Welcome, everyone. The Council for Advancement and Support of Education is pleased to present this online webinar Managing Uncertainty through the Practice of Adaptive Leadership. My name is Ann Weller and it's my pleasure to introduce our speaker today. Lauren Villanueva is the assistant Vice President of Alumni Relations and the Executive director of the Alumni Board of Governors at Drexel University in Philadelphia. In this role, she provides strategic direction to programing and volunteer management initiatives and ensures alignment between the board and institutional strategic priorities in the context of the university's current comprehensive campaign. The future is a place we make Lauren and her team focus on the development and delivery of programs that increase alumni engagement and participation, including career and professional development programing, shared interest affinity groups, recent graduate student programing and signature events such as Alumni Weekend Homecoming and the Drexel Insights, Regional Events Series. Lauren has been working in higher education advancement for the past 17 years. Earlier in her career law and served as the director of Alumni and Parent Relations at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She has also held advancement focused roles at the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University. Welcome, Lauren. Thank you so much for that introduction, and it's a pleasure to be here with all of you today. So and shared a little bit about my background. So to set a little more context, this presentation really comes from what I have been thinking about as I've progressed throughout my career and particularly over the last couple of years, when change management has become more of a focus research interest of mine. So I've had experience in leading programs and then eventually in leading people. And I've always been fascinated by the process of managing change. So a couple of years ago, I enrolled in the D D program at Drexel, where change management and organizational development are frequent topics of conversation. And then just a few months after I started the program, the COVID 19 pandemic hit. And I had the opportunity to put I would put what I was learning into practice and lead an organization through new ways of working, thinking and doing. So what I'm going to share in this presentation is an approach to managing change through adaptive leadership that comes from those experiences. So just to take you through a little bit about what we'll cover in this session, I want to take you through several aspects of the practice of adaptive leadership. First, we'll review the differences between adaptive and technical challenges in defining the nature of the change that our organization and the individuals within them are faced with today. Second, we'll consider applications for the practice of adaptive leadership, including in the context of the current educational landscape. Next, we'll cover the steps associated with an adaptive approach to managing change, as well as the importance of the long term development of an adaptive culture. And finally, I'll discuss some of the challenges that this approach may surface within organizations and share some tips for developing as an adaptive leader. So to begin, it's important to recognize that the change management process is going to look different depending on what type of problems your organization is faced with. Underlying the practice of adaptive leadership is the idea that people in organizations typically face either technical or adaptive challenges. So technical challenges are clearly defined problems and solutions that can be solved by expertise. So sometimes those in positions of authority, somebody who's designated as the leader of an organization, will make a decision about what the way forward is going to be. It's almost like an edict and everybody else sort of has to fall in line and follow around with that. Technical challenges are able to be resolved in a short amount of time. And typically, you'll find that you face less resistance in solving these problems. One of the things I'll talk about later is that some of the challenges associated with the practice of adaptive leadership cause people to resist change. They feel like they have something to lose. They have a lot of emotions tied up into it, or there's a long held ways of thinking and doing or aspects of the organizational culture that are just difficult to give up. So in technical challenges, there's often less at stake in terms of all of those emotions. And so there's typically less resistance to change in that process. And then on the right hand side of the slide, you'll see some of the characteristics of adaptive challenges. These challenges are difficult to define. They might have multiple solutions to them. There's a lot of ambiguity around them. And they can't be solved by somebody who's quote unquote, an expert. It really requires the collaboration of multiple stakeholder groups, and often the work needs to take place across organizational boundaries. Adaptive challenges require attention to longer term outcomes. You're doing things that can fundamentally change the organization. And again, different from a technical challenge, these kinds of challenges in the adaptive sense really require changes in values, beliefs and culture. So if we think about what the climate is today, the global economy is increasingly interconnected. We have rapidly changing technology. The business landscape and the educational landscape are really competitive. Many of the challenges that we're going to encounter, both as individuals and within the organizations that we're leading, are going to be adaptive in nature. If organizations want to be able to maintain a