in theorganization, but fails to take in importantinformation regarding that initiative from theenvironment. Should the change initiative leadto successful adaptation, it is due to chanceor luck. The leader seems willing to continueto try new things and ideas, without regard toknowing whether or not they are actuallyeffective. Equilibration is not achieved due tothe low level of assimilation.

This was evident when the head of agovernmental agency implemented atechnology system that did not meet the needsof the organization. The leader had hired aleading consulting firm to perform systemrequirements analysis that included most key

assimilation

accommodation

High

Low

assimilation

accommodation

High

Low


22

Figure 3

Serendipity

stakeholders in the process. The requirementsreports recommended that the agencyimplement a specific change initiative but theleader decided to go against the requirementsfindings and implemented a different changeinitiative. The implementation was a disaster,went grossly over budget and took four yearsto complete.

Response Type 4: Maximum AdaptiveCapacity

This type of response occurs when a leaderemploys a high level of assimilation and a highlevel of accommodation in response to changesin their environment (Figure 4). In this type ofresponse, the leader is able to achieveequilibration by taking in critical information fromthe environment and successfully implementchanges in response to the information, even ifthat information challenges the leader’sworldview or status. The leader is able to riseabove personal needs or predisposing biasesand assimilate information from the environmentso that both the leader and the organizationcan adapt as required.

An excellent example of this occurred atone of Johnson and Johnson’s business units.The head of their worldwide customer servicesgroup began proactively looking for ways toimprove the organization and position it for

assimilation

accommodation

High

Low

world-class recognition in the years to come.She employed culturally appropriate strategiesto uncover the messy truth about what waspreventing maximum organizationalperformance and was able to synergize diverseinterests of many stakeholder groups toformulate new actions. She eagerly took ininformation from the organization and from theexternal environment, even when the informationchallenged her ability, world views and status.She put her personal interest aside andsanctioned the implementation of holisticsolutions to long standing problems. Withinthree years, her group was recognized as “Bestin Class” of all of Johnson and Johnson’s callcenters and she was recruited to serve on theexecutive team of a prestigious Silicon Valleycompany.

Predisposing Influences for CreatingAdaptive Capacity

We believe that certain predisposinginfluences may positively or negatively influencethe adaptive capacity of leaders and theirorganizations. Understanding thesepredispositions enable us to take steps towardachieving equilibration in our attempts atadapting to our environments.

At the most fundamental level, a leader’sgenetic make-up highly influences the degree


23

of assimilation and accommodation that theyare capable of experiencing. For instance,people who are born with damaged senses orlearning disabilities may have difficulty takingin and processing information. Historically,humans have thus far become the mostadaptive of species due to biologically inheritedtraits such as stereoscopic vision, a complexbrain, upright posture, and opposable thumbs.Although our long-term adaptive future is beingincreasingly questioned by many of us, humanshave historically combined these genetic traitswith cultural knowledge to adapt successfullyin most corners of the planet.

A second predisposing factor thatinfluences a leader’s adaptive capacity isculture. On a global scale, human culture isthe sum of all knowledge we share and passon to others about how to adapt to problems inour environments. On a specific organizationalor group level, culture includes our sharedknowledge about the specific responses theorganization or group has applied to adapt toproblems in the specific historical, ecological,and social contexts of that organization orgroup.

Regardless of leaders’ geneticpredispositions, their selections of responsesto the environment are culturally constrained.This includes constraints due to limitations inthe culture within which the leader operates (e.g.

Figure 4

Maximum Adaptive Capacity

it does not contain the necessary knowledgefrom which to choose an adaptive response anddiscourages attaining that knowledge) or thatthe culture strictly punishes certain responsesthat may indeed be more adaptive. Likewise, aperson’s culture can facilitate the equilibrationprocess by encouraging openness: to theinformation coming from the environment andalso to the options for doing things differentlythan they have previously been done. The moreleaders become aware of the influence ofculture on their thoughts and actions, the morelikely they will be able to go beyond these andchoose appropriate options to current thinkingwhich may lead to more adaptive responses.

A third predisposing influence on a leader’sadaptive capacity is cognitive development.Leaders’ levels of cognitive developmentinfluence their ability to employ assimilation andaccommodation in the face of environmentaldemands. Piaget found that around twelve yearsof age, most children achieve a level of cognitivedevelopment called formal operational. Formaloperational processing provides the basicmental foundation for successful adaptation inadulthood. Research by Cooke-Greuter andMiller (1994), Fisher, Torbert, AND Rooke(2000), and Kegan (1994), has indicated thatsome adults can continue developing morecomplex levels of cognitive capacity beyondformal operations (called post-formal

High assimilation accommodation

Low


24

Assuming the existenceof basic genetic,cultural, and cognitivepredispositions, aleader’s ongoingwillingness and desireto develop adaptivecapacity is absolutelyessential for success.

operations) as they continually face thedemands of daily living. Torbert and Kegan haveboth explored the concept of cognitivedevelopment in terms of leadership capacityindicating that post-formal operative processingmay be a necessary capacity for leaders to besuccessful in a complex, global context.

