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.