Adaptive behaviour selection

The ability to identify, select, and amplify behaviours that are already succeeding inside the system so they become the organisation’s next normal.

Leaders with strong adaptive behaviour selection understand that in complex organisations, the most effective solutions rarely need to be invented. They already exist in small, local, and often invisible pockets of success. Somewhere in the system, people are achieving better outcomes under the same constraints, resources, and pressures as everyone else.

Rather than importing external “best practice”, these leaders work as evolutionary stewards. They detect working adaptations, isolate the specific behaviours that produce them, and deliberately amplify those behaviours through social proof, peer learning, and low-friction replication.

Adaptive behaviour selection shifts leadership from designing change to governing how behaviour evolves. By evolving from within, organisations adapt faster, avoid immune rejection, and strengthen confidence in their own capacity to solve problems. Without this capability, organisations repeatedly reinvent change, suppress their most useful internal innovations, and become increasingly dependent on external intervention.

“The solution is not out there. It is in here.” — Jerry Sternin

Why adaptive behaviour selection matters

Adaptive behaviour selection matters because complex organisations do not change through instruction. They change through selection. Behaviours that fit the environment are copied, stabilised, and normalised, while those that do not quietly disappear.

When leaders rely primarily on externally designed programmes and centrally engineered solutions, they often work against this evolutionary logic. Interventions that do not fit local context are reinterpreted, resisted, or abandoned, even when they appear sound on paper. The organisation’s immune system rejects what does not belong.

Leaders who lack adaptive behaviour selection respond to performance gaps by adding frameworks, processes, and training. These increase organisational complexity but rarely change behaviour at scale. Over time, the organisation becomes slower, more dependent on external fixes, and less aware of the solutions already present within it.

When leaders develop adaptive behaviour selection, leverage shifts inside the system. Working adaptations are detected early, translated into replicable behaviours, and spread through social proof rather than enforcement. Change becomes faster, cheaper, and more durable because it is selected by the system rather than imposed upon it.

Under pressure, the difference becomes visible. Instead of launching large transformation programmes, leaders enable small, targeted shifts that compound. Evolution becomes structural rather than episodic. The organisation adapts continuously rather than reactively.

Most importantly, adaptive behaviour selection restores agency. It teaches the system that it can solve its own problems, strengthening resilience and reducing dependency on external intervention.

“Somewhere in your organization, groups of people are already doing things differently and better.” – Richard Tanner Pascale and Jerry Sternin

What good and bad looks like for adaptive behaviour selection

What weak adaptive behaviour selection looks like (Programme engineering)	What strong adaptive behaviour selection looks like (Evolutionary stewardship)
Solution importing: Looks outside the organisation first for answers.	Internal sensing: Looks inside the system for working adaptations before seeking external input.
Change designing: Designs ideal future processes before examining what already works.	Behaviour isolating: Studies specific behaviours that are already producing better results.
Framework layering: Adds new frameworks, tools, and models to drive change.	Selection shaping: Shapes which behaviours are copied, reinforced, and stabilised.
Uniform rollout: Applies one-size-fits-all programmes across contexts.	Context-fit scaling: Amplifies behaviours that already fit local conditions.
Rule enforcement: Prioritises compliance with standard procedure.	Productive deviance: Protects and learns from deviations that improve outcomes.
Central solution ownership: Keeps solution definition with senior leaders or consultants.	Practitioner ownership: Allows practitioners to define and demonstrate what works.
Training-first response: Defaults to training when performance gaps appear.	Replication-first response: Uses peer learning and imitation to spread success.
Average focus: Designs around the mean and ignores outliers.	Outlier mining: Actively studies high performers to find replicable behaviour.
Policy hardening: Turns early experiments into rigid policy too quickly.	Lightweight diffusion: Allows practices to spread socially before formalisation.
Dependency building: Reinforces reliance on external expertise.	Agency building: Strengthens internal problem-solving capacity.

“To pursue bright spots is to ask the question ‘What’s working, and how can we do more of it?’” – Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Barriers to adaptive behaviour selection

Defaulting to programmes: Leaders reach first for formal initiatives, frameworks, and transformation programmes because these feel structured, defensible, and measurable. In doing so, they bypass the slower but higher-leverage work of finding what is already working inside the system. The organisation learns that change comes from projects, not from everyday behaviour.

Favouring authored solutions: Leaders unconsciously value solutions they have designed, sponsored, or formally approved more highly than those that emerge organically. This creates a hidden filter where internal successes that lack executive lineage are less likely to be noticed, protected, or scaled.

Treating deviation as non-compliance: Leaders interpret deviation primarily as a control risk. Behaviour that sits outside standard process is corrected before it is examined, even when it is producing better outcomes. This trains the system to hide adaptation rather than surface it.

Managing to the mean: Leaders manage through averages, scorecards, and central targets. Outliers are treated as statistical noise rather than as early signals of emerging practice. The system becomes stable, but blind to its own future.

Missing quiet success: Leaders focus attention on escalations, problems, and formal reports. The highest-value adaptations often operate quietly and never enter governance forums, so they remain invisible to decision-makers.

Resisting informal change: Leaders hesitate to legitimise unofficial practices, even when they work better, because they feel difficult to audit, standardise, or defend. This causes useful behaviours to remain local rather than becoming shared capability.

Codifying too early: Leaders rush to turn successful behaviour into policy, training, or process before it has stabilised socially. This strips away the informal norms, relationships, and contextual judgement that made it effective in the first place.

Outsourcing evolution: Leaders seek answers externally before exhausting internal learning. Over time, the organisation becomes skilled at adopting frameworks but weak at discovering its own adaptations.