The last predisposing factor that influencesa leader’s ability to adapt is willpower. Assum-ing the existence of basic genetic, cultural, andcognitive predispositions, a leader’s ongoingwillingness and desire to develop adaptive ca-

pacity is absolutely es-sential for success.Adaptive leadership, aswe conceptualize it, in-volves the developmentof orientations and be-haviors that enable highlevels of assimilation andaccommodation, leadingto equilibration thatworks in the context in-volved. This is no smallundertaking. Continualcommitment, learning,experimentation andpractice are required forleaders who wish to

maximize their adaptive capacity.In order to maximize adaptive capacity, it

is necessary to understand and utilizeunderlying principles to develop adaptiveleadership potential. Developing adaptiveleadership potential involves deliberate stepsby a leader and an organization to improvebeyond the capacity for adapting given to themby their biology (genotype and phenotype),culture, and current cognitive skills. To this end,we propose four adaptive leadership principlesbased on cultural competency, knowledgeacquisition and use, creating synergy fromdiversity, and holistic vision (that provides a non-prescriptive, culturally relative guide for leadersoperating in a global context).

Developing and EnhancingAdaptive Potential

As an example of how the four adaptiveprinciples have been used in a leadershipsituation, Loy Weston was a globally-adaptiveleader before it was fashionable to be one. Hisstory illustrates how cultural competency,knowledge acquisition and use, creatingsynergy, and holistic vision can be realized bya leader.

When Kentucky Fried Chicken hiredWeston in the late 1970s to establish a fastfood franchise subsidiary in Japan, KFCheadquarters in the U.S. and its Japanesepartner, Mitsubishi Corporation, had verydifferent ideas about how to build the businessin Japan. Cultural values in the U.S. and Japanwere opposed in many instances. In order tocreate a successful business venture, Westonhad to design and create a managementsystem and organizational culture thatreconciled the opposing values of Mitsubishiand KFC. Weston’s adaptiveness as a leaderwas the key to his success.

One of the first dilemmas Weston facedwas the store design expected by KFCheadquarters. Management from the USA hadrequired replicating the U.S. store design inJapan, but space limitations in Tokyo did notpermit large buildings. Squeezing the largerstore into the smaller, more cramped spacesavailable in Tokyo led to cost overruns and“wasted” space.

Loy Weston adapted the KFCheadquarters’ more expansive design model forstores in the USA to fit the smaller locationsavailable in Tokyo. Instead of forcing the storeinto a Tokyo environment where it did not fit,Weston created KFC flexible, usually smallerstores that fit the Tokyo environment.

In addition, KFC’s menu was not alwaysideal for Japanese tastes. The headquarters inLouisville had very strict product specificationsfor all restaurants, regardless of location, butJapanese consumers did not care for mashed


25

potatoes or coleslaw. Weston changed themenu to suit Japanese consumers, in spite ofpressure from the U.S. to maintain the samemenus in Japan as were being used in theWest.

Another issue Weston faced was how toadvertise KFC’s food in Japan. In the USA,KFC’s marketing theme was that it offeredconsumers “good food.” However, marketresearch indicated that KFC should bepositioned as “fine and elegant food” in Japan.Weston deferred to the advice of his Japanesemarket researchers.

Weston also had to decide whether to focuson market share or immediate profits. KFCheadquarters in the USA did not share theJapanese philosophy for building market shareover immediate profits. When Weston sent afinancial status report to the home office inLouisville, he was not able to use “buildingmarket share” as an excuse for low net earnings.Yet, the Japanese owners expected the focusto be on market share development andreassured Weston that it was acceptable, andeven expected, for a company to experiencesub par financial performance while buildingmarket share.

The Japanese partners also expectedmajor investments in time and effort to developKFC’s workforce. Workers in Japan expectedlong-term, if not lifetime, employment. Theyexpected the company to invest in their trainingand saw themselves as part of a group thatwas focused on the processes of providing aquality product to the customer.

Workers in KFC stores in the U.S., to thecontrary, were usually students, or lesseducated and transient employees. KFCheadquarters was quick to point out that laborcosts must be kept under strict control if thebusiness were to be profitable. Job tasks werewell defined by headquarters so that it was easyto replace one transient, often poorly educatedworker with another. Weston invested in hisJapanese workers in spite of this being contraryto the philosophy of KFC headquarters.

Loy Weston is an example of an adaptableexecutive who reconciled the dilemmas ofheadquarters’ single, inflexible model formanagement with the particular needs of hisJapan-U.S. joint venture. Not only did he survivethese early dilemmas by finding reconciledsolutions, he built one of the most successfulrestaurant franchise businesses in history.KFC-Japan developed into 800 stores in theten years Weston was there and became veryprofitable.

In creating KFC-Japan, Westonencountered few organizational andmanagement practices that did not requireadaptive redesign. The Japanese businessenvironment challengedall his previously heldnotions of how to takecare of accounting, dailyoperations, marketing,human resources, andbusiness development.Weston took thestrengths of both theAmerican and Japanesebusiness systems andcreated an adaptivecorporation, one that bridged the cultural gapsbetween the two international partners.

Weston’s abil i ty to keep diversestakeholders satisfied was part of hisadaptiveness as a leader. There were manystakeholders in the development of KFC-Japanbesides the two partner companies, KFC andMitsubishi. These included customers, otherbusinesses in the neighborhood where a KFCstore was to open, Japanese franchisees, andthe new managers and employees. Westonrecognized the importance of relating to all ofthem. He used a combination ofaccommodation and assimilation to createlearning and decision-making processes thatcreated maximum adaptive capacity for KFC-Japan.

