Leading the Adaptive Challenge: The Activist Challenge

Organizations get complacent just like we as individuals do. Routines become comfortable and the organization experiences inertia. You remember that concept from your high school science course: The tendency of a body at rest to remain at rest until acted upon by an outside force. The corollary is that a body/organization will continue along the same trajectory until some force changes that trajectory.

The force that changes the trajectory or overcomes the inertia is a catalyst. In the context of adaptive challenges the leader is the catalyst. And the first challenge of leadership is to get people to wake up to the fact that there is a problem. In his classic book, Leading Change, John Kotter says that the first step in any change initiative is to overcome the complacency - inertia - by creating a sense of urgency.  Bill Hybels says that we have to create a sense of "holy discontent" with the status quo.

Essentially, when an organization is facing an adaptive challenge, we have to shock the system to overcome the inertia of complacency to get the necessary change started.

When we do this we will encounter resistance. Often this comes in the form of a challenge about the costs or the risks associated with the change. Certainly there are risks associated with any change. But when we face an activist challenge the risk of not changing is greater than the risk of changing.

The key symptoms of an activist challenge are:

• Some endearing behaviors, values, and/or practices have become corrosive and dysfunctional-and serve to undermine the long-term integrity and survival of the group.
• An opportunity presents itself that can lead to great benefit in progress for the group, but no one is seriously considering it.
• Danger is looming due to an internal or external threat, and the group is not doing anything about it.

The condition of the people facing an activist challenge is:

• An unwillingness to change their values or thinking to accommodate some aspect of reality
• Denial, resistance, ignorance, or simply refuse to budge
• They are comfortable where they are. 

The barrier that impedes progress is the people’s resistance.

The promise or aspiration (vision) on the other side of the barrier:

• The promise in an activist challenge is that if people can face the problem and seriously consider the data they have neglected or denied, than a new opportunity for progress can open up.
• Fundamentally, the leader wants to get the people to learn about the problem, how their behavior contributes to the problem, and what can be done to solve the problem.

Leadership Intervention for an Activist Challenge

In an activist challenge, the person seeking to lead does not have the power or authority to make people listen and command change. Given the limitations of his or her power, the intervener must think of creative ways to get people's attention and highlight the contradiction and values. Fundamentally, the leader has to get the people to learn: to learn about the problem, how their own behavior contributes to the problem, and what can be done to solve the problem.

On Leading Change: Recommended Reading

By definition, leaders are agents of change. We are the catalysts that overcome the inertia of complacency, cast a bold vision, and change the trajectory of the organization.

 Here are some of the best books I have read on the subject of leading change. I highly recommend these books. In fact, I have used most of them in my graduate courses on Power, Influence and Leadership and Leading Change.

 Heifetz, Ronald. Leadership Without Easy Answers.  Cambridge:  Belknap Press, 1994.

Heifetz, Ronald and Martin Linsky. Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2002.

Kotter, John.  Leading Change.  Boston:  Harvard Business School Press, 1996.

Quinn, Robert E.  Deep Change:  Discovering the Leader Within. San Francisco:  Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1996.

Quinn, Robert E. Building the Bridge as You Walk On It: A Guide for Leading Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2004.

Stanley, Andy.  Visioneering. Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, Inc., 1999.

Willams, Dean. Real Leadership: Helping People and Organizations Face Their Toughest Challenges. San Francisco:  Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2005.

Six Adaptive Challenges

In my previous two posts I have been discussing the differences between adaptive challenges and technical problems. Here are some questions that will help you identify the various types of adaptive challenges:

1. Activist Challenge: Is the group, or a particular faction, refusing to face some aspect of reality?

2. Development Challenge: Is the group, lacking in capacity or resources to do the job or address future demands?

3. Transition Challenge: Does the culture of the group need to be shifted to accommodate new realities?

4. Maintenance Challenge: Does the group need to sustain its current values and practices because it is under threat?

5. Creative Challenge: Does the group need to invent new practices, processes, and procedures in order to do something that has never been done before?

6. Crisis Challenge: Is the group facing a potentially explosive situation, and is the value it has amassed in jeopardy?

Over the next several posts I will be drilling down on each of these challenges to provide you with some aditional details for leading in these situations.

How do you know whether the challenge is primarily technical or primarily adaptive?

You can never be certain, but there are some useful diagnostic clues. Anybody exercising leadership has to tell the difference between technical and adaptive situations because they require different responses.


First, you know you're dealing with something more than a technical issue when people's hearts and minds need to change, and not just their preferences or routine behaviors. In an adaptive challenge, people have to learn new ways and choose between what appear to be contradictory values.

Second, you can distinguish technical problems and adaptive challenges by process of exclusion. If you throw all the technical fixes you can imagine at the problem and the problem persists, it's a pretty clear signal that underlying adaptive challenge still needs to be addressed.

Third, the persistence of conflict usually indicates that people have not yet made the adjustments and accepted the losses that accompany adaptive change.

Fourth, crisis is a good indicator of adaptive issues that have festered. Crises represent danger because the stakes are high, time appears short, and the uncertainties are great.

Technical Problem or Adaptive Challenge?

Many of the problems faced in complex organizations are adaptive challenges that do not have ready-made, tried and true solutions. Adaptive challenges require a learning mindset to both understand and solve the challenge. Yet, many leaders have difficulty admitting that they don't have a solution ready for implementation and thus they treat any adaptive challenges as if they were actually technical problems.


When faced with an adaptive leaders must be willing to give the work back to the people who have the problem and facilitate the process of solving that problem. This requires a secure ego on the part of the leader. It also requires a maturity on the part of followers because they have to accept responsibility for solving the problem they are facing

How do I know if I am facing an adaptive challenge instead of a technical problem?
Here are the key characteristics and distinctions between technical problems and adaptive challenges.

Technical problems are clear and the solution to the problem is clear and understood. The locus of solution for these problems is the manager who knows what to do to fix the problem and tells the team what to do.

Adaptive challenges are different. Defining the problem requires learning and there is no known off-the-shelf solution. So solving the problem requires learning as well. Rather than a leader having the answer, the leader's job when facing an adaptive challenge is to facilitate the learning necessary to understand and solve the problem. In this sense, adaptive challenges require the leader to give the problem back to the people who have the problem.

This is not abdicating; it is facilitating. But this requires the humility that can only come from a an ego-in-check. The leader has to be willing to say, "I have never seen this before and I am not sure how we are going to deal with this. But, there are several really good people on this team and together I think we can figure this out."

Of course, when the ego is not in check, the leader cannot say that. Thus, when the organization is facing a true adaptive challenge they continue to treat it as a technical problem, and the problem never goes away.

Are you facing an adaptive challenge or a technical problem?

Will your ego allow you to call it for what it is?