competitive advantage. In spite of all of this, the individuals within them need to be willing to expand their knowledge and consider new ways of thinking and doing and be able to address these challenges with creativity, innovation and collaboration. It's important to note that sometimes technical approaches to problem solving can be applied to adaptive challenges. For example, your organization might bring in an outside consultant to act as an expert in facilitating the solution to a problem. That person might collaborate with others in. The important distinction here is that many of the challenges that we face can't be solved by this type of technical approach alone. That's really providing a quick fix, but it doesn't enable the individual or organization to engage in the development, learning and capacity building so that they would be able to continue to respond to challenges. When that consultant leaves, you know, so they need to be able to take the work back on when they don't have sort of that supervision and partnership of someone who's an outside expert because they're going to be challenges that are inevitably going to rise in the future. And they might not have that same level of support there. So again, really just highlighting here that you might apply kind of a technical approach to the to solving a complex problem, but that can't be sort of the only solution that you employ. In those cases where you really have a high level of complexity. So some people listening today might be familiar with the work of Peter Sangay, who described the concept of systems thinking, and he defines organization as operating in webs of interdependence. So you have social, political and economic factors that affect industries. And that filters down to the organizational level. And then those organizations are comprised of teams of people who must navigate through periods of uncertainty, chaos and rapid change in order to thrive. We certainly saw this concept of webs of interdependence play out over the last year or so, as are organizations, and we as individuals grappled with the implications of the pandemic. If I think about my work, and I'm sure if you think about your work in the institutional advancement field, we know that what we are facing in terms of the global health situation forced us to rethink our traditional in-person ways of engaging with our constituents. We had to create high quality engagement opportunities in a virtual setting and really just find a way to keep them connected to each other in our institutions when those sort of traditional ways of doing that weren't available to us. So some of the decisions also that our constituents made about their engagement, particularly in the context of philanthropy, were colored by some of the economic implications associated with the pandemic. If you're leading or managing a team, you know you were seeing work and personal demands that came together at home and caused us and our colleagues to really have to struggle and think through how do we balance work and professional life. And you had to maybe support your team in a little bit of a different way or provide different resources than you were used to in an in-person setting. So this might be the most extreme and widespread example of dealing with rapid change and uncertainty that many of us have faced in the workplace. But there probably even similar situations in your professional career where you and your team members had to pivot to new ways of thinking and doing things like leadership transitions, the introduction of new technology, integrating teams that once worked in silos. Those are all examples of the complex challenges that teams must work together to solve, and that is adaptive approach can be applied to. So when we think about education specifically, we see that we're faced with a number of different challenges here. You've got decreasing budgets, increasing calls for accountability from internal and external stakeholders and of course, growing competition in the marketplace. The practice of adaptive leadership can enable our institutions to move forward ideas and develop new ways of thinking. And doing that can ultimately strengthen our competitive advantage in this challenging environment. So I feel that the adaptive approach is well aligned with the goals of the work that most of us are engaged in as advancement professionals, as I'll talk about in a moment. The process really places people as well as their values, feelings and relationships at the center of the process while endeavoring to ensure a sustainable and long term future for the organization as it moves forward. These elements are at the heart of what we do, whether you're a fundraiser, an alumni engagement professional, a volunteer, a board manager, or a marketing communications team member who is supporting an educational institution. So when executed effectively, the practice of adaptive leadership can engage faculty and staff, alumni, donors, volunteers and board members in developing effective solutions to help their institution reinvent itself. Even in the face of some of those challenges that I described. An adaptive approach provides the opportunity to align key stakeholder groups around a shared vision for the future while providing a meaningful engagement opportunity as they come together to shape a vision. The relationships between individuals and between the individuals and their organization and between the organization and the larger system in which they operate can be strengthened in this process. So as I said a couple of years ago, I enrolled in the doctoral program at Drexel, and this is where I really began to think a little bit more critically about the process of change management. And it occurred to me that most of the