I have a weird personality - an amalgamate of strongly contrasting characteristics that don’t come together frequently (e.g., intense + analytical, competitive + stoic). Some of them I’ve strongly developed over the years, but there’s a bunch I’d call innate - “analytical” is probably the most important of those. That’s why I used to be a hardcore technocrat - I believed all the problems can be solved with the brain & an adequate level of knowledge applied.

That changed after I became a full-time manager circa 2010-2011, as I’ve come to appreciate the meaning of leadership, motivation, vision clarity & strategic alignment, etc. In fact, it surprised me how many issues can be solved more easily and quickly just by showing agency, bias for action, and simply taking ownership. Jocko Willink (ex-SEAL, author of popular leadership-related books) has even coined a saying:

“Every problem is a leadership problem.”

“Every” is a strong generalization, and I’m a bit allergic to such ones (thanks, Amazon!) - so it has got me thinking: is Jocko right? Can all the failures be attributed to insufficient leadership? Could any problem be solved with an adequate amount (how to measure that?!) of leadership? I started digging, I’ve dived into one specific management theory and a book dedicated to it, and this blog post is all about what I’ve found.

I’ve started collecting examples & classifying them (into the groups that confirm or deny Jocko’s statement). I’ll spare you all of them and head straight to the conclusions. It seems that leadership is a great “cure” for:

  • lack of decisiveness/clarity (e.g., paralysis-analysis)
  • passiveness - lack of agency/bias for action
  • gaps/lack of ownership (”not my job”, “someone else caused that”, “let someone else do it”)
  • being afraid/feeling insecure about something (e.g., making mistakes)
  • massive entropy accumulated (problems that seem overwhelming)
  • issues with culture/internal politics (us-vs-them, misaligned goals, ego problem, complacency)
  • high complexity/chaos (beyond anyone's cognitive load threshold)

That seems like a lot of very different problem categories with no common denominator. But apparently, some wise heads have already been thinking about that, and they’ve coined the term 1. adaptive challenges. Let me pause on the definition until I present the other three categories - where applying the leadership IS NOT SUFFICIENT (or even harmful - in some conditions): 2. expertise problems, 3. structural/systemic problems, and 4. polarities.

Expertise problems are “technical” (domain) problems with either a known fix or at least a straight path towards the fix (for problems that still require scientific research). Many are not unique (they happened in the past). Examples are quite straightforward: a complex bug to fix, a broken item to replace, a research barrier to overcome.

Structural/systemic problems can’t be solved in the current conditions, as the environment has changed in ways beyond our control (e.g., a physical constraint, unfavorable market conditions, or a restrictive legal change). Just moving forward (regardless of energy/will dedicated) would not work - we need to (re-)adjust/calibrate the perspective (pivot the product, try different materials, change market, look for the legal loophole).

Polarities (sometimes referred to as “wicked problems” - I’ve written about them once already) are something you can’t solve but only manage. Why so? Because the problem is supposed to have a “stopping rule” (definition of when the problem stops being one) - but in this case, it’s about maintaining some sort of a balance between desired qualities: e.g., between quality and speed, innovation and stability, free speech and abuse/harassment prevention.

What does it leave us with? Well, adaptive challenges are the ones that:

  • make us face strong ambiguity (beyond technical expertise!)
  • and/or force the change of human behavior (values, beliefs, roles, relationships, approaches to work, etc).

That makes a lot of sense (IMHO) as:

Leadership is the art of influencing people to act in a certain way, regardless of obstacles (past habits & biases, uncertainty, ambiguity, lack of clarity/vision).

But maybe I’m overthinking it? Why bother with all this classification instead of following Jocko’s rule - what could go wrong?

  1. First of all, ignoring the importance of expertise in solving a certain category of problems leads straight to the “Messiah Complex” (a false belief that a leader can fix anything through sheer will/charisma). That leads straight to undervaluation of knowledge, wisdom & experience - that won't end well, right?
  2. Trying to ignore the nature of polarity (& trying to “fix” it permanently instead of initiating a re-balancing loop) leads only to frustration, failed expectations, and potentially neglecting one of the desired polar qualities.
  3. Take a look at how well this model fits ... Cynefin. Simple and Complicated domains are nothing but expertise problems, while Complex and Chaos ones clearly belong to adaptive problems! And isn’t Cynefin all about why it’s important to differentiate approaches to varying domains?
  4. Leadership allows you to shape the matter that is people, but it cannot bend the laws of physics or time - that’s why it’s mostly ineffective against systemic problems.

P.S. If you’re interested in the concept of “polarity management” (mentioned briefly above), take a look at “Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems” by Barry Johnson, or “Both/And Thinking” by Wendy Smith and Marianne Lewis.

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