Adaptability can be learned

Your external environment is moving faster than your internal environment, which means you’re going to fall behind and then fall over. If that scenario does not apply to you, stop reading because you’re either brilliantly adaptable already, or terminally deluded.

According to fresh research, productivity is the #1 focus for organisations in 2025. But, however much money you have to throw at the problem with the likes of automation and digitisation, the only thing that makes anything more productive is your team’s willingness and ability to make it happen.

What’s the issue?

Leaders assume that people will do what they’re told. And sooner or later they usually do. But change projects – which after all are the most risky, expensive and disruptive activity the organisation will ever undertake - usually suffer from inertia. That means they take longer to deliver, and often deliver less than 100% of their benefits. And that right there is a productivity disaster.

If you’re only using Change Management as your sole means of preparing your people for change, you’re only doing that when change is needed, which is acting tactically with your most strategic asset. And even then, you’re just herding them through change one project at a time, doomed to repeat the same inertia every time.

And yet you keep on doing it, perhaps because everyone else is, perhaps it’s accepted best practice, and perhaps because 92% of organisations aren’t proactively developing adaptability as a skill. So it can’t be a priority in 2025, right?

Consider this

1 If you’re one of the 53% of C-suite who has productivity top of your agenda this year, start thinking about how to make your people more adaptable to reduce that inertia, to see projects delivered more quickly and more completely. More quickly means less cost and earlier benefits on your biggest strategic initiatives. And more completely means more of the benefits you were promised.

2 Stop thinking that throwing your people into more projects will make them like change more. Aversion therapy works for arachnophobes, but evidently not for your staff with change. The same inertia you keep having to put up with every time you launch a project proves that. Start preparing them to better embrace the generic IDEA of change now, so they’ll be ready for any specific change you want to throw them into down the line.

3 Ask your staff what they think about change. If you’ve got an open relationship with them you’ll likely hear the words ‘fear’ and ‘anxiety’ – as these are entirely human self-protecting mechanisms. It’s your job to drive change – which drives fear and anxiety. It’s also your job to deal with the fallout too. Both can drive or wreck your productivity.

Try this

Reflect on the idea that adaptability can be learned. It’s not baked into your DNA. Identify your most adaptable team member. And then imagine what the whole team could do if they could become even 80% as adaptable as that star.

At HPC, we developed Adaptability Based Leadership with the express purpose of raising productivity through more engaged, better led staff. If that approach resonates, contact me and let’s get you started on the next phase of your journey towards mastering leadership.