discussions that you see around the practice of change management tend to either focus on personality of the leader or the process and the set of steps itself. And ultimately, I think that effective change management results from the interplay between both of these things. And so this diagram on the left hand side of the slide outlines a little bit of the thought process around that view. So you can see that stakeholders and their shared values are placed at the center of the process of change management. And although one person may be identified as the leader, instituting change is almost always a collective effort. The leader motivates others, encourages collaboration, promotes continuous learning and models, appropriate behavior to the team. The leader is also in charge of communicating the shared mission, vision and values, which promote a sense of ownership and unite all stakeholders. And this encourages their active participation in the change process along the way. My approach to managing change has also been influenced by other research and professional and personal and professional experience. And so the practice of ADAPT the leadership, which was developed by Ronald Heifetz and Marty Lenski, really resonated with me because it provides a framework for managing complex change in a way that engages multiple stakeholder groups to solve short term issues and work towards work towards a long term and sustainable future for the organization. So this diagram illustrates some of the key steps associated with managing change as I see them, and again, its influence by sort of this adaptive approach. But it's grounded in sort of this idea that part of the process needs to include continuous learning that allows stakeholders to reflect on what's happening, reflect on their personal contributions, and think about the outcomes. This helps to address the challenges at hand and builds the skills and knowledge that can later be leveraged to face the subsequent challenges that might arise. So change is really this iterative process. Participants may need to go back and revisit certain steps, especially when they start experimenting with and evaluating possible solutions, but really starts with identifying the problem. And this is really a period of careful observation. So according to Heifetz and his colleagues, identifying the problem is the most critical part of the leadership process. However, we sometimes face internal and external pressures that compel us and the groups that we work with to move more quickly to action instead of taking time to accurately diagnose the problem. So if I think of our work in the context of institutional advancement, if there's really a critical need to raise money or engage more constituents around a particular issue, our leadership, our board members or administrative leadership might want us to act and develop a solution really quickly to meet that need, but hope it suggests that the interventions or interventions will be more effective if we really take the time to engage in accurate diagnosis. So the leader in this situation really needs to get off of the dance floor where the action is happening and go onto the balcony so that they can really act as sort of an outside observer. And when we're really immersed in our work, this needs to be sort of a very thoughtful, very intentional process. And we need to make a concerted effort to step back and gain the perspective that's needed to identify possible challenges, the patterns in the way that people interact with each other, and identify our personal perceptions of the situation. So it's really about getting to the root cause of a problem. Instead of saying, this is my knee jerk reaction to what's going on and this is what we need to do to solve it. So after that period of observation, it's important to assemble a team to really tackle this issue. So you, as the leader, might be the catalyst for change. You might recognize that there's a problem that needs to be solved. But it's really important to assemble a team around this that includes a diversity of perspectives, experiences, places within the organization that shares a desire to act. So there are ways that a leader can identify these allies and inspire them to action. A leader models purpose, empathy, persistence and confidence to engage stakeholders and facilitates a dialog that really builds consensus, informs potential interventions and engages all participants. So again, this is where that diversity of perspectives, experiences, positions in the organization comes in, because you're going to be able to benefit from a lot more of that sort of divergent thinking and insight than you would have if you were acting alone, or maybe acting only with the people that were sort of closest to the issue. And ultimately, the goal of the leader should be to give the work back to their people, to give the work back to the team so that they feel a sense of shared ownership in facing the challenge. And they are invested in the solutions and they can develop the capacity to solve the future problems that might arise. Because again, as we'll talk about throughout this process, it's really about developing that internal capacity within your team to face whatever comes to the next. Another important aspect of this process is really focusing on what the issues are. So again, with an adaptive challenge, you might have many kinds of factors that have contributed to the situations. There might be multiple solutions, but really the role of the leader in this is to keep people focused on what are what are the things that are most critical to be solved in this process of change management. There might be other things that need to be tackled later, but it's really important to keep focus and this really helps us to