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The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World |  | Authors: Ronald A. Heifetz, Marty Linsky, Alexander Grashow
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $15.43
as of 7/31/2010 03:02 CDT details
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Seller: supermoviedeals
Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 3229
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 7.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 1422105768
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.4092
EAN: 9781422105764
ASIN: 1422105768
Publication Date: May 18, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
We live in a time of danger and opportunity. Individuals, organizations, communities and countries must continuously adapt to new realities to simply survive. Wanting more, wanting to thrive even under constantly shifting and often perilous conditions, people in all sectors are called upon to lead with the courage and skill to challenge the status quo, deploy themselves with agility, and mobilize others to step into the unknown.
Ron Heifetz first mapped a groundbreaking theory of leadership in the seminal book, Leadership Without Easy Answers. Followed by the bestselling Leadership on the Line, he and long-time Harvard colleague Marty Linsky offered a compelling set of arguments and stories to show how to lead and stay alive through the dangers of change.
Now Heifetz and Linsky, joined by Alexander Grashow, have distilled the learning from their combined sixty-plus years of leadership consulting, teaching and training around the globe into a practical hands-on guide to making your leadership both more effective and more powerful.
The Practice of Adaptive Leadership will help you think and execute amidst profoundly changing complexity. With its comprehensive and systemic approach to assessing candidly the situation and yourself, and then taking action, its wisdom and advice are drawn also from the experiences of people like you, committed to advancing what you care about most.
The book is anchored in the framework of Adaptive Leadership, but goes beyond the theory to provide a practical set of stories, diagrams, techniques, and activities that will help you both assess and address the toughest challenges that lie ahead. Dozens of tools and tactics are presented in an exciting, clear, and reader-friendly design.
The Practice of Adaptive Leadership is your handbook to meeting the challenges of leadership in a complex and rapidly changing world.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 12
 Excellent, simply excellent February 26, 2010
Geoffery Chaucer (USA, Beulaville)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Great sequel to Leadership on the Line, which may be one of the best books I have ever read concerning leadership. Pragmatic, complex yet so is leadership. The two together provide a framework that helps individuals and organizations adapt and thrive in challenging situations. Change requires you to challenge people's familiar reality, or in some sense be disruptive. That can be difficult, dangerous work. And, as you push though major changes, the political and organizational fallout can be deadly....Nonetheless, leaders need to find a way to make it work. The two texts are a necessary addition to any leadership library....and insightful for leaders in those situations.
 Adaptive Leadership Shouldn't be Dull February 8, 2010
Milton Friesen (Hamilton, Ontario)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Adaptive leadership is very important. In the few pockets of business and organizational life these days that are untouched by the turbulence around us, business as usual is, it would seem, acceptable. The trouble is that there are so few arenas where that is the case. Finding ways to lead in a way that can adjust to rapid and often unexpected change is critical.
I received a review copy of this book from Harvard Business Press. When it arrived I was very excited to dig in and get jazzed by all the great content. The problem was that the book was about as dull to read as it was to look at (I scrawled this on my cover: "Don't judge a book by its cover. In this case you should. This books cover is really boring"). I was twenty pages in when I felt that they were in trouble. It felt like a Harvard Business Press word container with WalMart content inside. My disappointment was that it lacked any real edge. For people who are deeply immersed in complexity theory and related pursuits that examine how systems change over time, there just wasn't any real insight. For people who don't like that sort of thing, it would, I fear, feel impenetrable.
Reading about next things should be engaging, compelling, shocking even. This book wasn't any of that. I felt genuinely disappointed as I worked my way through out. I just couldn't track with the style or flow. It felt like I was at a really dull meeting that was supposed to be important but somehow wasn't. No Wheatley. No Holling. No Stacey. No Sante Fe Institute. No Kauffman. No cheeky Tom Peters feel. No Dave Snowden deadpan humour. Nothing daring.
There were no expeditions into the heart of real, living organizations where the good, bad and ugly was on display and the authors dared to do battle with their adaptive leadership rocket launchers. No biological modelling, computer simulations, real-time adaptations. After awhile, you just start to feel like the book was off, somehow - like when someone is staring past you. If I was Randy from American Idol, I'd say, "Hey, dog, it's a bit pitchy" or something like that.
