Leading Transformation When There’s No Playbook

BY Jessica Swenson | April 15, 2025

As companies continue to introduce change initiatives borne from both internal and external sources, it becomes more vital for leaders to have the ability to navigate teams through uncertainty while sustaining engagement and connection.

“When we talk about transformation where there is no playbook, the previous rules about leadership and management and what you do, don’t apply,” said Carl Sanders-Edwards, CEO and co-founder of Adeption, during a thought leadership spotlight at From Day One’s Silicon Valley conference.

Since the inception of desktop computing and its transition to the cloud environment, we have lived through multiple shifts in computing power and how work gets done. With the emergence of AI, we are in a new era of possibility that is again profoundly impacting jobs and workflow. Companies are leaning toward using AI to solve technical challenges and leaving more nuanced work for humans.

Technical vs. Adaptive Challenges

Technical challenges with teachable processes, a defined path, and known solutions are a bit clearer, but novel, or adaptive, challenges often haven’t been done before and have no known solution. The problem and the solution may be intertwined and need to be separated before progress is made; experimentation and learning will likely be required from everyone involved. A significant percentage of change efforts fail, Edwards says, because organizations treat adaptive challenges the same way they treat technical challenges. “One of the greatest things we can give the leaders and the people that we serve in our field is letting them know about the distinction between these two things, and there are different approaches for different types of challenges,” he said.

Edwards acknowledges that success isn’t as linear as we may think; it isn’t as simple as taking data in, responding with action, and receiving a result. There is a hidden step between data receipt and response where the data is filtered through our mindset and influences emotion, which in turn influences our response. “We see the world as we are, not it as it is. And we're always projecting ourselves onto the world,” he said. Harnessing these unconscious mindsets is one key to effectively managing and resolving an adaptive challenge. This type of challenge appears resistant to teachable techniques because we are using prior experience and knowledge to solve something that is completely new. However, the overarching, high-level suggestions that come from our unconscious mindsets can help teams to progress on adaptive challenges.

Carl Sanders Edwards, CEO and co-founder of Adeption, led the thought leadership spotlight 

Citing the example of a Silicon Valley company experiencing a decline in sales, Edwards outlined a few mindsets that might be helpful in that type of adaptive situation. A product expert mindset might focus solely on product perfection and attempt to make the product better. An achiever mindset may set goals and enforce attainment, promote training, or recommend more sales people. A transformative mindset may introduce new systems, while a marketing awareness mindset would avoid negative market impact by changing the product’s pricing model from subscription to consumption-based.

Identify, Refine, and Apply Unconscious Mindsets

When we have experiences, we create stories (good or bad) and those stories become a part of our unconscious mindset. By adding deliberate reflection and speaking with another person about it, says Edwards, we can refine that story to heighten our awareness, accelerating the ability to create and access these mindsets for future problem-solving.

This is the origin of Adeption’s B3 leadership development methodology, which promotes habit-based learning in the flow of work. During his session, Edwards invited audience members to consider a challenge of their own through this lens and think about anything they might be able to do differently once the session ended:

Be conscious. Reflect and make sense of the current situation you’re in. What’s important? What’s working? What isn’t?

Be curious. Gain inspiration from other perspectives, ideas, and tools. Can any of the concepts learned today help with your challenge?

Be better. Deliberately experiment with new ways of leading in response to what currently matters, learning from success and failure.

Over 80,000 people have used this methodology to plan 500,000+ deliberate actions. Leadership struggles were reduced by 54%, 360° scores were impacted (others noticed an increased ability to empathize), and this method appears to accelerate progress on resolving adaptive challenges.

It is helpful for people to understand their own unconscious mindsets and grow their range, Edwards says. Assessments are available for individuals to identify their predominant mindset, including an Adeption assessment that also allows users to “try on” other mindsets. People have seen new things that seemed to be hiding in plain sight after trying alternative mindsets.

Edwards notes that the skill to develop skills is very important for future leaders. He said “I also think that the disruption that we’re facing now is not a doom and gloom situation. It’s actually a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create the type of leadership we need in this world.”

Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Adeption, for sponsoring this thought leadership spotlight.

Jessica Swenson is a freelance writer based in the Midwest. Learn more about her at jmswensonllc.com.

(Photos by David Coe for From Day One)

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