The four principles of cultural competency,knowledge acquisition and use, creating

Weston invested inhis Japanese workersin spite of this beingcontrary to thephilosophy of KFCheadquarters.


26

synergy from diversity, and holistic visionenabled Loy Weston to use assimilation andaccommodation to achieve on-going states ofequilibration and adapt his organization to thevast array of changes and environments facedin today’s global community. Each of theseprinciples contributed to his potential for makingadaptive decisions (Figure 5). The followingdiscussion examines each of these principlesin greater detail.

Principle One. An adaptive leader isculturally competent.

Cultural competency comprises a set ofknowledge and skills about culture, how toobserve it, how to analyze and measure it, andhow to change it. Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1997) tell us that there are three stepsto achieving cultural competency, namely

becoming aware of culturaldifferences, respectingthose differences, andreconciling one’s ownculture with the observeddifferences. They concludethat “Once we are aware ofour own mental models andcultural predispositions,and we can respect andunderstand that those ofanother culture are

legitmately different, then it becomes possibleto reconcile differences.” (p. 200)

Cultural competence begins with anunderstanding that culture is thefundamental building material of all humanorganization. It is critical that adaptive leadersunderstand the organizational dynamics ofhuman culture. A working knowledge of cultureis necessary because leaders continuouslyinteract with others who may have differentvalues than their own. Culture is the essenceof our human adaptive experience, providing uswith knowledge to solve the varied problems ofdaily existence.

Cultural knowledge is very important tosuccessful leadership. Robert Galvin, formerCEO of Motorola has been quoted as sayingthat, for a leader, “the next great competitiveadvantage beyond technology is dealingsuccessfully with people from differentcultures.” Contemporary managers andprofessional workers in every country of theworld often encounter people with differentbeliefs, values, and behaviors. Multi-nationalcompanies, such as Motorola and Toshiba,operate worldwide organizations of people,resources, goods, and services involving manycountries. They must adapt to many localcontexts while maintaining their global network.

Cultural competence includes skills fororganizational architecture. An adaptive leaderwho possesses cultural competency has thecapacity for understanding “human nature” inmost organizational settings. Such a leader isable to see beyond surface behaviors tounderstand the motivations and valuesinfluencing people as they organize and managethemselves.

Most of us have personal computers, butwhile we are familiar with the externalappearance and operation of our hardware andsoftware, we would not be comfortable if wehad to open the cover of the CPU. Under thecover is a mosaic of wires, strange-lookingmetal and electronic parts, and even amysterious looking gray colored “belt.” Evenmore mysterious to us is the logic in theembedded circuits. Unless we are in thecomputer business, the inner workings of ourPC are generally off limits to our meddling.

An organization’s culture is also verycomplex, as well as difficult to understand formost people. Yet we have observed thatorganizational leaders frequently take the “coveroff” their organization’s culture without a secondthought to its complexities. Many leaders rushheadlong into “pulling out the wires andhardware” of their cultures without anunderstanding of what they are really doing.

Weston’s ability tokeep diversestakeholders satisfiedwas part of hisadaptiveness as aleader.


27

Figure 5

Dynamics of Adaptive Leadership Potential

Regardless of the location or intent of theleaders, all change initiatives occur within acultural context. That cultural context includesstakeholder groups, each with a culturalunderstanding of the way the world has been,the way it is, and how it should in the future.Contemporary leaders, if they are to besuccessful in creating adaptive changes, mustbe culturally competent, and know how to applythe dynamics of adaptive change. If they arenot able to understand the cultural milieu inwhich they are attempting to create change,adaptive responses are unlikely to happen intheir organization. The following case illustratesthe power of culture in shaping behavior.

The new waiter. Culture is a force in everyorganization, regardless of the particularleaders and their approach to management.Consider the case of the hotel manager who

had inherited an organizational culture that hedid not understand. This expatriate, with asuccessful management track record inEngland, had been reassigned to a hotel in TheBahamas. He asked for the senior author’sassistance in solving a problem at one of thehotel’s restaurants.

“We took over this restaurant three monthsago,” he explained. “The former managementcompany left us with a mess. Employees aresurly, rude to customers, and close to a laborwalkout. Customers complain continuouslyabout the service. Even our own hotelsupervisors are afraid to go in there!” He wasclearly baffled by the situation. The expatriatesuggested that we have lunch in the restaurantto see the conditions he was facing.

Upon arrival at the restaurant, a youngwaiter warmly introduced himself, took us to

Assimilation and Accommodation

Holistic and Sustainable

Vision

Creating Synergy

from Diversity

Knowledge Acquisition

and Use

Cultural

Competency


28

our table, and politely explained the menuoptions. As he walked away to place theirorder, one of us remarked to the manager, “Ithought you said there were problems with theemployees here. Our waiter is doing everythingone could expect as part of quality service.”The manager grimaced and replied, “Yes he is,but today is his first day on the job. He hasnot had enough time to learn to be like all theother employees.”

