The Insight Interviews

190 Vikas Bhatia - Adaptive vs Technical

Written by Rewire Inc. | Dec 12, 2023 3:25:30 PM

Vikas is a former executive with an extensive track record in Marketing, Analytics, Strategy & Operations at Fortune 100 organizations. He is the founder of The Prana Partnership, a human development organization focused on personal and organizational leadership and transformation. His commitment is to inspire and serve people and teams that wish to be their best self. His focus is to bring about the synthesis of mind, body and spirit to help his clients create a leadership presence that enables them to take exquisite care of the concerns that they hold for the world around them. He believes that life is a journey, a destinationless pursuit of mastery over one’s chosen discipline, and he strives to live his life in congruence with this vision. His insights and guidance have been instrumental in empowering individuals to make lasting, meaningful changes in their lives.

 

In this episode, Steve and Vikas discuss:

  • Technical and Adaptive Change
  • The Importance, Complexity & Challenges of Adaptive Change
  • Changing Mindset for Success
  • Leading and Coaching for Mindset Change
  • The Limitations of Technical Solutions

 

Key Takeaways:

  • Unleash your personal growth potential and transform your life with lasting change
  • Learn how to navigate both the technical and adaptive aspects of change for successful outcomes
  • Gain insights into the psychological barriers that may be holding you back from making meaningful changes
  • Discover the power of mindset shifts and embrace failure as a stepping stone towards personal and professional growth
  • Explore the benefits of coaching to experience genuine growth and transformation in your life

 

 

“Change is not just about following a set of technical steps, it's about examining the deeper, adaptive aspects of ourselves and our behaviors.”
Vikas Bhatia

 

Connect with Vikas Bhatia:

 

Connect with Steve and Jason:

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Listen to the podcast here:

 

Vikas Bhatia- Adaptive vs Technical


                        

Hello, everyone, and welcome to this episode of The Insight Interviews- Powered by REWIRE. This is our weekly podcast that my business partner, Jason Abel and I have done over here at Rewire now for the better part of three and a half years, am I getting that right? We have a lot of episodes, we're getting more listeners, and maybe that's just tenacity. So, every week we come together, we're trying to bring some insights out. We most typically bring guests on that we think are interesting and we think would bring out an interesting topic. This week, however, my guest, I think interesting just doesn't feel strong enough. This is, by the way, the second time this guest has appeared, and I won't keep you waiting. Plus, you're going to see the show notes, so whatever. So inside interview world, say hello to Vikas Bhatia. Vikas, say hi.

Hi, Steve. And hi, listeners.

Yeah, there you go. So, this is Vikas. Vikas and I are -when I think about our relationship, Vikas, I don't know, maybe I shouldn't do this, but I think of you first as a friend and then as I think of someone that we work with in the coaching practice, I think of you as a colleague. And whether you like it or not, I think of you as a mentor. So, there you go.        
          

Well, thank you, Steve. And absolutely, I completely think of you as a friend. I have a very distinct memory of when you and I met at a coaching program and you had just sort of wonderful way of such an easy conversationalist, and you just slid up next to me and started talking to me, and I was like, wow, this guy's so interesting and so easy to talk. You know, we spent, I think, four or five days together in San Jose, California, in a hotel, and by the end of it, if I didn't already think of you as a friend, I definitely wanted to be friends with you.

And we've subsequently done now some trips together and we have some other interests.

You're definitely one of my favorite people in the world to talk to. When I see the phone light up, saying Steve Scanlon, like a smile just comes to my face. I'm so excited to be- such a lighthearted and fun and valuable-

Well, I think that's one of the things that I think we appreciate about each other and certainly that I appreciate about you. You and I are rarely ever in the shallow end of the pool. Have you noticed that?

Yes. That's, I think, also why we get along well, because yeah, we spend no time in-

Yeah, I don't call you up and wonder if you like chocolate and tell me about what you think of a certain television show. We haven't done that very well.        
            

Yeah, maybe we should. We're probably missing something out.

