By Dennis Sparks

Journal of Staff Development, Spring 2002 (Vol. 23, No. 2)

Copyright, National Staff Development Council, 2002. All rights reserved.

JSD: In Leadership Without Easy Answers (Belknap Press, 1994), you argue that the most important issues society faces require leadership "that will challenge us to face problems for which there are no simple, painless solutions ... problems that require us to learn new ways. ... Making progress on these problems demands not just someone who provides answers from on high but changes in our attitudes, behavior, and values."

Heifetz: Leadership would be an easy business if our organizations only had problems for which we already knew the solutions. Organizations have problems every day for which they do in fact have the know-how and procedures to solve. But there are a whole host of problems they face that are not amenable to authoritative expertise. I call these problems adaptive challenges because they require us to find new ways of doing things if we are to thrive in a new environment.

Adaptive challenges require a different form of leadership because our current model looks to authorities to have the answers. But adaptive challenges require experiments, new discoveries, and adjustments that arise from numerous places in the organization. When we look to authorities for answers to adaptive challenges, we end up with dysfunction. We expect the person in charge to know what to do, and under the weight of that responsibility the person frequently ends up either faking it or disappointing people. Or the person gets spit out of the system in the organization's belief that a new leader will solve the problem.

Adapting to new tasks

JSD: To a large degree, schools have viewed the problems they face--for instance, the integration of technology in daily instruction--as technical when in fact they are also adaptive challenges that require different types of leadership and responses.

Heifetz: Most problems come bundled with both technical and adaptive components. I was at my 5th-grade daughter's school two mornings ago for parents' visiting day and watched the kids work in pairs on a project to understand water treatment processes in order to design a process for ancient Rome. The kids went to the Internet to check out web sites with suggestions provided by the teacher. To learn how communities currently process water, my daughter looked at a site that described the water treatment facilities in Independence, Mo. This morning I watched the kids in pairs make reports to the class with charts and flow diagrams. They had learned so much so quickly, and the technology helped a lot.

There are aspects of the instruction I observed that were really technical problems, such as basic use of the computer or how to do research on a subject. But there are aspects of it that are also adaptive challenges, both for students and for teachers. Students learn that the teacher is not the source of all information, and teachers have to learn a new way to teach based on developing students' resourcefulness.

Of course, for some teachers, this is their usual way of working with students. But for many, this approach to teaching requires that teachers see themselves differently and model a different form of authority that's not based on having the answers but on being a guide to help students discover their own answers. Teachers empower students' discoveries rather than serve as the primary source of knowledge. As a result, teachers must learn how to design new types of projects rather than simply present material to be memorized, for example, for multiple-choice tests. Such changes in mindset are a response to an adaptive challenge that asks teachers to model a different form of teaching and a new form of authority.

Solutions from all

JSD: People sometimes want an authority to tell them what to do and expect their leaders to have solutions to the organization's problems. That phenomenon is so widespread that it seems to be a part of human nature. And yet in Leadership Without Easy Answers you wrote: "Adaptive situations demand that people discover, invent, and take responsibility." You obviously believe human beings can learn to invent and take responsibility for their organization's problems.

Heifetz: Let me provide some context for that statement. The term "adaptive work" is a metaphor drawing from evolutionary biology. In a biological system, the existing social organization works well for predictable problems. But when the environment changes and members of the community are unable to do the learning required to respond to the change, they die off. The animal species that survives a change in the environment does so because of genetic diversity in the population that created a series of experiments. Some of these experiments hold the key to surviving and thriving in a changing environment.

It's quite similar in a cultural, social system. Cultures work beautifully as adaptations to yesterday's problems. Tomorrow's problems, however, require adjustments and experiments that require separating what's precious in the past from what is expendable. That's the difficult and painful thing about doing adaptive work - we have to give up that which no longer enables us to thrive in the new environment. That loss generates resistance in any organizational system.

The process of discovering solutions to adaptive challenges cannot rely solely on people in authority. Discovery has an unpredictable quality because it is hard to know where in the organization a brilliant idea may emerge. When facing an adaptive challenge, one needs to create an environment in which multiple experiments are being run through invention and innovation and then sift through those experiments to see which ones are fruitful and exciting.

Now, the inclination of organizational systems is to see innovators as threats to the normal way of doing business. That means these deviant voices need a lot of protection because they are at risk of getting clobbered by the organization. Just as in biology, where most permutations are not successful, so it is in our creative life. Most of our inventive ideas aren't useful, so 80% to 90% of the time creative people get it wrong and are a source of inefficiency. But 10% to 20% of the time they get it right, and those times may be absolutely critical to the success of the enterprise.

