Being Adaptable

When we think about how we work and live has changed over the past few years and how much change we were told (and can see) coming down the tracks (even before the seismic shifts we've experienced since early 2020) it's becoming clearer that the ability to be able to adapt to new conditions is an increasingly important personal and leadership attribute.

Both the rate of change and significance of change are accelerating in all aspects of work, organisations and in society more generally.

VUCA = volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous was originally coined to describe the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world after the end of the Cold War

The dynamics of change; both the nature and speed of change and the catalysts for change make it virtually impossible to accurately predict our place in a changing environment.

Multiple competing forces, opinions, demands and the difficulty in reading our environment and what these things will mean, place heavy demands on organisational and team leaders and that demand is not switched off in our personal and family lives either.

Planning and managing people in this context is challenging and developing a personal strategy to adapt to changing contexts can help.

While people have different preferences for predictability v uncertainty and clarity v ambiguity, most of us have a limit for the amount of uncertainty and ambiguity we can tolerate before we lose effectiveness and the same is probably true for complexity and volatility.

Adaptability is our way of responding to a changing environment. It is how we respond to uncertainty, ambiguity, complexity and volatility by taking account of our preferences but not being held captive by them. Developing our adaptability means we respond to change by making making well considered adjustments.

There are a few ideas within adaptability:

· Being able to adjust to the new

· Being receptive to change

· Tolerating differences of opinion

Adjusting to the New

Adjustment can be in how we think or feel about something. Can we change our previous opinion about some issue or change our emotional reaction to something or someone? By learning how to adjust what we think or feel about the situation, we can then adjust our behaviour in that new situation.

This can be a challenge especially where our previous thinking has served us well. But the key is being open to acknowledging that what served us well in one situation or environment will not always continue to be effective in a new situation or changing context.

That is above all what adaptability is about - recognising and assessing the new situation and then being open to making adjustments to how we would normally react by making changes to our standard response or previous responses.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, it’s tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail. If we’re just dealing with nails, then the hammer serves us well. When we stop dealing with nails and have to develop a way of dealing with some other material or thing, we need to find a new tool or risk applying our hammer to something what won’t react well to it.

Receptive to New Ideas

If we have a tried and tested way of dealing with something, its hard to change. But by not changing we risk being the hammer when the new challenge requires some new approach.

By being receptive to new ways of doing things, we can prepare for change. We can allow ourselves time to explore, assess and internalise new ideas and integrate them into our own way of doing things. We can better prepare ourselves for new challenges and changes.

Tolerance of Difference

The more ambiguous the context in which we work, the more important it is to have a reasonable tolerance of difference. Learning to work with changing and sometimes conflicting opinions and points of view is an important attribute in a changing environment.

The ability to go with the flow and take some risks makes it easier to adapt our thinking and actions and also helps us not waste time and energy in resisting changing circumstances.