The Harvard leadership guru Ronald Heifetz makes a fundamental distinction between a technical challenge and an adaptive one. A technical challenge is one that can be solved by an expert. You’re ill; you go to a doctor; he prescribes a pill. Your car breaks down; you call a mechanic; he replaces the broken part. They’re the easy problems.
An adaptive challenge is where we’re part of the problem, and it’s we who have to change: when the doctor tells us that if we’re to avoid a serious condition we’re going to have to change our lifestyle, or when the mechanic tells us the problem isn’t the car: it’s how we drive it. Most of us don’t like having to change, so we’re constantly tempted to look for a technical solution. Let somebody else fix it, not us.
Our addiction to oil is remarkable….
Read the whole thing.
U.K. Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks reflects on Change
The Harvard leadership guru Ronald Heifetz makes a fundamental distinction between a technical challenge and an adaptive one. A technical challenge is one that can be solved by an expert. You’re ill; you go to a doctor; he prescribes a pill. Your car breaks down; you call a mechanic; he replaces the broken part. They’re the easy problems.
An adaptive challenge is where we’re part of the problem, and it’s we who have to change: when the doctor tells us that if we’re to avoid a serious condition we’re going to have to change our lifestyle, or when the mechanic tells us the problem isn’t the car: it’s how we drive it. Most of us don’t like having to change, so we’re constantly tempted to look for a technical solution. Let somebody else fix it, not us.
Our addiction to oil is remarkable….
Read the whole thing.