Classroom challenges

JSD: The culture of many schools is inhospitable to spreading responsibility for discovery and invention. At the heart of this problem, at least from my perspective, is the intersection of two powerful beliefs. One is that there is one right answer to most problems and an authority figure knows it, and another is that teachers lack the ability or will to discover and invent solutions to complex problems.

Heifetz: The system expects teachers and administrators to have all the answers to the adaptive challenges they face even though they are deprived of capacity and resources. It's important to appreciate how truly difficult a teacher's job is. That they can do this work day after day is nothing short of amazing to me. Classrooms are loaded with adaptive challenges, such as those posed by differences among students. What works for one child may not work well for another. Moreover, many children live in families who experience a good deal of stress. It's an adaptive challenge for teachers to figure out how to best support these children so that their potential is more closely realized.

Teachers are not getting the level of support required to do their jobs. They are teaching too many children, they are not paid enough, and they do not have sufficient social work and community services available to them, particularly in poor communities. So they are reduced to throwing technical fixes at these adaptive challenges based on whatever default expertise they have available. Even at a default setting, though, the classroom will work for a certain number of students. But a lot of students will fall through the cracks.

No foolproofing

JSD: One view of teachers is that they can innovate and learn what's necessary to meet the adaptive challenges you've described. Another view is that teachers are not capable of meeting these challenges and must implement other people's solutions through teacher-proof materials, teaching scripts, and other methods that minimize the scope of their decision making.

Heifetz: That latter view is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you treat teachers that way, give them foolproof ways of teaching, you'll get fools for teachers. No one will want to enter the profession but fools.

Changing habits hurts

JSD: Earlier, you mentioned the sense of loss that often accompanies adaptive work. In your book, you say that emotional work is an important part of responding to adaptive challenges.

Heifetz: It is emotional work to experience the loss of old ways of doing things. It's emotional work to give up an old habit and to feel incompetent while learning a new habit. If adaptive work only meant acquiring new ideas, we'd be learning incredibly fast. It's not a paucity of ingenious ideas that's a problem; it's our attachment to old ideas that makes it so difficult to do adaptive work.

Sifting perspectives

JSD: You wrote, "The task of leadership consists of choreographing and directing learning processes in an organization or community. Progress often demands new ideas and innovations." You also noted: "Attention is the currency of leadership. Getting people to pay attention to tough issues rather than diversions is at the heart of strategy."

Heifetz: Here's an example. Let's say a community wanted to improve its schools by doubling the number of teachers and doubling their salaries so it would have twice as many teachers who are paid twice as well. As a result, we'd have higher quality teachers who would see teaching as a valued profession and who would have twice as much time to work with students.

To get that done, the superintendent and the school board would face deeply entrenched ideas and values in the community. Sifting through competing perspectives requires both learning and emotional work as these conflicts are worked out.

School boards, superintendents, principals, and activist parents need to spend a great deal more time educating the community as a whole so citizens understand what it will take to improve a school system and the role they can play in improving it. The leadership that's required is not just within the school itself but within the community.

Superintendents and other leaders must create local processes and structures that bring people to understand that they have a critical role to play in the future of America by improving the education system in their communities. They have to think creatively to invent those processes and structures.

Conflict has benefits

JSD: The things you are describing often lead to conflict, but most of us avoid conflict whenever possible or try to minimize it whenever it occurs.

Heifetz: Conflict is essentially dangerous. That's why we are allergic to it. But conflict is a product of people holding different points of view about which they feel passionate. It's these differences that generate learning and innovation and adaptation. People learn by engaging with different points of view. Staying in the game with one another when we feel passionately about our differences is the saving grace of any community. The cohesion of a community tested by the conflict within it is a measure of the community's health.

In our effort to control the dangers of conflict, we also eradicate the benefits of having different points of view within an organization. Conflict can be a resource that promotes creativity and learning. The orchestration of such learning is an important part of adaptive work.

Bio for Ronald A. Heifetz

Position: Founding director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he has been responsible for developing a theory of leadership and a method for leadership development over the last 18 years. Heifetz consults with and provides seminars for leaders in government, nonprofits, and business focusing on the work of leaders in generating and sustaining adaptive change across political boundaries, operating units, product divisions, and functions in politics, government agencies, and international businesses. Education: Bachelor of arts degree in comparative literature from Columbia University, M.D. and residency in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and a master's degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Professional history: Formerly a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government.

Personal: Heifetz is also a cellist and former student of Gregor Piatigorsky.

Books: Leadership Without Easy Answers. (The Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1994). Leadership on the Line, with Marty Linsky. (Harvard Business School Press, 2002).

About the author
Dennis Sparks is executive director of the National Staff Development Council.