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AQ – Adaptability Quotient and the Growth Mindset

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AQ  – Adaptability Quotient is being cited as the “New EQ” – the big thing that will make the difference between excellence and extinction in the modern workplace.

In a nutshell, it’s about how well placed you are as an individual or organisation, to adapt to the rapidly changing circumstances in which we now all operate.

When I’m talking to clients I use the Blockbuster example. It would not have mattered if they had the most engaged teams, the best leaders, the best sites and the most impressive labour and GP ratios. There business would still have died because people became able to watch films for free on their telephones.

It is super easy to be exceptionally busy with all the things that have always made you successful as an individual. Or focus almost entirely on the things that are driving the profitability of your business today.

But how much time and structured thinking do you put into the things that might make your business obselete in 10 years? Or maybe more scarily, turn you from someone with a proven track record in skills that are highly valued, into someone who is the business equivalent of a Betamax expert.

It’s not new science. How adaptable we are is closely connected to things you may have read already about Growth Mindset.

However the AQ or adaptive thinking terminology has helped emphasise one of the most difficult things we overcome when we develop a genuine Growth Mindset – that we have to learn to challenge our very deeply helps beliefs on things. And that sometimes these are the very things that made us successful in the first place.

I’ve summarised what it takes to train your brain to have a higher AQ at the bottom of this article, using the acronym ADAPTS so it’s easy to remember and pass on.

So if it is such an easy concept to get your head around, why is AQ so prized? It’s because it is easy to define, but really difficult to do.

This is because our brains don’t like adaption. So those with high AQ are likely to have done some pretty difficult thinking. Adapting in business is crucial, but when the “what’s in it for me” is more important even than that – and is the difference between surving or dying, our brains are great at coming up with very rational ways to resist adaption.

I am very fond of the sad story told in a HBR book Immunity to Change. A number of heart patients were told that they were faced with almost certain death if they did not change their lifestyle habits. Only 1 in 7 were able to make the necessary changes. 6 died.

Even when it is literally a matter of life and death, the motivation to change is not enough. We still listen to our faulty wiring. Our brain  finds evidence that what we have always done is still OK and we listen to it because it means we don’t have to do something difficult or painful.

When our brain tells us “I know I have to find the time to do this a bit differently and I will definitely do it tomorrow” we can defer what we need to do, but will be difficult. And go back to focusing on what is comfortable instead.

It makes sense. Old habits die hard – especially ones that we think helped to contribute to previous success.

Take the scientific research that appears to prove irrefutably that there is a link between whether people like you and whether they rate you professionally.

In one Harvard study of over 57,000 leaders only 0.1% of who were disliked by their teams, were also perceived as being good at their job.

How hard would that be to read if you were a 50 year old Executive who has oft quoted the mantra “I’m not here to be liked, I’m here to be respected.”

Woah. Our brains just don’t like that sort of curve ball. We have a complex system of thinking that is there for good reason – to protect us from the shame of being wrong. Or the disappointment of wondering about what could have been.

So instead our brains try to keep us safe from shame and disappointment and quickly find “evidence” that justifies keeping that questionable belief intact. But that is what AQ is all about. Developing the confidence and mental agility to adapt even your most strongly held beliefs and assumptions if you find they might be wrong.

A leader who has not bothered previously about being “liked” with low AQ would probably stick with the first “rational” thought that dismisses that research out of hand and enables them to get back to the business of the day. “Yeah but that was just in America. It’s unlikely that it was in a tough environment like mine. Look at what I’ve achieved. It’s clearly tree hugging rubbish.”

It’s much, much harder to develop a personal high AQ. Where you allow yourself to feel a bit ashamed of yourself for being quite horrible at times and acknowledge you might need to adapt your thinking into something like “Well that blows my assumption out of the water that it is shows weakness to want to be liked. Wow, that’s uncomfortable. What would I have done differently if I had known this 20 years ago? OK. Let’s think. What can I do about this right now. Today”.