Two weeks later, we returned to therestaurant for a follow-up meeting andencountered a very different response from thesame waiter. He was not attentive, seemedunmotivated, and bordered on rudeness on oneoccasion. The waiter had obviously learnedthe behaviors of his more experiencedcoworkers. He now behaved in the same wayas did the other, less motivated workers. Hehad become one of them.

What was going on here? Furtherinvestigation revealed two distinct subcultures

within the workplace, oneheld by managers and theother by employees.Workers told us that thenew manager’s attemptsto fire some of theirrelatives, who had beenworking together in therestaurant for manyyears, had caused themto consider a labor action.

They saw the situation from their collective andascriptive perspective. For years, they had allworked together as a family, both literally andfiguratively. The power of the closeness of thisfamily bond was illustrated by how quickly thenew waiter was socialized into the collectivesubculture.

The manager, for his part, viewed theworkplace from an individualistic andachievement-oriented perspective, and hiscultural values and beliefs did not include hiringclose relatives. A mentor had told him in his

previous job in London that it was difficult tosupervise in such an environment, as the bondsamong the workers prevented any effectivediscipline. He had inherited an organizationalculture that clashed with his own. As a result,he created maladaptive change in therestaurant by implementing his new policy onhiring relatives, thereby perpetuating andreinforcing the very things he did not want tosee happen.

This very difficult situation requiredchanging the existing culture in the workplace.The “seemingly opposing values” of the managerand those of the employees had to bereconciled somehow.

Culture is understandable when we have aframework that enables us to look beyond theobvious behaviors we are observing.Frameworks such as those provided byTrompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1997,2001), Hofstede (1980), and others are goodtools for making sense of culture. When wedo so, we better understand the role of culturein our human adaptive process.

Principle Two: An adaptive leader isable to effectively acquire and useknowledge.

Managing knowledge has become veryimportant in our current era of globalization andrapid technological change. Humans havealways needed to learn by integratinginformation from their environment, but todaythat information often comes rapidly and isstored in many different corners of anorganization.

Adaptive leaders need to be aware of whattheir organizations know and what they do notknow. This entails setting up effectiveinformation systems to capture, store, andefficiently distribute both the “explicit”knowledge (e.g. data and context) and “tacit”knowledge (e.g. personal contacts, experience,and judgement) associated with the history and

“ . . . but today is hisfirst day on the job.He has not hadenough time to learnto be like all theother employees.”


29

successful operation of an organization. A goodknowledge management system helps toidentify, catalog, store, and make available theknowledge resources of the organization.

To accomplish learning, the organization’sleaders must see clearly what is happening intheir environment. That is why learning beginswith perception. Yet organizational leaders,enmeshed in the details of what they alreadyknow and their change efforts, often think aboutoutside pressures in only the vaguest terms.They do not develop a careful sensitivity to thesignals of pressure from outside theorganization and how those pressures arechanging.

Adaptive leaders don’t just processinformation from their perceptual field; they useit to improve their response in given situations.They learn and make modifications in theirorganizations as they anticipate or observechanges in their environment. They constantlyverify and validate what they know in an effortto better understand that environment.

Knowledge management includesdeveloping “sense and respond” tools. Howcan information systems be used effectively toacquire, store, process, and distribute data asneeded? It is critical for leaders to developorganizational systems that “sense andrespond” appropriately to the “noise” of theirenvironment so that they can know what is goingon in their environment and adapt to it. Theymust know why an initiative succeeded and tounderstand the degree to which those successfactors can be used in future innovations.

An adaptive leader must be able, whennecessary, to alter his or her organizationalsystem to stay in harmony with the surroundingworld. A fundamental revision in financeregulations, for example, can lead a bankexecutive to consider new markets and newproducts, dramatically stretching its existingcapabilities. An increase in oil prices can forcean airline CEO to implement a fundamentalrevision of its costs, its price structure, its flightschedules, or the composition of its fleet. A

change in the political values of a nation candictate that government agencies modify theirpriorities.

Every adaptive system, whether anindividual living creature, a computer virus, or alarge organization survives by making sense ofits environment and responding with anappropriate action. It then repeats the cycle ofsensing and responding to change, factoringin the results of its previous adaptation. In thiscircular and continuous process, the adaptivesystem is aware of its environment even as itacts (Haeckel, 1999).

Humans and their organizations have thepotential ability to make conscious decisionsabout what things to sense, how to interpretthem, and how to respond to their interpretation.We discover meaning in the data by looking forpatterns related to some previous experienceor known concept. The system must thendecide what to do in response and act on itsdecision. This sequence may be automatic andreflexive or conscious and reflective. Once acycle is completed, a new one begins, in whichthe system incorporates the outcome of theprevious cycle along with any newly perceivedenvironmental signals. The challenge forleaders, therefore, is to create an organizationalculture that “knows what it knows” and “knowswhat it doesn’t know” so that adaptation canbe rational, reasonable, and systematic(Haeckel, 1999).

Knowledge management involvescreating effective innovations. Onceleadership implements new solutions, whetherthey involve a new technology, marketing policy,project portfolio, or service schedule, theorganization is no longer the same. It has movedinto a new phase of its existence. This is theessence of creative learning and innovation.

