Last year, I published a new book called ‘The Art of Adaptive Leadership: Why Do Organizations Decay or Get Stuck?’ This book attempts to answer these questions: Why do certain nations and companies succeed in growing steadily, while others struggle, get stuck, and fall behind? What determines what we are and where we are today? What defines what we will be and where we will go in the coming days? To answer these and other questions, we need to study both the past and the present. The quest for effective leadership began by asking these questions in relation to nations and organizations heading toward either a rise or a fall.
Our path forward will involve one of the three options: one heading for the better, one for the worse, and one for the status quo. One can also call these possible trajectories growth, decline, and mediocrity. I believe that all humans have a natural desire for growth. Personally, I have wished throughout my career to help others grow through my work, thus growing myself. In addition, I hope to see myself grow better in health, improve my quality of living, and strengthen my relationships with others. I also want to see my children grow up to be good citizens, contributing valuably to their society and beyond. Like most people, I desire to see a world with no conflict, one that can focus on pressing and immediate issues like climate change, fighting crime, alleviating the drug crisis, slowing the process of ageing, reducing the digital and social divides, etc.
But despite these urgent matters, and despite so many people’s desires to see improvement, we are not living up to our own aspirations. We see many situations going from bad to worse, or simply getting stuck. Perhaps this is because we are pursuing the wrong priorities, not putting in the right kind of effort, or becoming overwhelmed by the many issues we must all deal with. Wherever the problem lies, what we critically need is effective leadership, reaching far beyond mere administrative and executive capacity. Leadership, to me, is not only about making the adaptations necessary for our survival—that is its minimum requirement—but also, ultimately, about thriving, even in the face of many hurdles.