Given how hard genuine adaptive change is for us as individuals, why are we surprised that it is even harder – and sometimes feels impossible – in an organisation?

An organisation is simply a collection of people doing business together. If if the business environment changes, what makes us believe that those people can automatically follow suit?

Changing ways of working is difficult. I would say almost impossible. Getting people to let go of something they have found useful in the past takes time, effort and real focus. It is not something that can be achieved with a day’s training (or even a week of workshops) – no matter how good the training is or how hot the burning platform is to change something.

It is really common practise for us to work hard to set a vision, goals and values and invest a lot of time and money in encouraging maybe hundreds or thousands of people to “sing from the same hymn sheet”. But we remain surprised when people can’t remember the new lyrics, even if they agree the song has become old hat.

I’ve seen evidence where even if where we have uncovered that a business “myth” is actually propping up underperformance, teams and individuals can really want to hold onto it.

The article in HBR about AQ from 2011 resonates with me more than ever. We are learning more daily about why we find change difficult and why AQ or “adaptive quotient” may become the new EQ.

Reeves and Delmer write:

“Management paradigms die hard, especially when they have historically been the basis for success.”

The article is great. Please do read it. However if you are now too busy because you have read this instead, there are 6 key things that you can do to train you and your organisation to be more adaptive so that you can increase your AQ. Ask questions and spend time thinking about Alternatives, Disrupters, Assumptions, Plans, Threats and Speed – helpfully we have turned their recommendations into – ADAPTS.

Try these 6 things today to increase your AQ.

1) ALTERNATIVES: Insist any change proposal has several suggested alternatives as a matter of course – this encourages cognitive and organisational flexibility

2) DISRUPTERS: Ask questions that set an expectation that the leaders in your business are thinking about what the disrupters on the edges of your business are doing – not just what your competitors are up to.

3) ASSUMPTIONS: Get into the habit of thinking about and  asking questions about what you think you all “know”. Are there some firmly and widely held beliefs that you need to have the courage to challenge?

4) PLANS: Do you spend quality time and energy thinking and reflecting on plans that take your business beyond what you know? What are the megatrends? What are you under-exploiting? What can you not know?

5) THREATS: Treat threats or risks to your business with rigour. Do you have people with time and a clear responsibility for exploring areas of potential market exposure. Do you set up and incentivise  initiatives to measure future threats with the same passion as you measure yesterday’s performance?

6) SPEED: Increase your “clock-speed” – make any annual reviews lighter and consider how to transform any processes that you do on a monthly or annual basis into business as usual activity that takes minutes not hours.

I am frequently to be heard challenging my clients about separating “business fact” from “business fiction”.

We all have assumptions. We are wired to make them. But we can train our brains to stand back and check them out for what they are. We can then decide if the things that we are protecting are actually the same things that are holding us back.

To increase your AQ, remind yourself and your organisation regularly that some organisational widely held beliefs and firmly followed processes are actually based on questionable or outdated assumptions. Also remember that initially it will be normal that when you question them, your individual and collective organisation brains might be desperate to hold onto them!

Here are some questions I have found helpful to ask. I hope they stimulate some thinking for you.

“What trends are emerging that mean we just won’t have customers in the same numbers in 5 years?”

“What would X do if they bought our business?”
Insert whatever name you like for X.

“Is this actually “real” or a myth we like – that it suits us to believe?”

“Just because our brains can to find “evidence” to support that view, does it mean it is actually true?”

“Did this used to be a business fact but one we need to question now things have moved on?”

“What do we not want to know?”

“If we needed to overcome that risk within 6 weeks, who would we have working on it and what resources would they need to create a viable alternative in that time?”

“If we needed 3 other options, what would they be?”

“What would be ridiculous about us turning that annual review into a fortnightly one?”

I hope that helps explain what AQ is if you hear someone mention it!

More importantly, I hope it gives you a head start about how we could help you to do something about it before everyone else does!

Contact us via Teabreaktraining.com for more information and a cuppa to get you thinking. It’s our job to keep you. ahead of the curve.

