The shortcuts to success in dealing with an adaptive challenge are humility and the desire to learn. These two traits are deeply interrelated. People with no humility have a hard time learning. You know their typical behavioral traits: they are not good at listening, instead paying attention only to themselves; they love to portray themselves as strong and perfect, even if they are not actually competent. If leadership is about solving complex adaptive challenges, then leadership is surely not for such people. True leadership involves finding and opening doors that lead to improvement. It means generating as many workable options as possible. Thomas Payne, an American writer and political activist from the eighteenth century, wrote, “Arrogance closes more doors than it opens. Stay humble!” Similarly, the nineteenth-century Russian author Leo Tolstoy, one of the greatest writers of all time, wrote, “Arrogance…interferes with a person’s main task in life—becoming a better person.” In my view, becoming a better person entails working toward a better world.
I put a great emphasis on humility and learning because if you cannot differentiate one type of challenge from another, your leadership efforts may not be fruitful. Say, for instance, that there is a talented employee in your organization who keeps coming to work late, thus missing important strategy and planning meetings to which he is a critical contributor. As the quality of everyone’s work is being affected, your boss calls you out, saying that the situation has to be remedied. As the man’s superior, you need to do something about this.
Is this an adaptive challenge or a technical one? If you wish to retain the employee and also help him out on a human level, you need to treat the problem as an adaptive one. Solving this issue will require talking to him, allowing him to express his reasons and uncovering the underlying causes of his tardiness. In due course, you and he will need to find ways to attain what’s optimal for you, for him, and for the company.
