What is your challenge?

An organization is only as healthy as its dominant patterns of discourse

Craig Weber

Organizations face two kinds of problems:

The first is a routine problem, which can be difficult and bothersome, but for which we have ready answers, off-the-shelf solutions, experts we can depend on for a reliable fix. In other words, a routine problem is routine not because it happens regularly, but because we have a routine for dealing with it.

The second is an adaptive challenge-a problem for which there is no easy answer, no off-the-shelf solution, no proven routine for dealing with the issue, no expert who can ride in and save the day.

This is a key distinction because routine and adaptive issues make very different demands, and require vastly different competencies.

An organization in a stable state, with little change or challenge, may face a predominance of routine problems, but an organization dealing with growth, change, competition, limited resources, and other tough issues, will often have just the opposite–a preponderance of adaptive challenges. In such circumstances executives and managers need to develop their ability to do adaptive work-mobilizing people to effectively recognize, diagnose, and engage their adaptive issues.

Nothing is more relevant to this task than the dominant patterns of discourse-the habitual ways people and groups tend to interact, communicate, and work with one another. The patterns of discourse that work well in routine circumstances are grossly ineffective in an adaptive context. While people generally find it easy to pull together around a routine problem, they often pull apart in a more stressful, complex, adaptive situation. So an organization, you could say, is only as healthy as its dominant patterns of discourse, and shaping those patterns in a productive direction is a key task of leadership.

It’s the patterns that count

Direct, open, robust patterns of interaction produce flexible, healthy organizations. Defensive, distorted, anemic patterns inevitably result in unhealthy, poorly performing organizations. When it comes to managing change, solving challenging problems or making difficult decisions, the caliber of discourse directly determines organizational effectiveness.

When it comes to executing strategy, managing growth and change, solving challenging conflicts, and making difficult decisions, organizations inevitably come face-to-face with their dominant patterns:

• Patterns that breed conflict, or patterns that resolve it
• Patterns that block action, or patterns that generate it
• Patterns that restrict collaboration, or patterns that promote it
• Patterns that resist change, or patterns that facilitate it

Any team or organization is only as strong as its dominant patterns of discourse

This is especially true when working with smart people who strongly believe in what they’re trying to accomplish. Why? Their varying functional, experiential, educational, personality, and ego filters lead them to see issues and opportunities differently, and, consequently, when working with an adaptive challenge–when no clear solutions or paths forward exist–they often have strongly conflicting notions about the problem and the “best” way to deal with it. And because they are smart and they care, they can be more rigidly attached to their perspectives. Managed effectively, these conflicting perspectives can be the source of tremendous flexibility and learning. Managed poorly, they’re the source of crippling rigidity and weakness. In other words, when dealing with an adaptive challenge, the patterns of discourse are of fundamental significance-they make the difference between strength or weakness, openness or defensiveness, success or failure.

Conversational capacity

When it comes to dealing with such touch discussions and issues, conversational capacity is key. When a group can converse rigorously and responsibly about exceptionally tough issues, without allowing defensiveness to restrict their progress, it has high conversational capacity. When a group is easily overwhelmed by even routine conversations and decisions, and defensiveness inhibits progress, it has low conversational capacity. Management’s business is building organizations that work, and increasing and maintaining conversational capacity is key to building teams and organizations that do exceptional work in adaptive situations.

Get that wrong and nothing else will work the way you intend.

There is, therefore, a vital need to both understand the powerful, predictable factors that retard conversational capacity, and the need to acquire skills and frameworks for increasing it.

Lacking that ability, you roll the dice and operate at the mercy of whatever patterns happen to evolve.