RESPONDING TO GRIDLOCKS

An interview with Vega Roberts

""The worst mistake that leaders can make is to try to solve adaptive challenges with technical solutions. But we do it all the time."

A lot of people in organisations are feeling stuck in gridlocks.  What helps people get "unstuck"?

To get out of gridlock, the most important thing is to really get back in touch with our passions and beliefs - that sense of  'why I get out of bed in the morning' that really energises us. These days, a lot of people are focused on outputs - how many of what we can produce by when - rather than on outcomes, the difference our work makes. And that drains us, and often makes us feel stuck.

Once you get back the 'why' of what you do, you can start to question the assumptions you are making about what is stopping you.  And that's the other part of getting out of gridlock: being prepared to question and give up assumptions you've been making. It takes courage to start this process, but once people start, it's incredibly liberating.

So what kind of leadership do we need to bring this about?

A lot of the challenges leaders are facing today just cannot be met by doing more of what we have always done. As one of my favourite writers about leadership, Ron Heifetz, puts it, the worst mistake that leaders can make is to try to solve adaptive challenges with technical solutions. But we do it all the time. 

So leadership today is about creating the conditions - the culture - where new mindsets are possible, away from either-or/right-wrong thinking to both-and-also or 'what if thinking'. I think they need to model a spirit of curiosity, a willingness to be surprised, an openness to using other people's very different perspectives as a resource rather than a nuisance. In other words, to create a climate where not only it's safe but it's actively encouraged and rewarded to not be sure of what to do next, but to work with one's colleagues to understand the roots of the challenge first.

What are the skills that people need to learn in organisations to be able to work effectively with adaptive challenges?

I think one of the most crucial skills people need in today world is learning how to analyse situations from multiple perspectives, going below the surface, not assuming their first 'reading' is the only one. By putting multiple 'readings' together, you are much more likely to come up with effective actions and decisions. And at the same time, people feel more valued because every perspectives genuinely contributes to the final decision.

Organisations talk a lot about valuing diversity, but mostly struggle to actually do this.  The method we practice in this workshop is all about this, learning how to use differences - even conflict! - to broaden and deepen our analysis, to notice and use a larger evidence-base, and to do this in a disciplined systematic way to open up new possibilities. 

To contact Vega, visit The Grubb Institute website at www.grubb.org.uk