You like chocolate? Well, because time is such a precious commodity, usually when I get you on in fact, when I get on the phone with you, I was like, I better ask some really good questions. And I usually have them. And so, hey, today's insight interview is really Vikas, it does come around an idea that whether you, again telling someone that they're humble puts them in a funky position, so I won't say that. I've noticed that you don't like to consider yourself an authority, because no one likes to -no humble people say that about themselves. But this particular topic is something that you've worked in and around for many years, something that you've taught, you've written stuff about it, and I thought about you because it's been coming back up in my life and I think our listeners would benefit a great deal from it. So, I just thought, who better to have a dialogue with than you? And so really what I was hoping, Vikas, is it could almost be like you and I chatting like we do, and all I did was hit record. Is that cool? Could we do that?

That's best way to do it. I think so. Without any pretense, without any very…You're a golfer, right? When you try and get this very steery swing, you're trying to get the ball to go some way, that's never great. Yeah. So, let's just-


Well, given that I didn't really give you an agenda, what choice do we have?


Yeah, actually, I think we should kind of maybe spotlight that a little bit. Normally when I do these kinds of conversations, the person will send some questions that they're going to ask. Nothing. You just told me the topic. We had a two-minute conversation about it, and here we are, zero prep. I just know the topic. I have no idea what questions you're going to ask me, and I love it.

Great. Great. Well, I'm going to ask you about all you know about quantum entanglement.
        

Oh, well, that's something I'm not even able to BS my way through.

I just barely know the words and have very little idea what they mean by that. That's okay. So, here's the topic. I'm going to do the setup for us, and it'll guide us into a quick dialogue. There was a book written, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, I believe the book was written in 2010, but I could go figure that out. It was written in the 2000s somewhere. However, the research for this book and this topic was done many, many years before that by Robert Keegan and Lisa Leahy, and the book and the research is entitled Immunity to Change. So, listeners, you're going to see this in the show notes, and if you are the kind of person that wants to go, I would love to read that book, this book, Vikas and I can both tell you and I don't know, maybe he's probably got I don't know where it falls in his list, this book has become something of a beacon for me with regard to the coaching practice because it speaks very, very eloquently, thoroughly and frankly scientifically to how human beings change, perhaps why they don't and hopefully how they could, right?
      
Well said.

If you're listening to this, you might think, well, why would- well, look growth, Vikas, is change. One of the things that I learned even doing my work- sometimes we would try to promote a workshop that we're doing, we promoted one called Thriving Through Change. I learned something about that nobody really wants to come to a workshop in which they want to change.

Right. The topic of this book is interesting, the right energy to change. And the claim is that we as human beings, or I think any inherently stable system and we do hope to be a stable system because otherwise we kind of lose our grip on life and unsanity, right? We hope to be a stable system. But the flip side of that is that an inherently stable system should not change willy nilly, otherwise it'll spiral out of control, and this whole biological concept of homeostasis that actually the book references and that's where even the name comes from, is that in general try and operate within a narrow band of variability as a system. And that's great for stability, but it’s sort and dark and shadowy side is that that makes change hard. And yeah, that's, I guess, the fundamental premise of the book. There's good reasons why we should in general be stable human beings, but then that comes with the territory of the change that we do want to produce is hard. But as you were saying, Steve, what Robert Kagan and Lisa Leahy have done in this book is to talk about how we could actually work with that inherent feature and try and produce change that is interesting to us. I do have a question for you, though. Are we talking about this entire methodology or framework or actually about what is one of the important access points into it?


Wow, that's a great question. We only have like, you know, 18 minutes left.

Yes.

This is as best if I remember right from the book, this is the sum total of two and a half decades of research that two Harvard scientists slapped into a model. And I'm on my third reading of the book and I'm still trying to suck the marrow out of it, like, wait a minute, there's no way we're going to draw out the whole model. I mean, I think your question is are we going to go through the whole map and do all this stuff? I actually wanted to talk to you about a very specific element within the immunity to change model. So no, not everything, but one thing in particular that I think might be interesting for the people listening to this call.

