Technical versus Adaptive Changes

Technical (the skill set required to perform certain behaviours, is well known and acquired by training and practice)

Adaptive (require changes in your current mindset and cannot be solved  by technical means alone. It involves an adaptive formulation of the problem, ie how do the challenges come up against the current limits of our own mindsets, and this is followed by an adaptive solution.

Adaptive goals are the
"...ones that require us to develop our mindsets - we must easily converted what we learn from behavioural changes that it changes into our mindset..."
Robert Kegan et al, 2009)

Meeting adaptive challenges requires

- an adaptive formulation of the problem
"...We need to see exactly how the challenges come up against the current mindset of our own mental complexity..."
Robert Kegan et al, 2009

- an adaptive solution
"...we ourselves need to adapt in some way..."
Robert Kegan et al, 2009

The common characteristics of people who accomplish adaptive changes:

- change their mindsets and behaviours (not one or the other. 'Mindsets' refers to
"...The meaning-making system that shapes thoughts and feelings..."
Robert Kegan et al, 2009)

- are astute observers of their own thoughts, emotions and behaviours, and learn to use them as information to help improve themselves

- improvements in mindsets are in seeing and feeling more possibilities than previously thought possible

- they take calculated risks that change the rules of the game

- enjoy the experience

- they experience
"...increased mastery, more options, wider control, and greater degrees of freedom..."
Robert Kegan et al, 2009

They succeed beyond their wildest dreams as they have developed new mental capabilities