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Introduction 1-6
p.3 We respect how tough this work is. We know too many people with scars to show for their efforts. We have scars ourselves and harbor no illusions.
Part One: The Challenge
1: The Heart of Danger 9-30
p.12 You appear dangerous to people when you question their values, beliefs, or habits of a lifetime.
p.13 Leadership would be a safe undertaking if your organizations and communities only faced problems for which they already knew the solutions.... We call these technical problems. But there is a whole host of problems that are not amenable to authoritative expertise or standard operating procedures... We call these adaptive challenges because they require experiments, new discoveries, and adjustments from numerous places in the organization or community.
p.14 the single most common source of leadership failure we've been able to identify... is that people, especially those in positions of authority, treat adaptive challenges like technical problems.
p.22 As he soon discovered, the problem, like many tough problems, contained both technical and adaptive elements.
p.27 In going through the pains of adaptive change, there is no guarantee that the result will be an improvement.
2: The Faces of Danger 31-48
p.31 The dangers of leadership take many forms... When people resist adaptive work, their goal is to shut down those who exercise leadership in order to preserve what they have.
p.40-41 Attacking you personally is another tried-and-true method of neutralizing your message. Whatever the form of the attack, if the attackers can turn the subject of the conversation from the issue you are advancing to your character or style, or even to the attack itself, it will have succeeded in submerging the issue... You have probably been attacked in one form or another... For the most part, people criticize you when they don't like the message. But rather than focus on the content of your message, taking issue with its merits, they frequently find it more effective to discredit you.
p.42 The attacks... will come in whatever form your opponents think will work. Through trial and error, they will find your Achilles' heel. They will come at you wherever you are most vulnerable.
3: Get on the Balcony 51-74
p.51 Few practical ideas are more obvious or more critical than the need to get perspective in the midst of action... We call this skill "getting off the dance floor and going to the balcony," an image that captures the mental activity of stepping back in the midst of action and asking, "What's really going on here?"
p.52 Amanda... was... unable to get an overview and see what was going on. Typically only a few people see these dynamics as they happen... most never notice... The observational challenge is to see the subtleties that normally go right by us. Seeing the whole picture requires standing back and watching even as you take part in the action being observed. But taking a balcony perspective... The most difficult part to notice is what you do yourself... So you might imagine looking down on the room from a sky camera and seeing yourself as merely another player in the game.
p.53 Achieving a balcony perspective means taking yourself out of the dance, in your mind, even if only for a moment... If you want to affect what is happening, you must return to the dance floor... The process must be iterative, not static. The challenge is to move back and forth between the dance floor and the balcony, making interventions, observing their impact in real time, and then returning to the action.
p.54 When you observe from the balcony you must see yourself as well as the other participants. Perhaps this is the hardest task of all - to see yourself objectively... You must notice that part of yourself that others would see if they were looking down from the balcony.
p.58 Most problems come bundled with both technical and adaptive aspects.
p.60-61 If you throw all the technical fixes you can imagine at the problem and the problem persists, it's a pretty clear signal that an underlying adaptive challenge still needs to be addressed.
p.73 Leadership is an improvisational art... what you actually do from moment to moment cannot be scripted. To be effective, you must respond to what is happening... You take action, step back and assess the results of the action, reassess the plan, then... make the next move. You have to maintain a diagnostic mindset on a changing reality... A plan is no more than today's best guess. Tomorrow you discover the unanticipated effects of today's actions and adjust to those unexpected events.
4: Think Politically 75-100
p.92 Remember that when you ask people to do adaptive work, you are asking a lot.
5: Orchestrate the Conflict 101-122
p.102 When you exercise leadership, you need a holding environment to contain and adjust the heat that is being generated by addressing difficult issues or wide value differences.
p.107-108 If you try to stimulate deep change within an organization, you have to control the temperature. There are really two tasks here. The first is to raise the heat enough that people sit up, pay attention, and deal with the real threats and challenges facing them... The second is to lower the temperature when necessary to reduce a counterproductive level of tension.
p.112 Roosevelt... knew that accomplishing the adaptive work facing the nation required improvisation, experiments, creativity, and conflict
p.120 Assess the situation. Calculate the risks. Then decide how to pace the work, knowing that this is an improvisation. Not only must you be open to the possibility of changing course in midstream, you should expect that... you will have to reassess and take ongoing corrective action.
p.122 It is not always possible to show people the future. It might not exist. You might not even be able to envision it yourself. But if it is possible, revealing the future is an extremely useful way to mobilize adaptive work
6: Give the Work Back 123-140
p.135 In and of themselves, observations are no more than snapshots from the balcony.
7: Hold Steady 141-162
8: Manage Your Hungers 163-186
p.175 Ron [Heifetz]... One night he came home from a book promotion trip and his wife, Sousan, suggested that they take a bath together after the kids were in bed. "Oh, wow," he thought, "A little pleasure after all my hard work running around pushing the book. Do I deserve this or what?" The kids were washed, brushed, and read to. Husband and wife proceeded to the bathroom. They ran the water, added some wonderful smelling stuff, disrobed, and got into the tub. [JLJ - you'll have to read the rest of this anecdote yourself - but you probably will be disappointed...]
9: Anchor Yourself 187-206
p.188, 193 "You are a jerk" is not necessarily a personal attack... Even physical assassination, the ultimate form of attack, is not personal. [JLJ - The point being made here is that changes being pushed by leadership, necessary or not, are going to be met with resistance, by those who want the "old system" to remain. Nothing, it seems, is off the table, in their counter-schemes to undo what you are attempting or scheming to accomplish.]
10: What's on the Line? 207-224
11: Sacred Heart 225-236
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