Adaptive Leadership: The Heifetz Collection (3 Items)

The Theory Behind the Practice 23

assessing, managing, distributing, and providing contexts for losses

that move people through those losses to a new place.

At the same time, adaptation is a process of conservation as well as

loss. Although the losses of change are the hard part, adaptive change is

mostly not about change at all. The question is not only, “Of all that we

care about, what must be given up to survive and thrive going for-

ward?” but also, “Of all that we care about, what elements are essential

and must be preserved into the future, or we will lose precious values,

core competencies, and lose who we are?” As in nature, a successful

adaptation enables an organization or community to take the best from

its traditions, identity, and history ...