Conserving Cultural DNA During Adaptation

Guest: Ron Heifetz

In times of change, people often try to hold onto the values of their culture that have had personal meaning and significance to them. When dominant cultures are confronted with stresses, they are called to examine their values and take on very difficult integrative work. The leadership required must point out values their cultural values; in the United States, for example, one would be: We stand for freedom and respect for all people, and our policy does not align with what we say we stand for.

How do we make space for this evolution? What are the “gives” and “gets” required to evolve cultures? How can we hold steady to our cultural DNA and still evolve? In nature, when an organism adapts, it builds on its old capacity and generates radically new functionality. Ron suggests that "God didn’t do zero-based budgeting in evolution." We honor our past yet determine what parts of the past we can release.

Produced in partnership with the International Leadership Association: https://ilaglobalnetwork.org.

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Books we’re reading for fun or personal development right now include:

• Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller, the Man Who Created Nancy by Bill Griffith
• The Five Lost Superpowers: Why We Lost Them & How to Get Them Back by John Reid, et al
• The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin

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About Our Guest:  

Ronald Heifetz is among the world’s foremost authorities on the practice and teaching of leadership. In 2016, President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia highlighted Heifetz’s advice in his Nobel Peace Prize Lecture.

Heifetz founded the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School where he has taught for nearly four decades. He is the King Hussein bin Talal Senior Lecturer in Public Leadership. Heifetz played a pioneering role in establishing leadership as an area of study and education in the United States and at Harvard.

Heifetz co-developed the adaptive leadership framework with Riley Sinder and Marty Linsky to provide a basis for leadership research and practice. His first book, Leadership Without Easy Answers (1994), is a classic in the field and one of the ten most assigned course books at Harvard and Duke Universities.  Heifetz co-authored the best-selling Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Change with Marty Linsky (2002, revised 2017).  He then co-authored the field book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing your Organization and the World with Alexander Grashow and Marty Linsky (2009).