Foundation 04 The Orion Foundations

Adaptive Leadership

Navigating uncertainty through experimentation and results.

Most leadership failures are failures of diagnosis. We attempt to solve complex, systemic challenges with technical fixes (e.g. new tools, reorganisations or processes) when the real work needs a shift in habits, values and ways of thinking.

Adaptive leadership is the discipline of recognising when no clear answer exists and being courageous enough to learn through action. It's about experimentation, and not so much about control. It's also less about certainty and more about responsiveness. The challenge is to work intelligently in the presence of uncertainty, not eliminate it entirely.

Practical Tools

The Diagnostic Filter

What it is: A simple way to tell technical problems apart from adaptive challenges.

How to use it:

Ask yourself the following:
• Does a known solution already exist? (If yes, the problem is likely technical.)
• Does the issue need people to change habits, assumptions or relationships? (If yes, it's adaptive.)
• Who must change for this to resolve? (If the answer is only you, it's technical. On the other hand, if it's other people, it's adaptive.)

Why it works: Misdiagnosis leads to wasted effort. Treating adaptive challenges as technical problems results in short-term fixes that fail to stick.

Example: A leader introduces new reporting software to fix performance issues, when the real problem is fear of speaking honestly about risks.

Safe-to-Fail Experiments

What it is: Small tests designed to give way to learning rather than certainty.

How to use it:

• Identify one behaviour you want to influence.
• Design a small time-limited change.
• Define in advance what success and failure would look like.
• Run the experiment briefly, and later review the outcome.

Why it works: In complex systems, understanding follows action. Small experiments reduce fear and create momentum without risking collapse.

Example: Instead of restructuring a team, a leader tests a temporary change to decision-making authority for two weeks.

Get on the Balcony

What it is: Stepping back to observe patterns rather than react to events.

How to use it:

• During a meeting or conflict, pause mentally for 30 seconds.
• Observe who speaks, who withdraws and where tension accumulates.
• Return to action informed by pattern rather than impulse.

Why it works: Distance reveals dynamics, and seeing the system clearly allows for more targeted intervention.

Holding the Heat

What it is: Managing productive discomfort during change.

How to use it:

• Notice when people avoid or rush past difficult topics.
• Gently increase pressure by naming what is being avoided.
• Reduce pressure when anxiety overwhelms capacity.

Why it works: Change need tension, but unmanaged tension gives way to paralysis or flight. Leadership can be likened to thermostat control, not force.

The System Work Audit

What it is: Separating immediate problem-solving from long-term system design.

How to use it:

• Review the past week.
• Identify time spent fixing problems versus observing patterns and designing improvements.
• Aim to shift at least 20% toward system-level work.

Why it works: Adaptive leadership requires moving from operator to architect. This audit makes that shift visible.

Nietzsche’s Perspective

The Leader as Experimenter

I love him who justifies the future ones and redeems the past ones; for he wants to perish of the present ones. — Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Nietzsche treats life as a continuous experiment, with growth happening with deliberate self-testing, not preservation. To lead adaptively, in this sense, is to accept that neither you nor your organisation are finished forms.

He is sharply critical of leaders clinging to familiar solutions just because they feel safe. What he calls the "Spirit of Gravity" is the tendency to repeat what worked in the past, as opposed t risking becoming something new. For Nietzsche, adaptive challenges are the mechanism through which progress occurs, and not interruptions to process.

Nietzschean cautions:

• Beware of the "Fixer" identity. Solving every problem on behalf of others prevents development and creates dependency.
• Experiments that can't fail are not experiments. If there is no risk of being wrong, then growth isn't possible.
• Discomfort is a signal and not a flaw. If nothing in an adaptive change threatens existing habits, this mean no real transformation is taking place.

Machiavelli’s Perspective

Virtù and the Demands of Change

I judge that it might be true that fortune is the arbiter of half of our actions, but that she still leaves the other half, or close to it, to be governed by us. — The Prince, Chapter XXV
For Machiavelli, adaptation is the essence of virtù. A leader who relies on one fixed method, even a previously successful one, will eventually be undone by changing circumstances.

From this point of view, adaptive leadership is about responsiveness to reality, and not loyalty to plans or ideals. When conditions change, the leader needs to be willing to change tactics, tone and approach without sentimentality.

Machiavelli’s counsel:

• Do not wait for crisis to experiment. Build flexibility before it is required.
• Learn to vary your approach. What succeeds through force in one moment may call for subtlety in another.
• Results are the final judge. Intentions matter ethically, but effectiveness determines survival and stability.

Where to Harden / Where to Soften

Harden

  • Commitment to outcomes rather than loyalty to plans.
  • Willingness to sustain discomfort long enough for learning to occur.
  • Readiness to abandon familiar leadership identities when they no longer serve.

Soften

  • The need to appear certain - adaptive leadership tolerates ambiguity.
  • Over-control of outcomes. Complex systems respond, but they don't obey.
  • Personalising resistance: treat it as information, not opposition.

Practice This Week

Treat one current challenge as an experiment rather than a problem to solve.

  1. Days 1 to 2: Diagnose
    Apply the Diagnostic Filter. Identify whose behaviour or assumptions would need to change for progress to happen.
  2. Days 3 to 4: Observe
    View the situation from the balcony. Notice patterns, avoidance and recurring reactions.
  3. Day 5: Design
    Create one safe-to-fail experiment aimed at shifting behaviour rather than fixing symptoms.
  4. Days 6 to 7: Act and Review
    Run the experiment. Monitor discomfort levels and record outcomes without judgement.

Reflection question: Did this experiment change behaviour, understanding or stability? If not, what did the resistance reveal about the true nature of the challenge?

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Identity & Presence

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