1.
LEAD THROUGH
ADAPTIVE CHANGE
(AS ORIGINALLY PRESENTED TO CPA FIRM LEADERS)
Russell Bedford International
Mexico City, Mexico
Deb Nystrom, October 21, 2016
Ideas for Action, LLC
Principalesa través de
Cambio adaptativo para líderes de CPA firms

2.
VUCA
Volatile
Uncertain
Complex
Ambiguous
Volátil
Incierto
Complejo
Ambigua

3.
Explore how to be a
business leader in a VUCA world

4.
VUCA => AWARENESS
& SKILLS
1. Willing to Open the
Space
2. Sense the Changing
World
3. Stay Results Oriented
4. Create => Co-Create
5. Increase Self-
Awareness =>
Development
What needs to be inside your Survival Bag? What will help
you manage & even enjoy the thrill of the journey?
1. Ser listos a abrir el espacio
2. Percibir al mundo cambiante
3. Quedar orientados a resultados
4. Crear => co-crear
5. Aumentar la conciencia de sí
mismo => desarrollo

5.
1. WILLING TO OPEN THE SPACE
2. Sense the Changing
World
3. Stay Results Oriented
4.Create => Co-Create
5. Increase Self-Awareness
=> Development
Time, Tools, Training
Variable Speed

6.
THE MAKER INSTINCT
• Try new things
• The most
basic inner
urge that we
all have to
build, create
or grow
things
• Futurist Bob
Johansen
Be clear where you are going, be flexible how
you get there, be prepared to adapt

7.
Learn by failing forward
1,000 to 10,000 mistakes
Our greatest
weakness lies in
giving up.
The most certain
way to succeed is
always to try just
one more time.
~ Thomas A. Edison
Edison, at the time he invented the phonograph, record player
Keep trying! Failure is essential to success.
What has been your most valuable failure?

8.
LIBERATING STRUCTURES
1. Include and Unleash Everyone
2. Practice Deep Respect for People
and Local Solutions
3. Always Start with a Clear Purpose
4. Build Trust As You Go
5. Learn by Failing Forward
6. Emphasize Possibilities: Believe
Before You See
7. Practice Self-Discovery Within a
Group
8. Amplify Freedom AND
Responsibility
9. Invite Creative Destruction To
Enable Innovation
10. Engage In Seriously Playful
Curiosity
So much experience / lessons learned
deep within. “Microstructures” interfere.

9.
Organization owners and partners
responded to the follow question:
• What do I need to do,
and/or stop doing, to
encourage innovation &
adaptive change in CPA
firm Leadership?
Multiple answers were encouraged
Discussion encouraged
Notes were used for later part of the
presentation
• Can you be Seriously Playful
& Curious?
EXPLORE HOW TO BE A
BUSINESS LEADER IN A VUCA WORLD
Let’s start with some of what you
already know.

10.
VIDEO: OPEN SPACE
TECHNOLOGY
Online here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnumrXvkpU4
Open Space in 30 seconds, with professional coaches

11.
OPEN SPACE WITH CPA FIRM
OWNERS, PARTNERS
Video of enthusiasm of the end Open
Space session: https://flic.kr/p/Nx6aDr
More photos are available: https://flic.kr/s/aHskMBtzCM

12.
2. SENSE THE CHANGING WORLD
1. Willing to Open the Space
2. -----
3. Stay Results Oriented
4. Create => Co-Create
5. Increase Self-Awareness
=> Development

13.
21ST CENTURY LEADERS
20th century hierarchy
no longer serves as
the primary mode of
leading
Post-heroic, knows how
to oversee co-creative
and bottom-up,
transformative change.

14.
Niels Pflaeging
Leading with flexible Targets.
Beyond Budgeting in Practice
Complexity
• Top teams engage change and
complexity as normal & expected
• Complicated = Financial systems, a
Ferrari
• Complexity = Rain forest, ant
colonies, organizations, teams,
humans
• “Unknown unknowns”
• Where business today IS shifting
• Complex has taken over the
complicated
Top teams
engage in
change &
complexity as
normal &
expected
Every team is a
complex system

15.
21ST CENTURY LEADERSHIP TRENDS
• Leadership is more fluid,
distributed, action-
oriented, shared
• Leadership exists within
relationship and within
community.
• Senior leaders judged on their ability to develop their top
leaders, beginning to coach senior leader teams
• Shared power and community building leads to transformation,
rather than “installing” change

16.
MORE LEADERSHIP
TRENDS
• Hands on, brings communities together in
conversations ~ Listens
• Does NOT delegate communication,
diversity or innovation to a function
• Focus is on Community ~ Avoids
language like inside / outside “audience”
or “stakeholder”
• Open, two-way conversations
• Engages people in conversation and
listens
• Knows that trust and relationships are
the new as well as old currency in
business today.
~ Futurist Ayelet Baron

17.
“If about everything
top-down
fragilizes and blocks
antifragility and growth,
everything bottom-up
thrives under
the right amount
of stress and disorder.”
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Antifragile

18.
BEYOND
RESILIENCE
ADAPTABILITY
ANTIFRAGILE
Photo: Sponge, by rob.knight Flickr cc

19.
TECHNICAL VS. ADAPTIVE CHANGE
• Involves installing
solutions to
problems for
which you know
the answers.
• Addressing problems for
which you don’t yet know
the solutions,
• Often requires changes in
behaviors or preferences
AND hearts and minds,
• Results in the
transformation of the
system
Source: Fullan (2003, 2005) cites Heifetz and Linsky (2002)

