State of the Solutions | Seth Bate

I admit to only half-listening to the coverage leading up to and following the State of the Union address on January 28, 2010. It’s just a speech, right?

Even so, a quote from Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell got my attention when I heard it on the radio – enough so that I went to his website to find it in an official press release.

“Americans aren’t happy with the administration’s approach,” McConnell said. “They want a step-by-step approach to our problems, not grand government experiments and schemes.”

What I heard was, “Americans want technical solutions, not adaptive responses.” And I have to agree with the Senator. That’s exactly what we want. Unfortunately, it’s not what the situation requires.

Over the last few years I have learned and in turn taught about the difference between technical and adaptive challenges. My first exposure was an article written by Ron Heifetz that a colleague shared with me, and it’s a concept that is central to the work of our partners at The Kansas Leadership Center.

McConnell’s statement points at a key distinction between the two kinds of challenges.

Technical challenges may be difficult and complicated, but they can be tackled with expertise that currently exists. If you get the right combination of brains, resources and influence, there may well be a step-by-step approach to these kinds of problems. Finding that approach is reassuring; if the administration could find it, Americans would likely be happier.

Adaptive challenges are also difficult and complicated, not to mention persistent. And there is no single entity with enough brains, resources or influence to fix them. As we’re reminded in the evolving Kansas Leadership Center Field Guide, these challenges “require learning to understand what is going on. The solutions also require learning to develop new tools, methodologies and practices.”

Job creation, health care and energy ― among other topics in the president’s speech and the Republican response – are adaptive challenges.

The only way to move forward on these enormous issues is to experiment, because no one yet knows what the answers are. Of course, we may disagree on the choice and scope of the experiments. Still, if we are ever to make progress, we have to give up our reliance on step-by-step approaches and embrace innovation, learning as we go.



Learn more about the properties of an adaptive challenge here (pgs. 19-22):

Photo courtesy of Philo Nordlund