This need for this transformation poses asignificant challenge for many leaders. Mostpeople in positions of leadership today gainedtheir success through their mastery of traditionalmanagement techniques and approaches. Thetransformation of their companies to adaptive


30

organizations carries with it profoundimplications for how they lead. Adaptivenessrequires leaders to be innovative in appropriateand creative ways. The following caseexemplifies this principle.

Kaizen versus great leaps. An Americanexecutive who was the CEO of a subsidiary ofa large U.S.A.-owned international corporationbased in Japan told the senior author a story.When he first came to Japan, he kept gettingmemos and other directives from the NewJersey headquarters that called for “quantum”changes in global operations, indicating thatthis was a company in which rapid and eventraumatic changes were expected as a way ofmanaging.

He related that his Japanese executivecommittee did not warm to the quantum idea,always politely smiling when he discusseddrastic change as an operating policy.Eventually he got the message from hisJapanese executives that change in Japan wasbased on the concept of kaizen , or slowcontinuous improvements.

Kaizen and reengineering are essentiallythe same idea in that both are concerned withimproving organizational processes. Yet whenkaizen is applied in Japan, the change is builtinto the organizational system as continuousimprovement. Kaizen fits the values and beliefsof Japanese corporate culture as it focuses onmaintaining harmony and balance.

On the other hand, reengineering in theU.S. is usually applied once and in a drasticmanner. Major structural changes are expectedas processes are defined and refined in onegrand project. After a few months, theorganization returns to “normal.” Change is nota linear event, nor is it a continuous process.

Principle Three: An adaptive leader isable to create synergy from diversity.

Creating synergy begins by avoidingthe”tyranny of the ‘OR’,” maladaptive thinkingand decision-making processes in which lead-

ers defend one best way of seeing a problem.Those leaders become polarized around theirposition, unwilling to consider that there areother ways to do things. Whenever there arepeople with different cultural values, influencedby ethnic, na-tional, religious, orprofessional back-grounds, the tyr-anny of the ORcan be found(Collins andPorras, 1994).The OR view doesnot accept para-dox, and cannotlive with two seem-ingly contradictoryforces or ideas atthe same time. The OR pushes people to be-lieve that things must be either one-way ORanother.

For example, leaders may be controlledby mindsets that expect change OR stability,low cost or high quality, investing in the futureor doing well in the short-term, creating wealthfor shareholders OR doing good in the world.The OR has become a way of perceiving realitythat often prevents adaptive responses fromleaders. It acts as a trap, limiting the ability tosee alternatives that might be better than whatis held as true.

It seems that leaders are always faced withchoosing between the past or the future, thisor that approach to a situation, following onemodel or another. The leader who can createadaptive synergy when facing an OR isessential in a highly diverse world. Creatingsynergy from diversity is necessary almosteverywhere today as contemporary leadersmust deal with people who hold values differentthan their own. Being able to lead and organizediverse groups with “seemingly opposingvalues” is essential to survival in a globalcommmunity. Organizations need to be able

Eventually he got themessage from hisJapanese executivesthat change in Japanwas based on theconcept of kaizen, orslow continuousimprovements.


31

to operate in diverse settings without losingfocus and direction.

Hampden-Turner (1990) tells us that whenwe try to create change, there is alwayscontrasting and hence dual propositions layingclaim to our allegiance. When not resolved,these “dilemmas” live on as semi-permanentsocial schisms and ideological conflicts inorganizations in which rival groups of partisanscelebrate their own preferred solution.

Creating synergy involves the genius ofthe “AND,” which entails being able toidentify and reconcile cultural dilemmas.The synergistic combination of existingelements represented by “AND” is more thanjust a mixture or amalgamation of parts. An

AND position does notrepresent balancesuch as might beobserved in acompromise. Insteadthe combination aimsto be distinctly thisAND distinctly that atthe same time and allthe time (Collins andPorras, 1994). Value isadded to the existing

way of doing things when they are combined.The innovation that is to be implementedrepresents a breaking out of existing mindsetsand creating a new cultural orientation built ofthe conjoined strengths of what went before.

Hampden-Turner explains the importanceof reconciling dilemmas to leaders thus:

“These seemingly “opposed”propositions are converging upon ussimultaneously. If we give exclusiveattention to either one in the pair,the other is likely to impale us.While all of us need to reconcilevalue dilemmas as part of dailyliving, those who lead groups ororganizations are beset by manydilemmas, stemming from the

opposing demands and claimsmade upon them. Confrontingdilemmas is both dangerous andpotentially rewarding. Opposingvalues ‘crucify’ the psyche andthreaten to disintegrate both leaderand organization. Yet to resolvethese same tensions enables theorganization to create wealth andoutperform competitors. If you duckthe dilemma you miss theresolution. There is no cheapgrace.” (Hampden-Turner, 1990:14).

Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner(2001) have demonstrated the importance ofreconciling cultural dilemmas for contemporaryleaders in 21 Leaders for the 21st Century. Bydescribing the cases of twenty-one influencialleaders, they convincingly illlustrate theimportance of this aspect of adaptive leadershipto successful operating in today’s globalcommunity. The next cases providesexamples of this principle.