develop a sense of what is important to sort of conserve in this process and what are we willing to lose. So there might be aspects of organizational culture or organizational identity and traditions that should remain after the change occurs. So really, this process of focusing on the issues allows us to figure out what is important to maintain and what are we willing to let go of. And this will ultimately help us inform the interventions that are most responsive to what we want to conserve and what we're willing to lose. And it also helps to really enhance team morale. So if you have, you know, a number of issues that need to be solved and a number of possible solutions, it can seem really overwhelming. And that sometimes leads to us not really being able to act at all. So as a leader, if you're able to help people sort of focus on what's most important here, what do we want to hold on to? What are we willing to let go of? It can help them feel like our work is actually getting us somewhere. We have a clear sort of framework and timeline for moving forward, and we're really focused on a particular issue that we want to solve once the team is empowered to act, the process of designing interventions really begins. So managing change really requires us to adopt that experimental mindset. And there's a quote that I like from the practice of adaptive leadership by Heifetz and his colleagues that says, You have to believe that your intervention is absolutely the right thing to do at the moment that you commit to it. But at the same time, you need to remain open to the possibility that you are dead wrong. So groups might have to revisit this phase multiple times as they experiment with the best interventions to address the challenge at hand. So you'll see in the diagram here, this is one of the points where you've got the arrows going in both directions. There are parts of this process that you might need to revisit as you go along because you might come up with a possible intervention. You put it into practice for a while and you realize, you know what, that's not going to work because of certain factors within our team or ultimately that doesn't align with the organizational culture or actually that intervention is in addressing what we've identified as the root cause of the problem. It's addressing something else, you know, So you might need to go back and really refine with that approaches. But underlying this is sort of that experimental mindset, that willingness to take risk and that willingness to admit when you've gone down a path that might ultimately not be the best fit for the organization. One of the things, again, that we talked a little bit about at the beginning of the presentation was this idea that the change process can be stressful. You might feel, you know, sort of anxiety around some of the resolutions that need to happen. There might be interpersonal conflict if people disagree on the approach where they disagree on the things that need to be conserved and the things that they're willing to lose. And there also may be ambiguous timelines, you know, particular wit, particularly in the context of complex change. It might not be, you know, a week long process from start to finish. It might take much more time, it might take more time to get by and it might take more time to experiment with different solutions. So this can really produce, you know, a fair amount of stress within the team. People might feel uncertain during that phase and again, the resolution might be sort of unclear at the outset. So really what you are empowered to do as the leader is to help people manage the stress. And Heifetz calls this keeping people in a productive zone of disequilibrium. So it sustains momentum towards the change without causing serious damage to the organization. And again, this is another stage of the process that groups may have to revisit multiple times as they determine the most appropriate intervention. So again, we'll talk a little bit about towards the end of our presentation about what some of the qualities are in terms of an adaptive leader. But I really think that this sort of idea that the leader is there to help manage stress is really important and it requires a fair amount of emotional intelligence, a fair amount of empathy, and just a willingness to meet people where they are. If they're positively resistant to the type of change that needs to happen. So the next step that will find is really this evaluation and refinement phase of the process where we're measuring the impact and effectiveness of the interventions that we decided to pursue. So this is really a critical piece. So the criteria that's that you're going to use is going to change depending on the nature of the challenge that you're trying to solve. Budget analysis might be needed to determine if the intervention you're pursuing is saving the organization money you might need to do employee satisfaction surveys. If it's something about organizational culture that you're trying to address. And so evaluation may lead to further experimentation, further refinement before, during and after the implementation process. So again, this is another spot where you'll see kind of the double arrows in that cycle where you might need to go back and reevaluate after a period of time to be sure that this is something that you're going to integrate into the organization in the long term. And finally, I think an important aspect of this process is to really celebrate success. So it's something that Folan, who is another sort of thought leader around leadership and change, calls the energizing power of realization. So in this process, you're helping people to recognize their impact, find meaning in their work, and build their confidence. And depending on the