Technical vs Adaptive Problems
Welcome Entrepreneurs, I'm so glad you're here.
The distinction between technical and adaptive problems is foundational to my work, because there’s nothing more akin to banging your head against a wall than taking a technical approach to an adaptive problem.
But how can you tell the difference? And, more importantly, once you’ve realized you’re working on an adaptive problem and that therefore “just do it” is bad advice, how do you make progress?
Hang tight, friends. And welcome to today’s issue.
“I can’t just take a vacation,” he told me. “I haven’t set up an out-of-office for over a decade.”
I nodded. The client and I had been working together for a few months and had talked about his pattern of being “always on” before. And about the toll it was taking on his growing family.
“But I’m heading out next month,” he continued, “and I don’t want it to be another one of those trips where my family goes on vacation, and I work from the hotel room or the pool. Do you have any tricks or techniques I could try to get some distance?”
I immediately thought of a few things that had worked for me: leaving my phone in the hotel room; leaving my computer at home; forwarding my email to someone who could triage it and send me only the vital, skip-your-vacation-now type emails; and, yes, setting up an out-of-office reminder. I considered sharing all these ideas, but I let them pass. In my experience when a CEO asks for advice, a how-to is very rarely what they’re actually looking for. By the time they’re working with an executive coach, they’ve generally already proven themselves to be intelligent, wise, and resourceful enough that not knowing how to do something is very rarely a true blocker.
“I’m happy to riff on how to get some space,” I began, “but before we do that, I wonder if you’d humor me. This goal of yours, do you suppose it’s technical or adaptive?”
Technical versus adaptive goals
One of the first conversations I have with clients is about the difference between technical and adaptive goals. The two types of goals are so different, and are accomplished via such different paths, that I’ve found the distinction serves as an essential foundation for our work together.
To grok the difference, consider these instructions:
“Ride your bike to the corner store, buy me an ice cream, and I’ll give you $100.”
I’m making an assumption here, but I imagine that for most of you this sounds like an easy $100. You’d grab a bike, ride it to the corner, buy some ice cream, and bring it back. If you’re particularly savvy, you might even get it in a dish rather than a cone, so it doesn’t spill in transit (you overachiever, you). For you, these instructions represent a tactical goal. You agree on the importance of the stated goal, and then you go do it.
Completely different story for my three-year-old son. Even if he could find his bike by himself, he would crash in less than a pedal-stroke, and if he did somehow manage to get to the store he would struggle to buy anything because A) he doesn’t understand (or have) money, and B) he’s generally too shy to talk to strangers. Never mind the fact that $100 doesn’t mean much to him yet, so he might not have any motivation to even begin the exercise. The same instructions that seem so straightforward to you represent an adaptive goal to him. He might understand the instructions, but he can’t complete them because who he is is not yet adapted to complete the goal.
What’s true for my son is true for all of us in certain situations, even the most successful CEOs. A single goal can lead to dramatically different results for two different people, depending on whether or not they’re adapted to achieve that goal. For some, the instructions “take a vacation to disconnect” would be technical. They would only need to decide on the importance of the goal, and the methods would take care of themselves. But for others, like the CEO in the story above (an amalgamation of many clients rather than a specific one, as this affliction is rampant in the startup world), the same instructions are adaptive.
And no matter how detailed the user manual, a person will fail to implement a technical solution to a goal that is, to him, adaptive.
The counterintuitive process of solving an adaptive problem
As a coach, it’s always easier to start with the assumption that a client’s goal is technical, as technical goals are much quicker to achieve. The client works to get clear on what specifically he or she wants, then designs a plan to achieve that outcome. Assuming it’s a technical goal, the client goes out and kills it. Bada bing, bada boom.
But CEOs of hypergrowth startups achieve technical goals all day. If the challenges they brought me were actually technical, more often than not they’d have achieved them already. So while we always start with the assumption that issues are technical because it’s the most efficient (and occasionally correct) approach, usually at some point in the process of implementing a technical solution, we hit a roadblock. The instructions are clear, but something’s still not working.
At that point, we’ve run into an adaptive problem, and the process changes entirely:
The focus must move from the problem itself to the person solving the problem.
The success criteria of the goal must change from “do something” to “learn how my current way of perceiving the world is incompatible with achieving this goal.”
This shift in focus is simple to describe, but profound in its implications. Instead of solving a problem, we are learning about how a person makes meaning in the world and taking steps to shift it.
For my “client” above, the moment we determined that the goal was adaptive (in this case it was evident when he mentioned his having tried and failed to disconnect during a vacation in the past), the entire problem changed. It went from “figure out how to disconnect on vacation” to “learn what it is about my relationship with work that prevents me from disconnecting when I really want to.”
As a result, the path to solving the problem shifted from a list of tips and tricks to a deep dive into understanding and shifting the patterns involved in my client’s subconscious thinking.
I’ve written extensively about how to do this deep dive here , but in summary, it works like this:
Identify your relevant mental pattern through careful, moment-by-moment attention to your thoughts. This is most easily accomplished via meditation or working with someone trained to spot them.
