Three Practices for Adaptive Leaders

Shifting stakeholder expectations of companies, digital transformation, and pendulum swings in how work is done have created dramatic changes for companies especially in the marketing function.

Amid all the uncertainty, one thing is for sure: All leaders need the ability to adapt and learn. And the companies who do it well, have a distinct competitive advantage. It’s clear that to perform dynamically, marketers must adapt continuously, and this requires intentional ongoing learning. Yet, I’ve found that learning to learn is one of the most overlooked capabilities of CMOs and their organizations.

The value of learning to learn is universal, it applies to every function and to both B2B and B2C business models. Here are three practices that I try to incorporate myself and nurture in my teams as we strive for a learning culture.

 1. Perspective taking

A useful model to gain perspective is the practice of ‘moving from the ‘dance floor to the balcony.’ Coined by Heifetz and Linsky of Harvard, it describes the mental exercise of stepping back from the action and assessing how effectively your team and strategy are working. Optimal engagement ‘on the dance floor’ builds credibility, provides a frontline experience and ensures a direct understanding of the realities confronting your teams and other stakeholders. Meanwhile, time spent “on the balcony’ allows you to examine patterns, re-evaluate assumptions, and make non-obvious connections. Adaptive leaders must do both. 

 2. Psychological safety

A prerequisite to rapid and sustained team learning is psychological safety. Harvard professor, Amy Edmondson, studied this concept in the workplace and found that psychological safety is present in an organization when there is a willingness to speak candidly in a timely manner across all levels without risk of punishment or humiliation. I think of this as creating a space where colleagues can speak in draft form and where learning systems are designed as part of the work routine, not confined to separate training activities. Environments with high psychological safety generate learning and increase the likelihood of effective execution of the decisions made because of the learning.

 3. Unlearning

An often-neglected aspect of learning is the process of unlearning. The philosopher Henry David Thoreau tells us, “When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before.” Unlearning does not mean forgetting. Instead, it’s about the ability to choose the right-fit paradigm based on your context. The pandemic has focused a light on brand purpose, upended customer behavior, and dismantled ecosystem norms. These upheavals have placed some established business and marketing truths on hold while rendering others obsolete. To adapt, we must unlearn the old mental models and make room for the new.

I recently hosted a CMO panel on learning. You can listen to the recording on the “How CMOs Commit” podcast on both Apple Podcasts and Spotify.