There is much that all managers, leaders, and employees need to learn-
- to distinguish technical knowingly fixable problems from unknowable complex situations that require exploration and adaptation
-to overcome fear of the unknown and unknowable. Fear of failure. Fear of appearing unwise or ignorant. Fear of others appearing smarter.
-to seek, obtain, and equally consider all ideas from all people in the organization AND impacted by it.
-to equally explore multiple promising ideas simultaneously, having considered in advance how to stabilize and spread what worked, and diminish and prevent what does not.
-to continuously pursue obtaining and sharing knowledge, among all people in the organization and situation.
-to continuously seek to improve everyone’s knowing of multiple ways to address a problem; everyone’s capacity to adapt to emergent challenges; and everyone’s resilience in the face of uncertainty and failure.
The single book I recommend first to people nowadays is “Developmental Evaluation” by Michael Quinn Patton. An acknowledged global expert on evaluation of research, and organizational outcomes, Patton does a great job simply and clearly explaining the differences between knowable/technical/predictably improvable situations, and unknown/unknowable/in need of adaptive action situations. This relates also to the pioneering work of Harvard’s Ron Heifetz (see either his own books on Adaptive Leadership, or the remarkable book about his work, “Leadership Can Be Taught”). Patton speaks to the situational differences in turn impacting the distinction between the use of Evidence-Based Practice, and the far-lesser-known (yet in many ways more significant) Practice-Based Evidence.
Older books I have been re-reading lately that are of tremendous value, and needed now:
Gentle Action by David Peat.
Zapp, by William Byham
Strategic Thinking and the New Science by T. Irene Sanders
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