culture of the organization, this phase might include tangible rewards like a pay increase or other kind of compensation. Formal celebrations or employee recognition. And this is sort of an interesting piece, I think, because I'm sure you found in managing and motivating your teams that there's not a one size fits all approach. You know, some people might want sort of more of those tangible rewards. Some people might want, you know, recognition at a department wide meeting. So this is really a place where you might want to have sort of multiple avenues to celebrate success so that you can sort of reward people and recognize them for their contributions in a way that's going to be most meaningful to them. And I think that this is a piece that we sometimes miss in the process of managing change, because, again, one problem is solved and then we identify another problem we need to solve. And it sort of feels like this notion of managing challenge after challenge. But I think this piece is really important both to let your team members know, you know, that they've made an impact and that that's something worth celebrating. And I think it will keep them motivated to sort of tackle the next challenge at hand. So if you can build in time to really celebrate the success of what's been done, I think that that's really critical in sustaining team morale and confidence moving forward. So, you know, after after that phase, you know, again, you're back at the top of the circle there with identifying what the next problem is to solve. But I really think taking the time to celebrate what's been accomplished in a particular situation is really critical to setting yourself and your team up for success and being ready to tackle what's next. So that's sort of the process oriented aspect of what I wanted to cover. But I really think it's important to recognize that at its core, the practice of adaptive leadership is just it's really a set of practices that are aimed at producing an organizational culture that enables the people within systems to meet, change head on and reinvent themselves when needed. So ultimately, what this process strives to do is develop a learning organization which is characterized by people who are flexible in their thinking, willing to approach their work differently when the situation calls for it, and who can see into larger systems in which they operate. Learning organizations have the best chance of thriving in environments that are characterized by uncertainty and rapid change at learning. Organizations are also characterized in adaptive culture by five key characteristics. First, adaptive cultures recognize the important portions of open and honest communication. If calls this naming the elephants and bringing sensitive issues to the forefront, this can bring attention to the areas of organizational culture that could be an impediment to change. Furthermore, these transparent conversations create an environment that embraces productive conflict and diversity in perspectives. Second, adaptive cultures are characterized by a sense of shared responsibility across the organization. While individuals may hold specific roles, they can work across boundaries to address challenges. This characteristic of an adaptive culture aligns with the idea that what we want to strive for is a collaborative culture that change results from the work of guiding coalitions, that work toward shared goals. And this really makes the change process a little bit more democratic because it extends power to other members of the organization and builds collective knowledge and skill. Third, an adaptive culture recognizes that the answers to complex challenges can come from any level of the organization, not just senior leadership. If it's notes that members of the adaptive organizations can encourage independent judgment by asking what's the right thing to do to advance the mission of our organization rather than what would the boss want me to do here? So I think, again, when we think about this kind of practice in the role of our in the context of our role in institutional advancement, where mission is kind of at the center of what we do, this is a really important question How is what we are doing and what we're empowering our teams to do and what we're asking our stakeholders to do? How does that advance ultimately the mission of this organization? Fourth, Adaptive Cultures place emphasis on the development of leadership capacity. This includes the ability to think independently, tolerate uncertainty, work with a team, and think in longer time horizons. And these can all develop through the experiences of managing adaptive challenges, acquiring and strengthening these skills benefits both personal and organizational growth. Individual skill sets are strengthened, and the organization can build a pipeline of future leaders in the process. And this really gives you that robust internal talent pool that can mitigate staff turnover and create decrease onboarding time when you have new leaders come in. And that's crucial to maintaining competitive advantage. And I think when we think about our work in institutional advancement, this is critical because we are really building relationships with our stakeholders on behalf of the institution. And when somebody leaves, you sometimes have to start all over again. So the more that we can sort of enhance this internal capacity within our teams to improve their skill set, to improve their retention. Again, it gets back to that organizational mission piece of having people in place that can sustain these relationships. Moving forward. And finally, adaptive culture is value continuous learning. They value, again, as I've said, experimentation. They look at mistakes as learning opportunities. They make time