Leading Innovation

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Having worked with small family businesses, larger SME’s and some of the largest businesses in the UK, what keeps being evident is that the old adage that people work for people is still very true.

Whatever the size of the business, whether they have manufactured a product, provided a service or sold an experience, the successful leaders of the businesses I have worked with have shared more in common than their business size or product might suggest. In fact when someone asked me recently whether I had any experience in the finance sector, rather than talk to the about the FDs I had coached, or finance teams I had trained in leadership, I paused and asked:

“That is an interesting question. It makes me curious about whether you think leaders in your business need different personal qualities to leaders in other sectors or functions?”

We ended up having a really interesting discussion along the same lines. That whilst particular jobs or sectors might attract a person with particular characteristics or skills, a good leader was a good leader. The skills and qualities needed transcend sector and size of business.

So when I was asked to talk recently at a conference for businesses of all different shapes, sizes and sectors on “How to Lead Innovation”, this conversation was very much in my mind.

The group I presented to had already met on a number of occasions. They had found that 3 words kept coming up when talking about what qualities were needed to take an innovative product or service to market.

The words were: Resilience. Tenacity. Creativity.

This was a great place to start. I began by agreeing about the importance of these qualities. And by suggesting that innovative places to work both need to attract people with these qualities, but that they also need to continue to grow and develop those qualities over time.

In a fast paced environment with lots of pressure to innovate the qualities need to be nurtured and fed back upon so that they remain strengths. I have seen resilient, tenacious and creative people stubbornly hanging onto yesterday’s idea that wasn’t working, for all they were worth. Tomorrow’s creative idea is after all “so last year”. Tenacity without feedback can easily turn into stubborn blinkeredness. Resilience in the face of failure is admirable – but what if you are really missing what people are telling you about why your idea won’t work because you are only selectively listening?

I added an example of my own. Seeing failure as feedback to help you get it right. I visited Dyson a few years ago to give them some advice on embedding learning from employee engagement surveys. I was struck by how much they talked about failure. It was one of their values. Fail. It really made me think about the sort of tightrope you have to walk as a leader to make failure OK but still ensure you are making enough money to survive. The key for me to turn failure into a learning opportunity is feedback. Asking questions to ensure people are becoming wiser and even more open minded, resilient, creative and tenacious from their failures. Ensuring people remain positive by digging underneath their responses to check whether they really are OK that their product has just crashed again. Making sure that people aren’t being over confident about an idea that has had it’s day or will simply not pay for itself soon enough.

So the list of things I spoke about became Resilience. Tenacity. Creativity. Feedback.

We spoke about how to develop those qualities in yourself and how to grow them in other people. I had 3 point plan which was simple but I think all I could do in 15 minutes!

1) Appreciate people are different. 

We all have different wiring and express our “tenacity” and “creativity” in different ways. Some people might adore a brainstorm. Others might need to lock themselves away and speak to no one in order to come up with their best ideas. Find ways to let people make the most effective use of their brain. Your way might work brilliantly for you – it is therefore natural that you will want to share “what worked well for me in the past was…”Consider whether it will work equally well for them.

Remember, your way of organising yourself or your thoughts may simply not suit someone else’s wiring.

2)  Play to individual and group strengths.

It’s a build on the point above. Don’t expect the person who wants to lock themselves away for 3 days to come up with ideas to necessarily be brillliant presenting them to a group at a conference. Or the person who loves brainstorming to necessarily be the best choice to take those ideas away and put them into a project plan with milestones. There are jobs that need to be done and processes that need to be followed. But delegate them to people who have the personal qualities as well as the skills that the job needs.

Expecting people who are technically brilliant at something to be equally as good at leading a team to do the same job to that same standards, may not give you the exceptional result you hoped for… Train them to lead.

