A Quote by Edgar Schein
Leadership is the ability to step outside the culture to start evolutionary change processes that are more adaptive.
Related Quotes
Darwin's principle of natural selection leads to the prediction that the proper way to analyze any evolutionary development is to see the new features as adaptive to environments. And that's a perfectly good principle. The problem is that there are many evolutionary biologists who view everything that happens in evolution as directly evolved for adaptive benefit. And that just doesn't work. Whenever you build a structure for adaptive reasons, the structure is going to exhibit properties that have nothing to do with adaptation. They're just side consequences.
We should always be learning or we will cease to be able to change or adapt. I think the best work on leadership today is by Ronald Heifetz. His work is focused on adaptive leadership.
Bill O'Reilly's firing is a welcome step by Fox News and its parent company, 21st Century Fox, by a new generation of leadership trying to modernize the country's conservative media flagship and change its culture. But it is just a step.
Considering that we live in an era of evolutionary everything---evolutionary biology, evolutionary medicine, evolutionary ecology, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary economics, evolutionary computing---it was surprising how rarely people thought in evolutionary terms. It was a human blind spot. We look at the world around us as a snapshot when it was really a movie, constantly changing.
I like how fashion is becoming more like music. It's more adaptive to young kids. It's more adaptive to a more on-the-go lifestyle. More street vibe. But I've always been into it.
Processes of avoiding the world within in order to try to regulate your behavior, or becoming entangled in your thoughts interfering with your ability to take advantage of what's around you, or losing contact with your values for fear that you'll know more about the places where you hurt - those kinds of processes are just normal psychological processes. And if you take the mode of mind that works great in 95 percent of your life and apply it within, it then implodes. It starts creating barriers, and that's true at work, it's true in our culture, true in our politics.
When we recognise that reflective processes are no more outside the causal net than unreflective processes, and that they are bound by similar constraints, we may come to understand the nature of reflection for the first time.
Deadlines refine the mind. They remove variables like exotic materials and processes that take too long. The closer the deadline, the more likely you'll start thinking waaay outside the box.
It so happens that certain songs becomes part of culture, and culture is a form of preserving patterns. Yes, we're Mexican, and we're proud to be, but we're also human. But like all cultures, there are retrograde elements and evolutionary elements. I think we'll chose to head towards the evolutionary ones and leave the others behind.
Every single person has leadership ability. Some step up and take them. Some don't. My answer was to step up and lead.
For centuries the most powerful argument for God's existence from the physical world was the so-called argument from design: Living things are so beautiful and elegant and so apparently purposeful, they could only have been made by an intelligent designer. But [Charles] Darwin provided a simpler explanation. His way is a gradual, incremental improvement starting from very simple beginnings and working up step by tiny incremental step to more complexity, more elegance, more adaptive perfection.
I think travelling teaches you that there is a change which is constant and you have to develop an adaptive nature to be part of this celebration and to be a part of this journey called life. It gives a great understanding of people and their culture.
After snowboarding a fair bit in 2011 and 2012 to test equipment, I got pretty good at it, and some friends at Adaptive Action Sports talked me into competing at the exhibition event at the Winter X Games in the adaptive boardercross. I was able to step up my game pretty quick and compete. I took last place, but knew I could improve.
Leadership rests not only on outstanding ability. It also rests on commitment, loyalty and pride. It rests on followers who are ready to accept guidance. Leadership is the ability to direct people and - more important - to have those people accept that direction.
The first step in changing a culture, I believe, starts with the senior leadership team - and with the CEO.
The more I have studied Lincoln, the more I have followed his thought processes, the more I am convinced that he understood leadership better than any other American president.