In chapter 13 you'll find a six page bit on systems thinking but that's it. An adaptive leadership text without tracking through the latest research and insight on what informs adaptive leadership. There was not good enough evidence that they have their finger on the pulsing neck artery of past, current, and emerging forms of adaptive leadership. A great topic area like this needs to evidence an awareness of adaptive practices in the very delivery of the content but that doesn't happen at all.
I'd love to give it a thumbs up - the title is definitely compelling - but I just can't. I'm happy to be convinced otherwise but all I can think is that I'm glad I had a review copy sent and didn't have to pay for it. The authors are probably very knowledgeable, interesting, and capable consultants but it just doesn't come through in the book, sadly. These are big players with long track records and tons of cultural cache who perhaps need a better way to deliver what they know than a vanilla-looking book that induces yawns.
There are many other books that are in line ahead of this one for developing my teams and thinking. It reminds me of a corporate comb-over. So disappointing. Next time involve a few freaky friends in the book development process.
 Leadership for the 21st century October 28, 2009
Desmond P. Behan (Dublin, Ireland)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Good read, has interesting concept where the future of the world lies. I hope that other people, in particular the politicians and bankers of the world, listen to the message and learn for the future.
Good content buried in a complex system October 6, 2009
Walter H. Bock (Charlotte NC)
28 out of 33 found this review helpful
I have to confess that I didn't finish The Practice of Adaptive Leadership. As a practical matter, reading this book is a bit like joining a monastic order.
It will work for you if you're willing to take a lot of time to learn the system and then change your life to fit it. I don't think most of the managers who read my articles or blog will see that as a good trade-off.
Here's an idea of what to expect.
You will have to learn a new language. This is not that hard. I'm unclear why observing has to happen "On the Balcony" and why a "Practice Field" is necessary. But don't worry, there are lots of charts and diagrams to help you understand the concepts. Here is a list of just a few.
There is a 2 X 2 Diagnosis Matrix
A chart to help you distinguish Technical Problems from Adaptive Challenges
A graph of formal and informal authority
The Productive Zone of Disequilibrium
And of course, there is lots of consultant-speak. You get to read and decipher sentences like the following. "Previously highly successful protocols seem antiquated." I translate that as: "Things that used to work don't work anymore."
Like most books of this type, there is a lot of starting to prepare to begin to get ready to think about doing something. The first chapter is 'How to Use This Book." The second chapter is "The Theory Behind the Practice." And the third is "Before You Begin." Those chapters take up almost fifty pages.
Then you get to the examples. But they're not real examples. People and companies are not named. Instead you're told about "a large law firm: and "a fast-growing advertising and sales company" and "a global energy company" and a "large multinational corporation with a matrix organization." There are lots of non-business examples, drawn from the authors' experience with government agencies.
People are similarly un-named. The only identifying factors seem to be race and gender, which are nicely balanced.
Bottom Line.
A book can have some great content and still not be a book to buy. The Practice of Adaptive Leadership is more like a book of theology than one about leadership. Assumptions are never questioned. The book offers a carefully thought-through system, but one that requires full commitment and significant time to learn and put to use.
For most managers, there's a better use of time than reading The Practice of Adaptive Leadership. Simply put, it's not worth much if you can't put it to use.
Leadership Survival of the Fittest August 14, 2009
Larry Underwood (Scottsdale, AZ)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Authors Ron Heifetz & Marty Linsky have used their 60+ years of combined teaching & leadership experience to compile a wonderful guide for anyone in a leadership capacity in any sized organization, to maximize their skills. It's consise, well-written & compelling; and quite possibly, could help some of the financially distressed organizations clean up their messes, without having to use taxpayers' money to help bail them out.
"Adaptave Leadership" has a Darwinian edge to it; and in fact, it is those leaders who are the strongest in the jungle of 21st century business, who stand the best chance for long term survival. In a free market economy, that's the way it should be; either lead the organization to become competitive, or go away. If I hear Stimulis Package one more time, I'm going to lose it.
Certainly, business needs to develop a more adaptive & flexible approach to running its operations; the leaders who are able to not only survive, but thrive in the real world will be deemed the fittest and reap the rewards.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 12
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