We had a great discussion with Alexander Grashow about The Practice of Adaptive Leadership.  Some take-aways:

1.    Technical Problems are the ones we know how to solve, and Adaptive Challenges are the ones we don’t know how to solve.  We frequently try to solve Adaptive Challenges with technical solutions – and it doesn’t work!

2.    I asked Alexander about how the management practices around change have changed.  He said that initially change management was about surfacing and adopting best practices, and now it is about best practices and risk management.

3.    Alexander mentioned a two day workshop that his firm Cambridge Leadership Associates is leading on Learning to Lead Adaptively.  Here’s a link to enroll:  Learning to Lead Adaptively.

We had a great call with Christine Pearson and Christine Porath, authors of The Cost of Bad Behavior.  A couple of the highlights for me:

1.     Addressing incivility from a corporate perspective may lead to cost savings (e.g. lowering absenteeism, increasing retention, etc.)

2.     Many of us have a lack of awareness of incivility because we are being shielded from it or because we have not drawn out and agreed upon the behavioral norms of our groups. ( e.g. to one person checking a blackberry at lunch is SOP, to another it is rude.)