Practice catching the pattern when it happens, through careful attention over a longer period of time. The most effective way to do this is to set aside 10 minutes daily to review your behaviors from the day. In this case, a CEO might write down any instances they remember in which they had the opportunity to disconnect and didn’t.
As you begin to notice your pattern more quickly – eventually even in real time – notice the sensations/emotions/thoughts that happen immediately before you take action (pick up your phone, say). They will be unpleasant.
Practice experiencing those unpleasant sensations, intentionally and fully, without taking the action. Repeat.
Adaptation
“I learned the craziest thing,” my client said. It was two weeks after we’d met last, and in the interim he’d been running an experiment designed to unearth the specific attractions or aversions that caused him to prioritize work over the family time he said he wanted.
“I put my phone on the cabinet by the door when I got home from the office like we talked about,” he continued. “I sat down to play cars with my kids, and it was fun for all of 30-seconds before I started worrying about a deal I’m working on. I had already stood up, walked into the other room and picked up my phone before I snapped out of it and put my phone down. I could feel anxiety just coursing through my whole body. My chest was tight, my heart was beating, and I could hear the voice in my head telling me that I was going to lose the deal. That I needed to check just to be sure, because otherwise the whole thing could unravel.”
“Sounds powerful,” I said. “Did you check your phone?”
“Surprisingly, no,” he responded. “I just stood there, looking at my phone, watching all the crazy turmoil inside, and then it just ended. One minute I was an alcoholic staring at a drink, and the next it was just kind of over, and I went back and played some more cars. And you know the best part? For the rest of the week it was pretty easy to leave my phone by the door.”
“What do you think you learned from that experience?” I asked.
“Just how powerful my urge to check my phone is,” he said. “Even when I deliberately leave my phone somewhere else, I would have gone back to get it in a second and left my kids to play cars by themselves if I hadn’t been paying attention.”
“Agreed,” I said. “But you also somehow weathered that storm, and it sounds like it got easier the more you did it.”
He nodded. “Yeah, once I’d felt the pull and sat through it the first time, and most importantly saw that it ended really quickly, it was easier to notice the next time it came up, and I knew I could get through it. I think I have a sense of how to work with these feelings, as long as I can notice them before I’m already acting.”
“That’s outstanding,” I said. “So, for today, I think we were going to talk about how you might prepare to disconnect on your trip down South, right? How do you think this experience might be relevant?”
He smiled.
Things I read this week
One: Switch your search engine to plant trees (Seth Godin)
Doing good usually takes effort. This is one area in which doing good is just as easy as not. Switch your default search engine to Ecosia and plant trees every time you search. I've been using the non-profit, tree-planting search engine for weeks, and it's just as effective as Google.
LINK >>
Two: Tell me more / On the fine art of listening (Brenda Ueland)
My favorite people are those who see the wonder and beauty in everyday things. And invariably, those people see those things at a depth that most miss. Brenda Ueland's essay on how the right kind of listening empowers others to grow into themselves is beautiful, and might make you reconsider how you show up as a listener.
LINK >>
Three: What courageous leaders do differently (HBR)
A mentor of mine, Fred Keller, was profiled in the Harvard Business Review in a piece called "Courageous Leaders." He deserved to be (1/1000 of every submission actually gets published in HBR, so this is a big deal). There are very few people who have done as much for those in need in the world as Fred Keller, and I'm proud to see him recognized. Congrats Fred.
LINK >>
Four: Speed matters (The Jsomers.net blog)
This analysis of the importance of working quickly (it lowers the cost of the action, making you do it more) is really intriguing in its own right. It also jives well with this analysis of the creative process, which I've found to be spot on. Speed is something I'm going to be more aware of as I write.
LINK >>
Five: The scientist's guide to spirituality (David Bohm via SLOWW)
Life is spiritual. And I completely empathize with those who struggle with that statement. It's so easy to lump spirituality into religion, and dismiss the whole lot. But spirituality is deeper than religion. Science has found it, too. Here's a great summary of what spirituality looks like, as seen through the lens of a leading physicist. (HT to Sloww for cranking through some great material and making it easier to read for the rest of us).
LINK >>
Want to dive deeper?
If you liked this, check out this list of my top posts, read and shared by thousands of entrepreneurs.
Here are a few of my favorites:
Executive Coaching for Entrepreneurs
There’s a reason every elite athlete in the world works with a coach. You need more than one perspective to see your best work.
I’m an executive coach and the founder of Inside-Out Leadership, a boutique leadership development agency supporting founders to rapidly scale themselves as leaders, so they can thrive professionally and personally as their company changes the world. Leveraging 15-years as a founder/CEO, along with deep training in mindfulness, psychology, Neurolinguistic Programming, psychedelic integration and more, I have helped leaders from some of the fastest growing companies and VC funds in the world design a more conscious life and make key changes to improve their performance and satisfaction.
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Focused on the person, not the role.
Focused on results, without the fluff.
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