Nestlé in China. This case is an exampleof an adaptive approach to the universal-particular dilemmas found in international jointventures. Universal-particular dilemmas occurwhen one culture assumes that there is onlyone set of rules governing relationships. CEOHelmut Maucher of Nestlé, whom we consideran adaptive leader, says that his primary roleas CEO of Nestlé is keeping Nestlé focusedon a strategy (of knowing local markets andtailoring products), making sure managersunderstand, respect, and respond to thedifferences in each country—differences inculture, taste preferences, shopping behaviors.

In China, Maucher negotiated for more thansix years to set up a powdered milk and babycereal factory. The Nestlé managers also hiredretired government workers and teachers toserve as farm agents and assigned them tothe villages in which farmers produced milk forthe company. Nestlé hygiene specialists fromSwitzerland trained the workers and teachers.

The OR has becomea way of perceivingreality that oftenprevents adaptiveresponses fromleaders.


32

But the goal was not to make the Chinese moreSwiss; rather, it was to make sure the Swissmanagers in China completely understood thefarmers who supplied the raw materials—theirculture, needs, expectations, and abilities. “Myphilosophy is to let the Chinese be Chinese,but to bring to their markets Nestlé’s expertiseand corporate values,” Maucher says. “That iswhat is meant by global thinking, localcommitment” (Farkes & De Backer, 1996, pp.41-44).

Principle Four: An adaptive leader hasholistic and sustainable vision.

Adaptive vision is the fourth componentneeded for adaptive leadership. Adaptiveleaders must be able to scan their horizonsand to think beyond the obvious, beyond whatis known about their world. This vision is usedto create sustainable solutions that go beyondthe immediate needs of a company, community,or nation.

We have always had the need for leaderswho were successful at adapting our institutionsto the world around us, whether those leaderswere a group of prehistoric tribal elders decidingto move the tribe to an environment where foodwas more abundant or a military leaderintroducing a new form of warfare to gainadvantage over opponents. In a morecontemporary context, the adaptive leadermight be the CEO of a computer softwarecompany initiating change by introducing a newtechnology into culturally diverse globalmarkets.

Holistic and sustainable vision involvesthe ability to visualize and consider all viableoptions before proceeding. Contemporaryleaders are faced with day-to-day and survivaldecisions, just as their predecessors were. Thedifference is the scope and the degree to whichtoday’s leaders must be able to createorganized responses to complex and rapidlychanging environments. Adaptive leaders aremore than just change leaders; they are able

to see the various possibilities and makeappropriate choices. Scenario planningmethods are useful as a tool for the adaptiveleader.

Adaptive leaders realize that they mustmake decisions within a context greater thantheir own. They realize their position and placein the grand scheme of things. They are ableto operate effectively in different and variedsettings, remembering who they are in a largerframework and projecting the consequences,good and bad, of their actions.

Scenario planning is about making choicestoday with an understanding of how things mightturn out. It provides a tool for ordering one’sperceptions about alternative futureenvironments in which one’s decisions mightbe played out. Often, scenarios can helppeople make better decisions—usually difficultdecisions—that they would otherwise miss ordeny.

Adaptive leaders are different from theircontemporaries in that they don’t createchange just to get from A to B. Instead, theysee the process of change itself as instructive,part of the capacity for constant renewal thatmay lead them from A to B—or to F or M oreven Z. Adaptive leaders accommodatethemselves to ongoing information they receivefrom their environment and make decisions toachieve congruency with various stakeholders’needs.

Holistic and sustainable vision includesanticipating future conditions and situationsthat affect sustainability. Adaptation needsto be seen from a holistic perspective. Adaptivecapacity and adaptive responses must beviewed within the context in which they occur.

Adaptive leaders think globally while actinglocally. Adaptive leaders are able to work withindifferent models of wealth creation. Adaptiveleaders are aware of, and respect, the valuesof others. When there are differences amongstakeholders, an adaptive leader is able todevelop solutions that create organizationaldesigns and management models capable of


33

dealing with those differences. The followingexample illustrates this principle.

Du Pont: The CEO as chiefenvironmental officer. When Ed Woolardtook over the chairmanship of Du Pont, theworld’s largest chemical company, in early1989, he was concerned that the company’senvironmental performance did not match itsstandards in other areas. Although Du Pont’ssafety record had been outstanding, Woolardbelieved that corporate environmentalperformance could be upgraded. The publicalso still had a negative opinion of the chemicalindustry, viewing it as too secretive, potentiallydangerous, and sometimes arrogant. “Thebasic problem was that management valueswere becoming out of phase with publicexpectations,” said Woolard. “Although therewere many examples of environmentalexcellence, they did not reflect a deeply heldvalue of the company.” (Schmidheiny, 1992,193).

Woolard wanted to instill a new sense ofurgency concerning environmental issuesthroughout the company’s managementstructure. Woolard found that that thecompany’s environmental management waslargely compliance-driven and thatenvironmental concerns had not been effectivelyintegrated into other business areas. Manysenior managers also downplayed theimportance of environmental issues in their listof priorities.

Woolard decided to take the lead by ex-ecutive action. In his first public speech, atthe American Chamber of Commerce in Lon-don within a month of his taking office, hestressed that he was not only Du Pont’s chiefexecutive officer, he was also its “chief environ-mental officer.” As such, he put himself at thehead of a new movement—”corporate environ-mentalism,” which he defined as “an attitudeand a performance commitment that places cor-porate environmental stewardship fully in linewith public desires and expectations”(Schmidheiny, 1992, 197).