Yeah.

Okay, so here's what it is. They have a concept in there they basically talk about-I loved how you said that we strive for stability, but the tension between striving too much leads to a lack of maybe growth. And so, they talk about that in this book. They identify Vikas. They identify two primary, I don't know, what would you call them? Buckets? Modes, regions, dimensions, change, whatever.

Types. Yeah, whatever.

Two types of change.
One they call technical and the other they call adaptive. And before they even roll out their definitions and really dive into what is technical and adaptive, I just want the listeners to maybe if you're prone to even writing, write down technical and adaptive. These are the two kind of change that these scientists uncovered. They used as their backdrop the story of they said, in order to sort of show which is which and how it is, they picked a change that many, many people, especially in the United States of America, want to do, which is they want to lose weight. That is a goal, that is a change, that is a drive, a thrive. And so they did all this research and again, I'm synthesizing here, but basically after the research was done, they noticed that a very large percentage of people within a pretty again, this was much more scientific than this, within a specific period of time, most people that lose any amount of significant weight will gain back 107% of their weight.


Yeah

Not everybody. And there were certain parameters put to that, but they actually studied that. Now, I tell people, don't know that you need to see the study because most people hear that and go, yeah, duh, right?        
            

Yeah

That's been self-evident for a lot of people. Like, we lose weight, we gain it back. But their question was why? And this led to at least one of the things to them explaining this immunity to change model. In explaining why, they go, and they talk about weight loss because and they say, okay, here is a technical way to look at weight loss.        
Here are some technical things that you can do to lose weight. So, here's a technical problem and a technical solution so that you want to lose weight. I should say the technical solutions are, hey, eat less sugar, exercise more, drink more water, drink less alcohol, eat fewer carbohydrates, blah, blah, blah.

Sleep regularly. Yeah.

So, these are all technical things that you can do.        
            

When they contrasted that with the adaptive changes, they were things like- this is where you get to come in.- they were things like, hey, when you think about lunch, how do you feel about it? And have you ever stopped to ponder how that particular food makes you feel at any given moment?

Right.

And would you be willing maybe to reexamine how you think about nutrition or exercise?

I'll find you sort of my own little example, like, where I struggle with this is that so much of our socialization is like in my life personally, us as a family and with friends, it's food based. And it's like if I want to do intermittent fasting, I don't want to skip dinner. It's like, hey, I don't or cannot meet my friends. And so, the change that is required is not just this technical change of eating less and working out more and all that, but I have to place my whole framework of being friends and socializing. And in the book, they give an example of an Italian gentleman who basically is trying to lose weight, but then when he goes and visits mother and grandmother, their way of showing love is to basically give food, and if you refuse that food, it's like you're refusing that love. So that becomes sort of the adaptive part of how do you take these psychological aspects which come in the way of you trying to accomplish a technical change by doing certain actions and you realize that, oh, those actions are probably the easy part. It's all the psychology, the meaning making that is associated with it that you also have to solve for, and unless you solve for it, the technical part is actually going to fail. And this is really replete as life has gotten more and more complex, and as we advanced as a civilization, we're running into this everywhere. That one of what the book also calls out very eloquently is that biggest mistake that leaders can make is to show up to what is essentially an adaptive problem with a technical toolkit, right? And that is why whatever that number is, 70 or 80 or 90% of change efforts in the corporate world fail. Because you're just paying attention to what to do and you forget who it is that needs to not just do it, but who it is and how do they need to feel differently about it. And that, I think, is the beauty. And yes, like you said, we're not going to get into this entire framework and methodology of immunity to change, but if we can actually convey this one point in today's conversation, that change isn't just about doing something differently, but often it is really about how you need to sort of reconfigure your inner way of being, your emotionality, your interiority, about that field, that action, or whatever that arena might be, and it's like the two wings of a bird, right? You've got to flap both wings, and if you're only flapping the technical wing and not even aware of the adaptive wing, we cannot fly.


