Adaptability, Mindfulness & Purpose

Theory compact

May 28

Adaptability implies independence and requires mindfulness. Adaptability means that we can cope with a wide range of challenges and unexpected developments. Thus, we become independent from favorable conditions. Crucial to such independence is adaptive sensemaking which denotes the readiness to detach from interpretations and enactments, should they fail to orient us in changing circumstances, and to explore alternative perspectives.[1] Independence from favorable conditions requires independence from reassuring beliefs or meanings. How can we acquire such independence?
First, we must loosen our attachment to our beliefs, or frames, and habitual engagements with the world. When we let go of stereotyped simplifications we open to the flux of events. Mindfulness is the ability to let go while attending both to the details of a situation as well as our reactive affections and interpretations. As we become increasingly aware of, and thus gain leverage over, habitual reactions, we expand our agency in responding to situations. We witness that our processing of situations is itself conditioned by our moods and external influences and realize that our experiences do not reliably represent a fixed objective reality.[2] And we might recognize rigid patterns in our sensemaking, learn to question our beliefs, and begin asking a crucial question: Why am I interpreting the situation as I do, and to which aim?

Adaptive sensemaking preserves diverging perspectives. Our sensemaking habits, the subconscious and the deliberate, are driven towards ends, like meeting our biological and social needs. These telic habits of interpretation and action open perspectives, organize our world, shape our identity, and suggest ways of dealing with situations.[3] When we rigidly adhere to a guiding belief, our perception of situations is dominated by one habitual drive. The belief that I am uniquely fit for my work from the above example, could, for instance, arise from the drive to protect self-esteem. If one way of viewing things dominates, as when all social encounters are interpreted in regard to whether they affirm or negate our self-worth, this perspective will limit our openness and versatility.
Renowned organizational psychologist Karl Weick argues, therefore, that adaptive capacities are highest when we can readily move between various habitual trajectories of interpretation and action.[4,5] A rich repertoire of habits, ends, and identities will install internal criticism that prevents domination of one perspective and ensures that more responses are available when facing unforeseen events (which, by the way, reveals an organizational advantage of diversity and participation).
Weick advises us to embrace uncertainty and ambiguity and act without clear plans but only a rough sense of direction. We should go ahead with both-and-thinking and ambiguous action that incorporates multiple intentions pointing in roughly the same direction. The more attention we pay to subtle details in the flux of things, however, the more occasions will materialize for competition between response tendencies and habits of interpretation—our own or those within a group. Thus, as trajectories of meaning and action compete, ambiguity deepens and our sense of direction is lost; to recover orientation we must then “rework ambiguity.”[6] How can we do that?

Purpose gives direction and contains ambiguity. Weick advocates “an attitude of wisdom” that preserves “an ongoing balance between knowing and doubt” where “what we know is sufficient to move ahead” without assuming that “what is known and done is necessarily true and valid.”[7] His recommendations are analogous to the approach of expert facilitator Adam Kahane to transformative collaboration on contested issues. Here, the balance is between inquiring openly and advocating assertively, between diverging and converging, advancing and concluding. As Weick, Kahane recommends moving on with ambiguity, that is, without agreement on all relevant issues; the key, however, is to know where agreement is necessary.[8] A rough sense of direction, just good enough to inspire the next step, is crucial to preventing fragmentation, crippling conflict, and paralyzing doubt.
Overarching (shared) purposes or identities offer this sense of direction; they provide reference points that can reconcile competing meanings, help negotiate a working agreement, and inspire creative ordering of ambiguous situations. Purpose and identity reduce ambiguity and are, therefore, crucial resources for sensemaking. But, promising reassurance, they also lure us to cling to them. If we wish to be versatile and adaptable to the core, we must avoid depending on even our purposes and identities. Identities are easily overthrown by blows of fate and purposes can over time lose their object or prove misguided. Ideally, then, we have just so much clarity about our purposes and identities that they provide a sense of direction that’s just good enough—just good enough to allow us to creatively improvise with what we find in any given situation. In other words, we must find the middle way between rigid conviction and disorienting ambiguity.

Integrative transformation allows conflict and doubt to manifest adaptability. When the self or an organization lacks aligning energy, the entropy of diverging perspectives will lead to disintegration, that is, crippling doubt or conflict; too much unifying momentum, though, and rigidity will result. The middle way is to find unity within differences and dissonances, to appreciate multiplicity mindfully but uncover shared undercurrents of purpose that gather differences without blurring them. The undercurrent thus sets going an integrative transformation that liberates the energies interlocked in doubt and conflict and channels them into empowering adaptivity.
Much of (self-)leadership is about facilitating the co-creation of sense that finds unity in differences and nurturing purpose that traces the middle ground between fragmentation and rigidity; it is about supporting people to become more adaptable so that they may engage in adaptive co-creation. People become more versatile if they intuit sources of sense to tap into and learn to detach from the beliefs they employ for orientation. Navigating conflict and doubt demands, therefore, the ability to steer clear from the allure of reassuring certainties and dwell in difference and ambiguity.

The facilitation of sensemaking can be practiced, and adaptability can be developed. In my trainings, workshops, and coaching, I will help you identify your own or your community’s sensemaking patterns, explore the benefits of open, non-violent communication, practice finding unity in difference and narrating purpose, strengthen your capacity to lead yourself and others, and, finally, develop expansive mindfulness. Mindfulness practice fosters the clarity and perceptiveness to detect resources and subtle environmental cues for sensemaking. And it helps us relearn to let go and not know. Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki:

If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.
It is the readiness of the mind that is wisdom.[9]