How to know when your adaptive strategy is working

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How to know when your adaptive strategy is working

Whenever I hear the business plans for the countless startups that I've advised, I always ask one important question, how will you know if your strategy is successful? You need to know that your strategy is working or you're going to need to change strategies. The same question applies to you as an adaptive manager. If you're trying to prepare adaptive workers that deal with the world of constant change, how will you know if your strategy has been successful? So, here are some signs to look for. First, you'll know if you're creating adaptive workers if your team members start talking in the language of problems and results.

They don't just talk about their activities, they talk about the deliverables that are connected to your group's strategic goals on an ongoing basis. Next, your team members start coming to you not with problems, but solutions. They understand their roles are either to solve those problems or as we say in Silicon Valley, to route around problems by coming up with completely new ways to perform their work. Third, you also start finding out that your team members have solved problems without your being involved. They come up with creative solutions because you've made them proactive and empowered, they feel like they have agency.

Sure, you may feel you're less needed, but that means you can have more time to focus on solving other problems. Fourth, you find your team members are collaboratively distributing the tasks that need to be done between themselves. They're self-organizing without needing much direction from you, whether the needed skills are on the team or out there in the Cloud. And finally, your team members are demonstrating new things they've learned on their own. They're proactively gathering information experience they need to do their work better and are therefore showing they're committed to being life-long learners.

As an adaptive manager though, you don't need to leave all of this to chance. You can tell your team members these are the kinds of behaviors you're actively looking for. The more transparent you are about your high expectations for them, the more they'll know what success looks like, and the more committed they'll be to meeting those expectations.


Source: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/hiring-and-developing-your-future-workforce/how-to-know-when-your-adaptive-strategy-is-working