Well, I loved how you said that, but when I was hearing you say that about whether it was the way you spoke about the toolkit or how you brought yourself to the problem and you were really trying to do your best to sort of describe what adaptive modality is, what adaptive technique is, which is sort of funny. It's the inability to describe it perfectly, which makes it adaptive. If you can have a perfect definition of it, what's this, this and this, well, then that's often the demarcation of technical. It's when we can't describe it. But even as you were describing that, I was sitting there going, well, it's no wonder that we fall into the technical, because the way that you described that, although I thought- talk about eloquent, I thought you did that so beautifully, but it sounded painful. It sounded laborious, it sounded complex.
        

            
Yeah.


Oh, for God's sakes, just tell me to quit eating sugar and then hold me accountable to it, and we'll get her done. Yeah, that's what people tried. Then why did the vast majority of people gain back 107% of their weight loss? Why when they did the research, because the one that really stuck out to me was that research when people visited a doctor who gave people a time frame for life unless they changed a specific behavior, and again, I'm forgetting some of the well-

The specific behavior is pretty simple, actually. Have a pill a day, right? And even that simple thing of having a pill a day is something that people couldn't do because it came with the territory of, oh, getting old, and if I take this pill every day, then I have to accept that I'm getting old. And this inability of this internal dialogue to make peace with that because, I mean, what else are you going to do? But you talk about something being so complex, but this actually is a great example.

                                                                                                       
"It may be very hard for us to accept the idea that we are aging, but really, do we have a choice? It’s said, you know, change is hard, but not changing is fatal. So given, you know, what's at stake here, yes, it's hard, but what choice do we have?"

        

Vikas, everything you just said is good. Changing, changing, changing. When people went to the doctor and those doctors were saying, you only have six months to live, and then they did the research on that and figured out only one in seven people made any changes to their life, and they went back and they were studying, well, wait a minute. There are people on this call going, it's because you don't know your why. That's not what their research suggested. It's because you don't have a different passion. You don't have this or that. Their research suggested that most of the people went back and tried to solve whatever behavioral change with technical means. And it wasn't ever a technical problem. It was an adaptive one.        

Right. Yeah. And a technical change for that would be to put an alarm in your phone, to buy a pill box and put the daily pills in it once a week, and so on and so forth. But if that is not what's stopping you from taking that pill, but it's really this idea of confronting mortality or getting old or whatever, unless you solve that, you will not be able to get to a place of taking that pill. Let me actually share with you an example from my own life. From my 20s onwards, I was never super athletic or super fit. And I said, okay, I should work on this. And I used to try a bunch of things. I would join the gym, I would sign up for a race, and I trained for the race, but the race was over, I would stop running. I was never able to build the routine or rhythm to do that because I was approaching it as a technical problem. And of course, back in the day, I did not even know the distinction. Interestingly enough, around the same time that I read this book about ten years ago, I'm not sure, it kind of was triggered directly by the book, it was also the time that I had transitioned from a corporate career and gone into coaching, so I was thinking a lot and applying a lot and learning a lot and experimenting a lot. And somehow, I came to this conclusion that, oh, the reason I don't go to the gym, because my objective or purpose in going to the gym and expending all this effort to be fit is because my goal was to get ripped, right? To basically get out of my dad-bod and be like someone on the cover of the fitness magazine. And after a couple of months of diligence, then I'm like, okay, I'm working hard at it. I've been at it for two months, and I can barely see a change in myself. And I'm like, okay, this is a bridge too far, and I would just give up. That okay, this goal is just not accomplishable. But at some point of time, my objective function changed, and my goal became, I did, in that two or three months, notice that when I do go to the gym, I have a better day, I feel good, I feel more productive, I feel happier. So, my goal became, I just wanted to be the guy that experienced that feeling three or four times a week and I was like, oh, this is now such an accomplishable goal. I go and do this activity and I get my reward and this is instantaneous.

