Adaptive Action: Leveraging Uncertainty in Your Organization

by Glenda Eoyang, Royce J. Holladay

Rooted in the study of chaos and complexity, Adaptive Action introduces a simple, common sense process that will guide you and your organization into reflective action. This elegant method prompts readers to engage with three deceptively simple What? So what? Now what? The first leads to careful observation. The second invites you to thoughtfully consider options and implications. The third ignites effective action. Together, these questions and the tools that support them produce a dynamic and creative dance with uncertainty. The road-tested steps of adaptive action can be used to devise solutions and improve performance across multiple challenges, and they have proven to be scalable from individuals to work groups, from organizations to communities. In addition to laying out the adaptive action framework and clear protocols to support it, Glenda H. Eoyang and Royce J. Holladay introduce best practices from exemplary professionals who have used adaptive action to meet personal, professional, and political challenges in leadership, consulting, Alzheimer's treatment, evaluation, education reform, political advocacy, and cultural engagement―readying readers to employ this new toolkit to meet their own goals with a sense of ingenuity and flexibility.

Genres: Leadership, Management, Nonfiction, Business

264 pages, Hardcover

First published March 8, 2013

Reviews

[Fred Leland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adaptive action a great read and resource

An effective change to an altered situation comes from understanding complex adaptive systems and adaptive action. In this book the author keeps it simple by breaking our observations, Orientation decision and actions down in What? So what? And Now what? She does so by illustrating through what she terms the CDE model (Container, Differences and Exchanges. Or the strategic game of interaction laid out academically but simplified. If you want to change a complex pattern, you can do only one of three kinds of things. • Change the container that holds the similarities by making it bigger or smaller, by breaking up large ones or introducing small ones • Change the differences by incorporating new ones in or excluding old ones from the current container, or ignoring or focusing on differences that exist within the current container • Change the exchanges by breaking existing ones, by altering them (making them stronger or weaker, wider or narrower, longer or shorter), or by adding new connections where none existed before. That is it. Those are your only options for influencing the emergent patterns in complex adaptive systems.

I highly t commend this book!

[Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part I explains what adaptive action is, using examples from various organizations in order to explain the concepts, mirroring the What question. Part II is examples of the model in action, which looks like the So What question. Part III is reflective, sharing insights that have been gained through the examples given in the text and the writing, it resembles the Now What question. The authors don’t frame the organization in this manner, but as I read, I clearly saw this cycle was used as their guiding framework. Much of the material is the same as what is described in Patterson’s book Radical Rules for Schools: Adaptive Action for Complex Change, but the main difference is in the examples. This one was clearly meant to support a broader audience, including examples from healthcare, business innovation, and education. The purpose of the book, and the HSD group, is about helping organizations to notice and name patterns and then set the conditions for action, which will hopefully signal a positive change.

[Lori Koppelman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a bit shallow, but I did not like the look and feel of this book. The binding was incredibly hard to crack so I was constantly cranking on it to get it open. The font is really small and the cover material has a residue on it. All together, not a pleasure to hold in my hand.

The content, however, was informative and I made notes at several places for good questions to ask. The examples in part 2 were a good way to try to apply the concepts, though I was left with the impression that being an HSD consultant, or using one, was in order, i.e. don't try this at home. But never mind, I think someone in an organization or trying to help one can glean some methods to try in helping with understanding and helping with change.

[Liesleest · Rating 4 out of 5]

Taai en zinnig

[Renu Khuller]

informative

[Jurgen Appelo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Common (or uncommon) sense, well presented as a simple method. But I missed the more sophisticated complexity concepts.

[Howie Cohen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book, lots of concepts from simple to complex.. Great area of thought in perspectives and patterns.