Counting BulasWhen the senior author first visited Fiji more

than ten years ago, he was impressed with thegenuine hospitality of the Fijian people. Itseemed that everyone he met warmly gavebulas. Bula is a greeting used by Fijians towelcome or to greet someone.

Being a good social scientist, trained inWestern methods, he decided to count thenumber of bulas given to him against the num-ber of employees we encountered at each re-sort we visited. At the first resort, we tallied 39bulas out of a possible 41encounters in a two-day stay.He spoke with the generalmanager of the establish-ment, who had moved to Fijione year prior to manage thisluxury resort in the Nadi area.He explained how impressedwe were with the hospitalityof the staff. The senior au-thor asked what he had doneto improve the resort when hearrived in Fiji.

“I did absolutely nothing. Why would I tryto change the natural hospitality that comesfrom the traditional culture here?” the generalmanager explained. “Instead I have tried to takeadvantage of the local assets I found in thetraditional culture and village life.” The managerhad the good adaptive sense to realize that hehad inherited an outstanding resort and anychanges would only make it less so. The seniorauthor left the resort expecting the samepeaceful and hospitable atmosphere at our nextlocation.

However, when he arrived at the next resorton our way to Suva, he encountered a muchdifferent atmosphere. As he attempted toexplain to the porter that he was checking in atthe entrance, he encountered a man, clearlyan expatriate, who began shouting and cursingat the porter. The man was upset that a branchhad fallen from a palm tree in the car park and

Adaptive leaders aredifferent from theircontemporaries inthat they don’t createchange just to getfrom A to B.


34

had not been picked up. The Fijian porter waspolite and told the man that he would take careof it right away. The porter then assisted thesenior author by providing directions for ourcheck in. During his brief two-day stay, hecounted only 23 bulas out of 41 possibleencounters with resort staff.

The next afternoon the senior author metwith the general manager of the resort. He wassurprised to find that he was the same manwho had shouted at the porter. Afterexchanging a few pleasantries, the generalmanager proceeded to tell the senior authorthat the locals were lazy and not suited forhospitality work. He longed for his formerassignment in Auckland where the local people

“had good work values.”It was also revealed thatthe local village chief andthis manager were atodds over the leasepayments on the land.“Impossible system ofland ownership here,” hebemoaned.

When asked what hisplans were for improve-ment at the resort. Heexplained that he hadhired a trainer from Aus-

tralia to spend a year teaching the locals thefundamentals of providing hospitable service.He also mentioned that he was attempting tobring in more expatriate managers to fill hisexecutive positions. “They will give me morehelp in getting the Fijians to do their work prop-erly.” His approach to changing the resort wasserendipitous at best. He tried many changesbut none of them were based on the signals hewas receiving from the stakeholders in theresort’s environment.

In both cases, these two expatriatemanagers were attempting to adapt to theconditions of operating a resort in an islandnation. The first one was very successful andremained in Fiji for almost ten years. He was

widely respected by the management companyfor which he worked as well as the localcommunity leaders. His resort was veryprofitable, and guests frequently returned forsubsequent visits. The other expatriate becameembroiled in a labor dispute with the localvillagers, and profits were as inconsistent asthe service received by the guests who stayedat the resort. He remained in Fiji only for hisinitial three-year contract.

During the past ten years, all of the authorshave grown to appreciate the significance ofthis early bula-counting experience related bythe senior author. A bula is a reflection ofgenuine positive feeling toward tourists amongcommunity members and resort staff. Theabsence of bulas, or even the presence of“perfunctory” bulas, is a symptom of difficultywithin the social system of the local communityand the resort staff. In fact, we believe that itmay be more important for the accountants,executives, and economists in Fiji to countbulas than cash receipts. In this sense, themost useful knowledge may be of the obvious,which is right in front of us yet barely noticed.

If you understand the moral of our “bulas”story, then you probably share our world viewon the need to develop adaptive leaders ingovernments, communities, and corporationsin every nation. However, adaptive leadershipis not easy. It is more than adding training oreducation courses in an organizational setting.It is not a change initiative. It is a new way oflooking at how we make decisions and solveour problems of existence.

A final point we wish to make is thatadaptation involves the organization’saccommodation to its surrounding environment,but also the environment’s accommodation tothe adapting organization. Adaptation requiresthat leaders create systems that perpetuatethe ongoing interaction of both organization andenvironment in a holistic process. We need tomove beyond the more superficial notions ofadaptation currently discussed in managementand organizational literature in order to

“I did absolutelynothing. Why wouldI try to change thenatural hospitalitythat comes from thetraditional culturehere?”


35

appreciate adaptation as a state never reached,a process that involves constant reinvention ofan organization and its context.

We do not advocate any one model fordeveloping adaptive organizations and leaders.In fact, we realize that universal models andprescriptions are not possible in our culturallydiverse world. However, the four principles wehave presented within the overarching themeof learning through both assimilation andaccommodation provides a basis for developinga variety of models that are contextuallyadaptive.