So, in that example explain -I'm sorry to cut you off. Explain. I think I got pretty clear on the technical parts. Like, now come back to the model of -talk to us about in that example, what was technical, what was adaptive specifically so that we could really put our arms around it.

Right. So, the adaptive part was this attraction to a self-image of having this out of this world physique that you see splashed from the media and to buy into that and to think of it as that, hey, that is the goal. That is the only thing that is worth pursuing, if I'm going to expend all this effort and energy and discipline, that is the goal. When the goal became that, oh, that is such a shallow and externally oriented thing. But the feeling of well-being that I get after, at 7:30 a.m., when I'm walking out of the gym with those endorphins coursing and me feeling good and already feeling productive early in the morning, that has actually some real value. And so, changing my mindset from what was the reason, what was the objective and also the sense of self. The adaptive change was changing my sense of self from someone who was trying to get six pack ABS and get really in tremendous shape externally from a sort of visual standpoint to oh, the benefit really is how good I feel. That required a psychological change, a mental change, an acceptance of a certain kind of reality, a letting go of a certain kind of aspiration and embracing a totally different aspiration. That's the adaptive change. The embracing about who I was and who I wanted to be.        
            
I absolutely love it. With the time we have, I want to get one more thing and by the way, I just made this up. So you don't think that I'm planning this. I just made this up. I had someone in a workshop this week, we were going through this and part of the reason you were on this call right now is because I'm actually trying to get better myself at number one, applying the concept. I love that you're using personal examples because I'm still trying to solve what I pretty sure can assume is an adaptive problem with some technical modality. And by the way, awareness of it sucks. I wish I wasn't that aware of it.

Yes, awareness is necessary, but it's far from sufficient.

I know, but the ignorance is bliss, dude. It was a lot easier when I didn't know any of this. But I had a person in a workshop this week because we were going over I was trying to demonstrate the difference between these two things and let's just say I was in a workshop of people and they were leaders, and underneath these leaders, they had salespeople. And like a lot of leaders do, they felt like a lot of these salespeople could sell more. And they noticed that a lot of people in this particular organization had a lot of call reluctance. And so, when we started to go around the room saying, hey, there was a communal thing around call reluctance. How do we solve for this? That's what I asked the group. And it was super interesting that the group came up and it was like, here's the call report we use. Here's how we do time blocking. Here's the script that we use when we have them call people and do this and do this. And there were some really, really good ideas, but one of the things that I noticed was almost every single idea was technical.

Technical. Yeah.

And I wanted to let them go and do that because I wanted them to see like, these were seasoned salespeople. Do you really think that if you crafted another set of perfectly oiled words and word smithed perfectly that they were all suddenly going to lose their call reluctance because they got the right words?


Yeah.

Again, I don't think using really eloquent words is a bad thing. It's not that it's wrong, it just is not going to solve the problem. And I suggested that this problem may be one of, like you said, it's often both, but let's for a second talk about the adaptive nature of that. If that were an adaptive problem, what might be some of the things, because this was the question I asked the group and Vikas, I'm asking you, let's pretend that I could get that group of people to see that call reluctance, not making enough calls, avoiding certain behaviors, procrastinate, call it what you want, they all agreed, yeah, we now get it. That's an adaptive problem. Where we fell short was how do you help someone see that it's an adaptive problem and how can you help someone? And I gave you that specific scenario. If you were to coach that specific scenario, what might be some of the things that you help someone look at point to ask to help them solve for a lack of sales or whatever it was, adaptively?

Yes. So, the question that I would ask them, and I think in their bones they would know, so if you said, okay, this is the plan we have come up with. Let's say we go and follow this plan, we commit to it today, we follow this plan and we come back in three months or six months, and we look at the results. Sitting here today, knowing what you know now with all your experience in this field, give me a set of odds of you achieving your goal of having overcome the call reluctance. Are you 100% confident? Are you 90% confident? And have everybody write down a number on a piece of paper, so they're not each biased by what the other is saying, right? And then collect those pieces of paper and share. What do you think if you had asked that question of the confidence that people had in this approach and they were anonymously telling how much confidence they felt, what would have come out as the average answer to that poll?

