Stealth Methods & Adaptive Change

As I prepare to design next years leadership journeys, I’m reminded of the 2016 Adaptive Leadership Conference in Washington D.C.

“Own your self interest”

“Be curious about what animates each other’s pain”

“The assumption was that this was an issue

where we had to change people’s minds. 

But this was an issue where we had to find common ground.”

These are some of the quotes which still resonate with me.

My favorite session was on creating holding spaces for change: Stealth Methods & Adaptive Change.  Richard Pascale and Maurizio Travaglini covered the following insights in creating change processes for companies.  Note that “space” shows up twice as does “process”.

1. Space: a space dominated by entanglement requires more mental complexity than a apace dominated by predictability.
2. Attention: undivided attention or nothing will happen.
3. Social psychology: when it comes to adults learning below the neck is more relevant than learning above the neck.
   1. Use opt in choices to create ownership
   2. Ask people to invest to create buy in
   3. Ask people to advocate
   4. Use mirroring
4. Signaling: to do something new and different one needs to learn something different.  To learn something new and different one must go through a different kind of experience.  Do different things with meaning.
5. Space: structure wins: the space makes most decisions about eh format and the process.
6. The process is the content: use different processes depending on need like, Mckinsey’s organizational audit, the valentines exercise or positive deviance.
7. Group size: the small group is the unit of transformation.
8. Hold people to a deliverable.
9. Serendipity is a process, not an event.  It must be facilitated in a deliberate way.