The Flux 5: Leader Mindsets for Thriving in a World of Wicked Problems

Welcome back, esteemed readers. I am thrilled to be writing my first collaborative article with my good friend and global leadership expert, Dr. Sharon Ravitch. In my last article, we embarked on a journey towards a shared understanding of collaboration, proposing that it is a blend of skills and mindsets. This time, we delve deeper, guided by Sharon’s insightful research and her groundbreaking book, Leadership Mindsets for Adaptive Change: The Flux 5. Let’s dive in.

Gone are the days when workplace challenges were neatly boxed, predictable puzzles that leaders could navigate with a well-crafted strategy. Back then, the professional world operated within a clear framework, where problems had defined edges and solutions were plotted with confidence. Today’s landscape is dramatically different. We're now navigating through a maze of wicked problems—from complex socio-political and economic upheavals to evolving workforce expectations and pressing demands for workplace equity. These issues, underscored by phenomena such as the Great Resignation, Great Reshuffle, Quiet Quitting, Quiet Firings, and Quiet Hirings, illustrate a profound transformation in the workplace, turning it into a dynamic arena of constant change.

In today’s world of wicked problems, effective organizational leaders drive adaptive change, rather than reacting to change. Reactive change is what happens to leaders and organizations. Adaptive change is when leaders drive and enact change amid flux. Agile leaders drive adaptive change with clear vision, strategic engagement, and collaboration, creating the conditions for purpose and individual agency. Adaptive change requires new kinds of leader learning for problem definition and conceptualization, solution design, and implementation. It requires identifying invisible logics—our own and those embedded in the organization—which are unspoken lines of reasoning that form inferences and interpretations and guide habits of mind, frames of thought, and arguments even as they remain invisible.

The Flux 5: Leadership Mindsets for Adaptive Change

This work-flux necessitates that leaders transcend ‘best practices’ to enact next practices that push through the status quo by identifying stale mindsets, structures, and defaults. These practices uphold outdated scarcity mindsets, which constrain collaboration and innovation, and are supported by 5 interrelated mindsets:

• Inquiry Mindset drives disciplined organizational curiosity that questions status quo logics and system defaults through systemic sensemaking for organizational self-understanding. This mindset identifies knowledge silos and invisible logics through deep learning, self-reflection, authentic engagement, and impactful learning.
• Humanizing Mindset is an antidote to Industrial-Age transactional approaches that were dehumanizing. Workplace humanization requires building relational trust, shared purpose, and belonging through reflective practices that identify unconscious biases embedded in the organization which limit authenticity, kindness, and compassion.
• Systems Mindset addresses the interconnectedness of organizational system components to advance purpose and goals based on analysis, synthesis, and emergence that continuously questions invisible logics and assumptions to promote appreciative decision-making and adaptive change in complex, dynamic, emergent changes.
• Entrepreneurial Mindset instills the ability to recognize and seize opportunities in unpredictable, uncertain, and ambiguous environments and times. Skills include the capacity to generate innovative and disruptive ideas, execute on those ideas, embrace risk, persist through ambiguity, and maintain confidence.
• Equity Mindset is a leader and organizational mindset that drives cultural and inclusive excellence in organizations through enacting adaptive learning for workplace equity, inclusion, and belonging, positioning the work as adaptive change management that requires boundary spanning and commitment.

As an organizational learning ecosystem, used together, these mindsets enable leaders to:

1. Engage unexpected change and emergent challenges with agility

2. Humanize the organization, team, and yourself

3. Build an ethos of shared purpose, compassion, and active listening

4. Read and skillfully address complex relational realities in real-time

5. Drive cultural and inclusive excellence in a polarizing social moment

The goal is being adaptive while humanizing the work, even when the tyranny of the urgent calls from every direction. In a world of wicked flux, new frames and mindsets are essential to imagining and crafting a resilient, vibrant organizational future.

Looking Ahead

This article merely skims the surface of the insights found in Sharon's latest work. If you want to learn more about adaptive leadership, then do yourself a favor and check out her book.

What Now?

In the meantime, let's expand our community. Subscribe to this newsletter and share it within your network. Together, we can create a ripple effect of knowledge and action.

Also, I'm eager to hear your thoughts and experiences on this topic. Do you have a story that speaks to these ideas? What needs do you have in navigating wicked problems? Your insights are invaluable as we navigate this complex journey together.

Let’s Connect

Are you grappling with a wicked problem? Reach out. Don't navigate it alone. I'm here with innovative strategies and processes that will be highlighted in my upcoming articles. Why wait? Let's explore the unknown together.