20.
Take medication to
lower blood pressure
Implement electronic
ordering and
dispensing of
medications in
hospitals to reduce
errors and drug
interactions
Increase penalty for
drunk driving
TECHNICAL VS. ADAPTIVE CHANGE
EXAMPLES
Source: Fullan (2003, 2005) cites Heifetz and Linsky (2002)
Change lifestyle to eat healthy, get
more exercise and lower stress
Encourage nurses and pharmacists
to question and even challenge
illegible or dangerous prescriptions
by physicians
Raise public awareness of the
dangers and effects of drunk
driving, targeting teenagers in
particular

21.
3. STAY RESULTS ORIENTED
1. Willing to Open the
Space
2. Sense the Changing
World
3. ---
4. Create => Co-Create
5. Increase Self-
Awareness
=> Development

22.
RESULTS
100 YEARS
COMPANIES
1. Strong corporate mission,
culture
2. Strengths, change [leading]
3. Deep relationships with
partners
4. Employees feel like family
5. Active members of community
• 100 Years of Adaptive Change
Vicki TenHaken, Lessons From Century Club
Companies: Managing for Long-Term Success

23.
RESULTS
100 YEARS
COMPANIES
1. Strong corporate mission, culture
2. Strengths, change [leading]
3. Deep relationships with partners
4. Employees feel like family
5. Active members of community
Vicki TenHaken, Lessons From Century Club
Companies: Managing for Long-Term Success
"I'm inspired by the
complexity inherent
in human behavior,
and in cities as the
physical expression
of that complexity.”
Mary Jukuri, Master Planner,
Member, Board of Directors

24.
DEEP RELATIONSHIPS WITH
PARTNERS

25.
LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOR = RESULTS
1. Solving problems
effectively
2. Operating with a
strong results
orientation
3. Seeking different
perspectives
4. Supporting others
Decoding leadership: What really mattersBy Claudio Feser, Fernanda Mayol,
and Ramesh SrinivasanMcKinsey Quarterly. January 2015

26.
Photo: Sponge, by rob.knight Flickr cc
• “It takes a lot
of courage to
release the
familiar and
seemingly
secure,
to embrace
the new.
But there is no
real security in
what is no
longer
meaningful….
SEGURIDAD? SECURITY?
FORTITUDE

27.
There is more
security in the
adventurous
and exciting,
for in movement
there is life,
and in change
there is power.”
~ Alan cohen

28.
TRYING IT OUT
“Commitment,
ownership and
follow-through
will not come
from listening to
hours of
PowerPoint
presentations.”

29.
Firm owners and partners
responded to the following
question:
• What do we need
to do, and/or stop
doing, to advance
the transformation
of CPA Firm
Leadership?
EXPLORE HOW TO BE A
BUSINESS LEADER IN A VUCA WORLD

30.
CPA FIRM OWNERS USING
LIBERATING STRUCTURES TOOLS
More photos are available: https://flic.kr/s/aHskMBtzCM

31.
1. Willing to Open the
Space
2. Sense the Changing
World
3. Stay Results Oriented
4. ------
5. Increase Self-
Awareness =>
Development
4. CREATE => CO-CREATE

32.
4. CREATE => CO-CREATE
To co-create, ask a question for which
you don’t have an answer

33.
MIND SET OUTER REALITY
RESISTOR Not feeling in alignment–
creates resistance
Perceived to have strong
beliefs and opinions – “I”
not open to influence
SKEPTIC Out of alignment–
raises doubt
Appears to be doubtful
and judgmental
WAIT & SEE Waits for others before
committing
Seems always tentative about
what or whom to trust
EXPERIMENTOR Desires to experiment
Seen as someone with
the courage to
take risks, and trust
CO-CREATOR Builds new meaning Willingness to transform
reality with others in a
WE-centric way

34.
5. INCREASE SELF-AWARENESS =>
DEVELOPMENT
1. Willing to Open the
Space
2. Sense the Changing
World
3. Stay Results Oriented
4. Create => Co-Create
5. ---

35.
PRESENCING

36.
WHICH ECONOMIES?
Courage, Creation

37.
WHICH ECONOMIES?
Fear, Destruction

38.
VUCA: TO SURVIVE
& THRIVE
1. Willing to Open the Space
• Try New Things, Smart Risks
• Maker Instinct
• Liberating Structures
2. Sense the Changing World
• 21st Century Leaders
• “AntiFragile”
• Adaptive vs. Technical Change
3. Stay Results Oriented
• 100 year companies
• Leader behaviors
4. Create => Co-Create
• Conversational Intelligence
5. Increase Self-Awareness =>
Development
• Theory U

39.
Freedom is actually
a bigger game
than power.
Power is about
what you
can control.
Freedom is
about
what you
can unleash.
~ Harriet Rubin

40.
EMAIL: DebNystrom@REVELN.com
OR: Give your business card to Deb
Ideas for Action, LLC & REVELN.com
• Subject line: MEXICO CITY
1. 21st century Leadership Handout with link
to slides
2. Bibliography

41.
What’s Next? Come find out in
the Open Space workshop that
follows.
VUCA Pairing
EMAIL: DebNystrom@REVELN.com

42.
WHAT IS OPEN SPACE
TECHNOLOGY?
• The best way to get
something done is
to give it to those
who have a passion
for it.

43.
OPEN SPACE TECHNOLOGY
Principles:
1.Whoever comes are the
right people.
2.Whatever happens is the
only thing that could have.
3.Whenever it starts is the
right time.
4.When it’s over, it’s over.
The Law
of Two Feet

44.
SO What?
Now
What?
What?
REFLECTION