P&P February 2016

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Policy&PracticeFebruary 2016 8
Debora Morris
is the managing
director, Integrated
Social Services,
State, Provincial and
Local Government
at Accenture.
A DIFFERENT KIND
OF LEADERSHIP
Ronald Heifetz, founding director of
the Center for Public Leadership at the
Harvard Kennedy School, developed
the theory and framework of adaptive
leadership.
As Heifetz explains, human service
leaders—all leaders—face technical
and adaptive challenges. Technical
challenges can be solved in short order
with technology, policy, or process
changes. Adaptive challenges are more
deeply rooted. They require organiza-
tions to venture into the unknown. The
journey can cut into long-held values.
processes—building one type of
strength from another. She is exploring
how regulative indicators can have a
generative effect. Take the example of
the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program (SNAP). “If we’re not
timely, how many kids and families
are waiting? It’s not the time that is
measured, it’s a hungry measure.”
Harness staff power for leadership
from within
Adaptive leaders excel at
the art of bringing differences
together within and outside of their
organizations. In Michigan, where
Timothy Becker, chief deputy director
of the Michigan Department of Health
and Human Services, is spearheading
the integration of two departments
overseeing 140 health and human
service programs, staff is involved in
planning. Leadership is acting with
intention to create a culture where
staff members are encouraged to take
chances in the service of better ways of
working and serving.
At the Georgia Division of Family
and Children Services, workforce
development is a significant part of
Efficiency in
Achieving Outcomes
Effectiveness
in Achieving
Outcomes
Regulative Business Model: The focus is
on serving constituents who are eligible for
particular services while complying with
categorical policy and program regulations.
Collaborative Business Model: The focus
is on supporting constituents in receiving all
services for which they’re eligible by working
across agency and programmatic borders.
Integrative Business Model: The focus
is on addressing the root causes of client
needs and problems by coordinating and
integrating services at an optimum level.
Generative Business Model: The focus
is on generating healthy communities by
co-creating solutions for multi-dimensional
family and socioeconomic challenges and
opportunities.
Generative
Business Model
Integrative
Business Model
Outcome Frontiers
Collaborative
Business
Model
Regulative
Business
Model
These challenges require adaptive
leadership. It is leadership at all
levels that fosters learning and
experimentation over time, even amid
organizational and cultural resistance.
ADAPTIVE LEADERSHIP
IN ACTION
Consider these five fundamentals of
adaptive leadership in human services:
Honor the positive and build from
strength
Adaptive leaders acknowledge
what works in their organiza-
tion, and move forward from there.
For Raquel Hatter, commissioner of
the Tennessee Department of Human
Services, this principle applies to
moving up the Human Services Value
Curve.2 With the generative model as
the ultimate goal, it is easy for leaders
to lose sight of the innate value of the
other models. Hatter views the regula-
tive state as a necessary foundation,
not a lesser pass-through. If organiza-
tions get it wrong, they jeopardize
everything else.
She is thinking about generative
capacity while refining regulative
1 2
© The Human Services Value Curve by Antonio M. Oftelie & Leadership for a Networked World is licensed under a Creative
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The Human Services Value Curve