Edward Hall explains that his examinationsof man’s psyche have enabled him to concludethat the natural act of thinking is greatly modifiedby culture. According to Hall, Western manuses only a small fraction of his mentalcapabilities; there are many different andlegitimate ways of thinking; we in the West valueone of these ways above all others—the onewe call “logic,” a linear system that has beenwith us since Socrates. Western man sees hissystem of logic as synonymous with the truth.For him it is the road to reality.” (1981: 9-14).

Thus, there is no single model that will giveus the “answer” to how to adaptively organizeand be a leader. A fundamental premise ofadaptive leadership is that there will never be“one best way” of organizing and leading. It isthis perspective of adaptive thinking thatseparates it from many other leadershipapproaches, particularly those whose primaryfocus is maintaining the status quo or culturalhegemony.

Given that contextual demands shiftconstantly, an organization’s adaptive potentialis always in flux. But we do have reasonableassurance that an organization that is capableof evolving through time and being flexible inspace will have higher adaptive potential thanone that does not. The ability of a humanorganization to meet the adaptive demands ofits contexts, no matter how simple or howvaried, is the key to its adaptive potential.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence isthe ability to hold two opposedideas in the mind at the same time,and still retain the ability tofunction.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald,in The Crack Up, 1936.

ReferencesBohannan, Paul. How Culture Works. New

York: The Free Press, 1995.Burns, J.M. Leadership. New York: Harper and

Row, 1978.Collins, James and Porras, Jerry. Built to Last.

New York: Harper Collins, 1994.De Geus, Arie. The Living Company. Boston:

Harvard Business School Press, 1997.Farkes, Charles and De Backer, Philippe,

Maximum Leadership. Henry Holt andCompany: New York, 1996.

Fisher, Dalmar, Rooke, David, & Torbert,William R. Personal and OrganizationalTransformations: Through Action Inquiry.Boston : Edge\Work Press, 2000

Haeckel, Stephan. Adaptive Enterprise.Boston: Harvard Business School Press,1999.

Hall, Edward. Beyond Culture. New York:Anchor Books, 1976.

Hampden– Turner, Charles. Charting theCorporate Mind. Cambridge: The FreePress, 1990.

Hofsteede, Geerte. Culture’s Consequences.London: Sage, 1980.

Kegan, Robert. In over our heads: The mentaldemands of modern life. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 1994.

Miller, Melvin E. and Cooke-Greuter, SusanneR. Transcendence and mature thought inadulthood. Lanham, MD: Rowman andLittlefield, 1994.

Northouse, Peter. Leadership: Theory andpractice. Thousand Oaks, CA; SagePublications, 1997.


36

Piaget, Jean. The Origins of Intelligence inChildren. New York, NY: InternationalPress, 1952.

Piaget, Jean. Biology and Knowledge.Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press,1971.

Stephan Schmidheiny. Changing Course: AGlobal Perspective on Development andthe Environment. The MIT Press:Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1992.

Lester C. Thurow, “Who Owns The Twenty-FirstCentury?” in Sloan Management Review.Spring, 1992, pp. 47-59.

Trompenaars, Fons and Hampden-Turner,Charles. Riding the Waves of Culture.London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing,1997.

Trompenaars, Fons and Hampden-Turner,Charles. 21 Leaders for the 21st Century.Oxford: Capstone, 2001.

Notes:1) The authors wish to acknowledge the

importance of the assistance and ideas ofDr. Fons Trompenaars to the developmentof this article.

2) The content of this article is taken from aforthcoming book by the authors entitledAdaptive Leadership: When Change Is NotEnough.


37

Jerry Glover, RODP, is a Professor in theOrganizational Change Graduate Program atHawaii Pacific University. Jerry is aninternationally recognized speaker, consultant,and researcher in the areas of change anddevelopment, organizational culture, and trans-cultural management. His most recent workis focused on developing perspectives and skillsfor adaptive leadership.Contact information:Professor, Organizational ChangeHawaii Pacific UniversityHonolulu, Hawaii 96813Phone: (808) 591-1092E-mail: [email protected]

Kelley Rainwater, MBA has spent the lasteleven years as an organizational developmentconsultant, corporate executive and coach. Shespecializes in helping organizations navigateERP implementations, process improvementinitiatives, cultural change, mergers, revenueenhancement programs, and strategic changeefforts. She is currently a faculty member inthe Organizational Change Program at HawaiiPacific University.Contact information:E-mail: [email protected]


38

Harris Friedman is Professor ofPsychology and Organizational Systems atSaybrook Graduate School and ResearchCenter in San Francisco. His research primarilyfocuses on empirical approaches withintranspersonal psychology. He will assume theco-editorship of The International Journal ofTranspersonal Studies in 2003. He alsoconsults with corporations and governmentagencies in facilitating organizational changeefforts. He and his wife manage a naturepreserve on which they live in Florida.Contact information:1255 Tom Coker Road SWLaBelle, FL 33935E-mail: [email protected].

Gordon Jones is professor of computerscience and information systems at HawaiiPacific University and has served asacademic dean and dean of professionalstudies. His current research efforts explorethe impact of technology on the culture,structures and functions of multinationalcorporations. He also consults in the areasof: strategic planning, technology transfer,and knowledge management.Contact information:E-mail: [email protected]

The Organization Development Journal - Indigenous Psychindigenouspsych.org/Interest...

Documents

Transcript of The Organization Development Journal - Indigenous Psychindigenouspsych.org/Interest...