for reflection and they demonstrate. They demonstrate flexible thinking. So they again exemplify these characteristics of the learning organization. And these are really going to be the groups that are best positioned to respond to all these evolving sort of trends that we see economically, politically, socially, because people are willing to expand their knowledge and consider new ways of thinking and doing. So I talked a lot about why this is a sound good approach so far. So a lot about the benefits of the adaptive process. But of course you need to recognize that there's going to be some challenges in working towards a truly adaptive culture and an adaptive organization. So first and foremost, it can be painful to admit that the way that things are currently done just isn't working and that a new approach might be needed. These are hard truths that we need to face as participants in this process, and we sometimes need to go through a period of reconciling ourselves to letting go of processes, projects or aspects of our organizational culture that just no longer serve us. Because this process really leverages the team approach to solve complex problems. It's important to balance both individual perspectives and goals with the perspectives and goals that are collectively shared across the organization. So it's an exercise in letting go of ego in a lot of ways. It doesn't mean that you need to completely give up individual goals or the things that are important to you that are important to you personally. It just means that you need to work through striking a balance between these personal aspirations and the ones that will ultimately serve the greater good of the organization. And of course, there might be people that resist these efforts. They might do so outwardly, tell you that they disagree with what's going on in the organization. Or it could also be a behind the scenes kind of approach where they try and divert or delay the process. And so you need to sort of become you know, you need to expect that. And you also need to be equipped with the strategies to overcome that. And the process can really fail if you as a leader or I'm willing to listen to the opinions around you. So adaptive practice is really more about the work being distributed across the team versus one person hoarding all the power over decision making. So again, sometimes that means letting go and welcoming the participation of others in the process. So I just wanted to share, you know, some of the characteristics that you can think about as you consider your development as an adaptive leader. This will enable you to manage the challenges that are associated with this approach and maximize the benefits of the practice of adaptive leadership. What I want to be clear about here also is that we talk about leaders in the process. We aren't necessarily saying that the person who leads the charge has to be in a formal position of authority because they have a certain title or a position in the organization hierarchy. You can be a leader in this type of change management approach from any place within the organization. So I just wanted to close here with some kind of summary items and some key takeaways from our presentation today. And I really just want to highlight here that the work of building an adaptive culture requires focus and commitment at all levels of the organization. And it's as much about process as it is about personality. Adaptive cultures value individual contribution and collective action and continuous reflection while building a talent pipeline and tolerance for ambiguity that can sustain organizations in times of disruption. And on the left hand side of the slide here, I've just listed a quote that really just resonates with me when I think about this type of practice of managing change. And it says every challenge is another opportunity to both work the immediate problem and institute ways of operating that can become norms for taking on whatever comes next. And again, I think this really sums up the process nicely because it's thinking about the short term and immediate challenges at hand and then thinking about what do we need to do as an organization and what do we need to equip our individuals within the organization to do to manage change in an ongoing basis? And I think this is especially important because our work is going to continue to become more complex. Our world is increasingly going to be interconnected, and these are the things that our institutional leaders and stakeholders are going to look to us to do as we hope to maintain the competitive advantage of our organization moving forward. So I hope this presentation has provided you with some insight into how the practice of adaptive leadership can be used to manage change within your own organizations and teams, and that you'll take away some actionable next steps as as you begin to develop an adaptive culture within your organization and begin to grow your skills as an adaptive leader. These are just some references that I've incorporated throughout the presentation, and I hope that this has provided some tips for you to really think about what that process looks like, what looks like within your own organization, and that you'll be equipped with some actionable steps to begin to build the adaptive culture needed within your organizations. Thank you. Thank you so much, Lauren. This concludes the webinar. Today's program is Copyright 2021 by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education with All rights reserved. For additional information on case demand webinars, please visit. W. W. W that case. Dot org slash Resources.

Adaptive Leadership

Change Management

Complex Change

Adaptive Culture

Continuous Learning

Managing Uncertainty

Competitive Advantage