According to authors the tougest task for leaders is often mobilizing people throughout the organization to do adaptive work. Solutions to adaptive challenges reside in the collective intelligence of employees at all levels, and it requires those emplpyees to take on new rules, new relationships, new values, new behaviors, and new approaches to work. The authors provide six principles for leading adaptive work: (1) "Business leaders have to be able to view patterns as if they were on a balcony." This should provide them with a context for change, which they should then translate into responsibilities for their organization and their people. (2) The leader then has to identify the essential adaptive challenge(s), which will depend on the leader, their people, and the potential sources of conflict. (3) "A leader must strike a delicate balance between having people feel the need to change and having them feel overwhelmed by change." In order to maintain the urgency, the leader must create a holding environment, be responsible for direction, protection, orientation, managing conflict, and shaping norms, plus he need to have presence and poise. (4) "A leader must get employees to confront tough trade-offs in values, procedures, operating styles, and power", and they, in return, require help to maintain their focus on the tough questions. Heifetz and Laurie believe this requires disciplined attention. (5) Getting people to take greater responsibility and the initiative in defining and solving problems means that management needs to learn to support rather than control. (6) Leaders have to rely on others in the organization to indicate impending adaptive challenges. In fact, "giving a voice to all people is the foundation of an organization that is willing to experiment and learn." The authors use an adaptive change at KPMG Netherlands, a professional-service firm, as an example. The authors conclude that leadership has to take place every day, which means that it essentially requires a learning strategy. The role for the leader then is to engage people in confronting the challenge, adjusting their values, changing perspectives, and learning habits.

Good article into the role of leaders/leadership in change. Although it is an important leadership role, I believe it is only part of leadership. Leadership is more and I would like to draw attention to John Kotter's article 'What Leaders Really Do', who discusses other important issues of leadership. The principles are simple and understandable, but it is too academical to me. The article is written in simple business US-English.