 


Meaning using technical modality?        
            

Well, without even calling it that, right.? They came up with, okay, this is what we're going to do.

We're going to come up with new scripts and new plans and new call reports.

Whatever they came up with, I said, okay, great, this is the plan. Imagine now that we are committed to this plan and we're going to go out and do it the best of our ability, and in six months we're going to come back in this room, and we go to see if we overcame our call reluctance. And tell me today, what are the odds. Each one of you individually, anonymously, tell me how confident are you that you.

Yeah, I got a number in my head. I don't know what the actual- I would say 40%.        

Right. So, I kind of agree with you if you had asked them that question.

And that's not just what I would say, I think that's what they would say.

That's exactly right. That's the question I'm asking. I'm not asking what you think. I'm asking what you think, what they think, which is exactly what you answered. And by the way, I think the same. So now if you do that, they say, okay, so why are we committing ourselves to a plan that has only about a 40% chance of success? We should be shooting for at least twice that number, right? So, through that conversation then you say, okay, so why is our confidence low? If this is the best plan that we can come up with, why is our confidence low? And through that you kind of need so here's then, let's sort of fast forward ahead. Why is there called reluctance? And the reason there is called reluctance is that for a salesperson, most calls lead to a decline, to a rejection, to move forward to the willingness to give a meeting or to have a conversation or whatever. Now, if you take that personally as a sign of personal failure, then of course it's a huge psychological price to pay. Who wants to pick up the phone or send an email and basically get a rejection or a no answer? And when the zeitgeist is that you take it as a mark of a personal failure. So, I believe this problem cannot be solved until there is a mindset change individually and collectively around it. And in sales, I ask this question of salespeople very often and in different industries, the success rates are different. Some people have a success rate of 5% and some people have a best-case success rate of 60%. So, I say, okay, even if your success rate is 60%, two out of five calls are going to be, quote unquote, a failure. Every failure actually means that you're closer to the next success. And so, if each person individually can change their mindset to A, this is not personal and B, every failure is a step closer to the next success, and if that's how they kind of structure their reports, if they only sort of said, hey, look, report your failures and the higher the number of failures you rate you report, the better salesperson you are. What gets measured is what gets done. So if this group or team were to -we can't suggest that to them, but let's say through the conversation that you led, through the exploration of what is really the cause of failure and it is this- sorry, what is the cause of called reluctance, and it is that thing of failure and if what is today seen as a failure were suddenly to be switched around and made as a cause for success, as a cause for celebration and that’s a mindset.

                                                                                                     
"How many rejections did you get? The more you got, the better it is. Because we know the more rejections you got, the closer you are to the next success."


All right. I hate to do this. It's almost like enough. Because part of me, the next question I was going to ask you was- we were going to have to take the red pill and be the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland and really be in a path because and maybe I'll just ask you and do this briefly because we probably got to sign off here, but basically what you said is you gave us a great example of what was the technical and how might we instead solve it or at least begin to look at it from an adaptive perspective.

Adaptive, right.

Great. Is it possible? There are some leaders out there going, oh, I totally agree. Do you really think we can change people's mindset? Do you really think not even we can change? Do you really think that we can lead people and coach people in a way that promotes a genuine change in mindset? Do you believe that?

We can and we must. It's our only hope for advancing as people as a civilization. We are having this conversation on November 10. Horrific things have happened in the world in the last month. If we are to get past it, if we are to realize our potential for each one of us individually in our lives, for us collectively to do that as a society, as a civilization, as nations, as a planet, then no matter how low the odds of success, it's the only thing worth doing.

We're done. That's like mic drop. The answer was yes, and we must. And the only other addition I would be is if you think they're going to solve those problems technically, if you think you're going to solve your weight loss technically, if you think you're going to solve call reluctance technically, there are certainly some technical aspects that are important, but if that's all you lean on-

Yeah, that's like flying on one wing.