Choosing scale over fit: Leaders favour solutions that look scalable on paper over those that fit real operating conditions. This biases the system toward uniformity rather than effectiveness.

Attributing success to talent: Leaders explain high performance as individual capability or motivation rather than replicable behaviour. This prevents learning from spreading and keeps success trapped in people rather than in the system.

“Diffusion is the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system.” – Everett M. Rogers

Enablers of adaptive behaviour selection

Working outliers are deliberately sought, not averages: Leaders search for teams or individuals performing unusually well under normal conditions. Real operating data and peer nomination are used to identify where adaptation is already happening, rather than relying on central improvement initiatives.

Behaviour is studied in the work itself: Time is spent observing how high performers actually work. Leaders sit with teams, walk through decisions, and document concrete actions rather than relying on reports, interviews, or post-rational explanations.

Successful practice is amplified through peer visibility: Working behaviours are made visible across the network through demonstrations, shadowing, and peer storytelling. Colleagues are allowed to see real practice rather than being instructed through formal rollout.

Replication preserves real operating context: Behaviours are replicated within similar conditions rather than being abstracted into generic processes. This ensures that constraints, pressures, and judgement remain aligned with how the work is actually done.

Formalisation is deliberately delayed: New behaviours are allowed to stabilise socially and across multiple contexts before being turned into policy or standard operating procedure. This preserves flexibility and prevents premature standardisation.

Diffusion paths are kept simple and human: Lightweight mechanisms such as short rotations, joint working sessions, and internal showcases allow people to learn directly from each other without creating programmes.

Productive deviation is explicitly legitimised: Bounded rule-bending that produces better outcomes is permitted and protected. This encourages useful variation rather than hidden workarounds.

Internal sensing is kept continuous: Recurring peer nominations, short showcases, and open forums surface emerging internal practices and make new adaptations visible early.

Behavioural ownership is protected and spread: Originators of successful practices are recognised and enabled to teach others so that success becomes shared capability rather than personal heroics.

Internal agency is publicly reinforced: Success is consistently framed as emerging from everyday practice inside the organisation, building confidence that adaptation is both possible and expected.

“Positive Deviance (PD) is based on the observation that in every community there are certain individuals or groups whose uncommon behaviors and strategies enable them to find better solutions…” – Positive Deviance Collaborative

Self-reflection questions for adaptive behaviour selection

Where are the most effective practices currently emerging inside the organisation, and how visible are they beyond their local teams?

How deliberately are internal success patterns being studied before new initiatives are launched?

How quickly can working behaviours be detected, tested, and shared across comparable operating contexts?

Which behaviours are quietly delivering superior outcomes today that could become tomorrow’s operating standard?

How often do leaders across the organisation look for what is already working before seeking external solutions?

Which high-performing behaviours would disappear if one individual left, and how are they being stabilised into shared capability?

How visible are productive deviations and learning experiments across functions and geographies?

How much of organisational improvement over the past year has come from internal learning versus external frameworks?

How easily can teams learn directly from each other without formal programmes?

Is the organisation becoming faster at evolving its own practice year over year?

Which emerging practices could shape the organisation’s next phase of performance advantage?

Is adaptive learning becoming part of everyday leadership behaviour, or remaining dependent on episodic change programmes?

“The future is diverse and unexpected, and innovation happens at the intersections.” – Frans Johansson

Micro-practices for adaptive behaviour selection

1. Run a quarterly bright spot scan

Once each quarter, invite every function to nominate one practice that is producing consistently stronger outcomes under normal operating conditions. Ask specifically for descriptions of concrete behaviours rather than tools, templates, or projects.

Review these nominations personally. Look for patterns in what people are doing differently, where behaviours are already spreading, and where success remains isolated. Select one or two practices to deliberately amplify by connecting teams directly, sponsoring shadowing, and making the originators visible to peers. Over time, this becomes the organisation’s internal evolution engine.

2. Conduct behavioural walk-throughs in real work

Regularly spend time with high-performing teams to observe how work is actually done. Focus on micro-decisions, handoffs, judgement calls, and informal coordination rather than on what is written in procedures.

Capture what you observe in concrete behavioural terms and share it through live demonstrations or short internal showcases. This preserves the real conditions that made the behaviour effective and prevents learning from being diluted into generic guidance.

3. Create peer-to-peer replication paths

When you identify a working practice, connect teams directly rather than launching formal rollouts. Set up short shadowing arrangements, joint working sessions, and temporary rotations so people can see the behaviour in action.

Sponsor these connections personally and remove barriers to participation. Teams copy what they see working in comparable conditions faster and more accurately than what they are told to adopt.

4. Delay codification by design

Resist the urge to immediately formalise successful behaviours into policy, training, or standard operating procedures. Require evidence that a behaviour works across multiple teams and contexts before it becomes standard.

This protects adaptability, preserves local judgement, and prevents the organisation from bureaucratising its own future.

5. Establish safe-to-deviate zones

Deliberately designate bounded areas where teams are permitted to adapt process in pursuit of better outcomes without formal approval. Set clear performance intent but allow flexibility in how results are achieved.

Make resulting behaviours visible so that successful adaptations can be studied, refined, and amplified rather than quietly corrected or hidden.

6. Publicly reinforce internal agency

Regularly highlight internal success stories and explicitly credit behavioural adaptation rather than project sponsorship or hierarchy. Recognise those who surface and share working practices, not only those who design initiatives.

Over time, this rewires what the organisation believes improvement actually is. The organisation learns that it evolves through everyday practice, not episodic transformation programmes.

This page is part of my broader work on complexity leadership, where I explore how leaders navigate uncertainty, sense patterns, and make decisions in complex systems.