Suggested Leadership Actions

Use these Inspect and Adapt activities to determine how your teams are addressing complexity and to make sure they're using the Inspect and Adapt principle.

We'll cover the following

Inspect

  • Review your current projects. Which elements of your projects would you describe as Complex, and which would you describe as Complicated?

  • Review a recent challenged project. Did your teams treat important aspects of the project as though they were Complicated or Complex? Does it appear that any of the project’s challenges might have arisen from a Complex project being misclassified as Complicated (or vice versa)?

  • To what degree are your projects using Inspect and Adapt? When and where else could you use Inspect and Adapt?

  • In OODA terms, Observe who your “opponent” is (specific competitor, market share, profit goal, bureaucracy, etc.).

  • Observe 3–5 areas of uncertainty that you could potentially exploit to gain advantage over your opponent.

Adapt

  • Create a list of projects that your organization should be treating as Complex rather than Complicated. Work with your project teams to begin treating them that way.

  • Orient using the areas of uncertainty in ways that will provide advantages over your opponent.

  • Decide how to take advantage of your insights into uncertainty and then Act.

Get hands-on with 1200+ tech skills courses.