Adaptation is a dynamic process of mutual influence. All creatures act on their environments, and their environments, in turn, act on them. We are all engaged in co-creation in our offices and in our families by virtue of the influences we exert on each other. Adaptive leadership is given to impacting the environment. It addresses a very active form of leadership, not a passive effort taken merely to adjust to circumstances as found.
Biology teaches that relationships between living entities are circular and interactive.
Our organizations are also living systems, being composed not just of capital goods and technology, but of people. Organizations are capable of intelligent, purposeful collective action, actions taken to influence their environments in desired directions. We know that, like all living organisms, our organizations can learn, adapt and grow. We know that they too have life cycles of birth, growth, maturity and eventual decline. It matters a great deal whether leaders conceive of their organizations as being like machines or like living adaptive systems.