Hugh O'Doherty makes it sound so simple.

 

 "What I hope to do is simply to provide a framework that will help people think about challenges that confront them and frame them in a different way."

 

O'Doherty, who will give the keynote address at the diocesan convention on Friday, October 2 at the Best Western Lehigh Valley Hotel and Conference Center, is a native of Northern Ireland, a much-sought after conflict resolution consultant and an adjunct lecturer in public policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

 

Like his colleague Ron Heifetz, O'Doherty has helped organizations throughout the world recognize the difference between the sorts of organizational problems they label "technical" and those they call "adaptive."

 

"With a technical problem, we have the skills to solve it," he says. "Solving an adaptive problem requires learning. The knowledge that got us here is no longer adequate.

 

"If you look at the Episcopal Church, what we have in our repertoire has got us to this point, but it is no longer adequate for the times we are in," says O'Doherty who has made presentations in several dioceses and worked with the Clergy Leadership Program run by Trinity Church, Wall Street in New York City.  

 

An adaptive challenge can't be solved by a stereotypically strong and decisive leader, he says, because the contours of the problem aren't yet known. "Ownership shifts so that everyone must own the problem," he says. "You have to gather all of the stakeholders and figure out what is really the work we face, what is the challenge we face going forward."

 

Bishop Sean Rowe believes the clergy and people of the diocese are ready to do this kind of self-examination, and that O'Doherty is the person to help them do it. "Hugh O'Doherty is certainly an expert in the theory of adaptive leadership," Rowe says. "But, more importantly, he is an experienced practitioner who has coached leaders and organizations to work through their most difficult challenges and assist them to identify important opportunities for growth.

 

"The work that Hugh will do with the clergy and lay leaders of the diocese during convention will lay the groundwork for the mission strategy work that we will undertake together as a diocese over the course of the next year."