CHAPTER 4
Diagnose the System
THE FIRST STEP in tackling any adaptive challenge is to get on the balcony so you can see how your organizational system is responding to it. Informed by this perspective, you will gain a clearer view of your company’s structures, culture, and defaults (its habitual ways of responding to problems). You will grasp the nature of the adaptive challenges at hand. You will map the networks of political relationships that will be relevant to how effectively you mobilize people to deal with that challenge. And you will assess your enterprise’s overall capacity for adaptation, by considering distinguishing characteristics of an adaptive organization.
The Elegance and Tenacity of the Status Quo
We start with the assumption ...
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