On June 3rd there was a fiery hearing on Capitol Hill between Dr. Anthony Fauci, the doctor who led the charge in the United States to try to handle the COVID outbreak, and the House Oversight and Accountability Committee Select Subcommittee. The hearing demonstrated something very clearly – American Politicians do not understand adaptive leadership challenges, and perhaps more importantly, the way politicians are judged runs counter to handling adaptive leadership problems. As such, we have a match made in hell.
Here is what we know. Members of the lower house, the House of Representatives, are elected every 2 years. Members of the upper house, the Senate, are elected every 6 years. Their mission and mandate hinges largely on their ability to demonstrate what they have done during that time period – legislation either initiated or passed and decisions they have taken. Their metrics are all about them being definitive in a very short period of time. That is how the voters judge them and if they should be reelected.
In contrast, adaptive leadership problems, which confront the United States on a regular basis, are all about uncertainty and managing a challenge that has not previously been seen before. Going back to COVID, this was exactly this type of challenge (the other type of problem is called technical – where the leadership problem has been seen before and we know what the range of solutions should be). To solve an adaptive problem you have to, well, adapt and adjust to the new information you are taking in. You have to try things, see what works, and go back to the drawing board – revising and honing your approach based on the new information you take in. But that approach is often mischaracterized by politicians as being weak or flip flopping. Nothing could be further from the truth and yet that is how this approach is branded.
Why is that the case in the American political context? If we look back at the all-powerful metrics on how people are judged, we find the answer. Politicians are forced, through their metrics, to be definitive and to provide answers, but they often do so as a palliative with possibly the best solutions that will actually address a problem buried somewhere in the details or in the political graveyard. This problem is epitomized by a famous quote from American Journalist and Satirist H.L. Menken that goes as follows, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
American politicians seek the easy solutions because their metrics dictate they do so. This may work, barely, for certain types of technical problems, but it certainly does not work for adaptive problems that require iteration and nuance.
This type of problem is a match made in hell for American Politicians (and the rest of us who have to live with these decisions), which is why we don’t see them grappling with these types of problems in a realistic manner. Rather they vilify figures, such as Dr. Fauci, who take this approach because they have no other choice.
Is there a way out of this dilemma? Yes, there is. The distinction between technical and adaptive problems needs to be made as clear as possible to the voting public, expectations need to be set immediately that we cannot solve this problem because we don’t even know that the problem is, and we need to be patient with those trying to find their way through a new problem we have never seen before. Is this likely? No. Is it possible? Yes.
Contributed by Dr. Joshua N. Weiss, Assistant Professor and Director of MS in Organizational Leadership and Negotiation Program