Yeah, you know, maybe you don't like me saying this, but whatever. We're improving. Ready for this? You actually came to us recently, Vikas, as our company because you coach for our company and you were like, you know, you were very gentle and kind about it because that's the person you are. You were like, you guys got to know this. When I get clients of any kind and they come in and all they want is technical solutions, you asked us kindly, would you please send them to another coach? Because I can't just do technical coaching, because I think what you see is it's one, it's not fruitful. And then you said something I thought was really brilliant. You were like, and Jason and I have adopted this, by the way. We totally swiped it and adapted it. We gave you no credit, just so you know. We're an adaptive coaching company. We are an adaptive coaching company. However, from time to time when you said this, I've regurgitated it and made it like my own because that's what I do, that's the kind of person I am. What you said was, from time to time, if people are willing to work on stuff adaptively and really see beyond it and get to mindset and question some things, it's beautiful. If from time to time they need help to solve something technically, there's no problem with that. We all do, and it's wonderful. Turn to being down primary focus of give me technical things, give me another call report. Do this for me, hold me accountable, tell me to do this, scream at me, give me a script. You were the first to go when that's the primary vehicle through which they want to change, you were like, don't even send it to me because I can't help them, right? And I was like, whoa.

Yeah. Coaching is though about also listening for potential, right? And in some sense, I'm making a judgment call in the fit conversation. I'm happy to even start with a technical coaching relationship with someone. If something in my instinct in having that initial conversation with them believed that they have the potential to think about problems adaptively, they do not know the distinction today, but just based on how the conversation is going under trust, I can believe that they will be open to that. When I don't get that feeling, right, is when I say the thing that you just talked about, and of course it's a judgment call. I could be wrong sometime, and I could be wrong both ways. I may let go of a person who maybe we could have had a breakthrough soon enough, and sometimes I start working with people and I have this sense that the conversation would turn adaptive, which is where I really would be able to help them. And it doesn't. And that's okay.

Look, if you're a leader, Vikas, and you're listening to this and it at all intrigues you to go, wait a minute. There is a different way to change people. In fact, it may be the only way that we help people and we're not trying to change people. How about what if they just want to grow in a genuine and authentic way? If you've got an organization, if you've got an entity, if you have people around you, if you've got the person in the mirror that would like to grow, maybe we could explore and examine what it might look like to approach these things from both a technical and adaptive solution. And you and I didn't make this up. In fact, it's been a decade plus now that they had it, but isn't it interesting that we're still talking about it? Because I am convinced, and I don't mean to end negatively, technical solutions are easier, faster and by the way in the book they say if it does solve the problem, for God's sakes do it.

Definitely do it.

Yes, but I'll tell you this: If you've got something in your life, that's one of the ways that I know it's an adaptive thing. If I've got something in my life I've been trying to solve for a long time and it's not yet solved, that is a clear demarcation that this is an adaptive problem.     
   

Yeah, exactly. Or like in the case of that workshop example you gave the sales team, if you come up with a solution and you're not excited by it, you don't believe it's really going to solve the problem. It feels like more of the same. That's also then an indicator or pointer that you might be missing the adaptive part.

We can and we must, Vikas, thank you so very much. I hate to sign off because as people can hear like you and I could be on till 9:00 tonight- they'd long stop.

That's our adaptive change opportunity.

That's exactly right- we're adapting right now, we're ending it. Thank you so very much for your time. I can't wait to publish this. Folks, hopefully you had some insights around this because at the end of the day here's an adaptive concept. It doesn't matter what Vikas and I say, meaning what matters more is what did you hear, and how did you maybe change as a result of it? And that's what we're trying to do even here at Rewire and at The Insight Interviews- Powered by REWIRE- in our podcast. So may you have heard something today that at least caused you to explore a technical and adaptive thing whether it's corporately, individually, or however and Vikas, thank you so much for being here again and we'll do it again shortly.

Thank you for that juicy topic and the fun way in which you have it.        

Have a good day. Peace.        

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