3) Learn to lead innovative people

The reason that you recruited someone can be the reason they drive you crazy as well – every strength has a relevant opposite or inevitable flip side. Finding a way to lead people and feedback to them about how their “flip sides” are impacting the people around them is tough. People who are creative can be difficult to pin down. People who are resilient can find it difficult to admit vulnerability. People who are tenacious can be rude and stubborn. All of these “flip-sides” need addressing – but research continually shows that if all we feedback to people is what they are not doing well – things that they find difficult – they will underperform. It’s tough, but what I call “top right conversations” can help. These are conversations when you project both approachability and authority as a leader. And are seen as someone who is provide feedback for learning – not to criticise.

Having a good degree of warmth and rapport so that someone can open up to you when things go wrong, is as important as been seen as strong and authoritative enough to help them to fix it.

I have recently written an article on this balance between creating trust and creating challenge – it is easy to say and really hard to actually do. You can read it here. http://www.itsnotbloodyrocketscience.com/

Many of the great leaders who I have worked with say they think that this might just be “the secret” to their success. However, it’s not a secret. It is really well researched common sense that is rooted in our palaeolithic brains! (See the work of Amy Cuddy at Harvard or Deborah Gruenfeld from Stanford for a much robust scientific studies than mine!)

It is hard but try it. It might just be the secret to unlocking profitable innovation from your people. If so, thinking about how well you balance trust and challenge is worth your very precious time.

We can help if you need it. Our websites at teabreaktraining.com and profitablyengaged.com tell you more.

Equally if you think you’ve read enough we’d love to hear from you!

Email elizabeth@teabreaktraining.com for help on how to get these skills into your business.

Or for 1:1 Executive Coaching or Business Mentoring get in touch at dulcie@profitablyengaged.com

What is Tea Break Training ?

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We created Tea Break Training because we believe there is a smarter and faster way to sustainably grow the skills and competencies of people at work. We are all Short on Time and Big on Ambition – which we shorten to STBAM (because we are too busy to write it out !)

I’m Dulcie Swanston. Elizabeth Davis and I, own and operate Tea Break Training. We relate to it’s mission personally. We have 9 children/stepchildren between us and have combined careers in business and law with parenthood. We know what being short on time, but still being really ambitious about achieving your potential, is like. We know, first hand, that business leaders and professionals don’t want (and can’t afford), development that takes their people away from the day job without it really changing anything. They want development that is effective, fast and that really makes a difference to what people achieve in the workplace. Training that people love, that changes minds fast. That’s what we do.

So why are we different ? Well…

We don’t do fluff. Our development and training should not be mistaken for a nice cup of tea with a HR lady…the clue was in the name (We do irony and have a sense of humour.) 

We don’t do long days of training with models that you forget when it’s time to actually use them at work. 

We don’t do quick one-off sessions, take your cash and hope that’s the job done. We have proven ways to train your people (and you!)  in how to keep the learning alive. We want the learning to be used week in, week out, to grow your business.

We do high brow, but we keep it simple. 

It’s our job to have read all the books you meant to…but were too busy to start. We will give you and your team a really good grasp of what we have found to be the best bits. But at speed, so that you can get on with leading your team or managing your business (and you can have a proper break on the beach this year and read John Grisham and leave the business at home !)

We have a system that works, that is based on science and research, to help you retain your learning.

We are licensed to use virtually every psychometric test available to understand your people (and yourself) better – MBTI, Insights, Wave, OPQ etc…So if that is part of the plan, great. But we don’t need to sell you one particular solution. 

We are not affiliated to one particular training brand, writer, business school or theory…We have read them and been there though. We have seen which ones work and which ones die on the vine. We’ve taken what we think are the best ones – the ones that make a real difference, in real life, to real people, most often. We’ve slimmed those ideas down and made them easy to get to grips with – in less than the time it takes to finish a cup of tea. 

So when we understand what is not quite working at work, we can pick and mix from the best ideas around and help you fix it. Fast.

We listen. We understand. And we are confident that we can create a bespoke solution that is absolutely exactly what you need.

The best thing to do is to email us on hello@teabreaktraining.com Our website will be brilliant and very whizzy (when we finally get the time…) But you might need help now? So if you do, please do get in touch…quick !