Imagine canoeing down a bubbling brook with a couple of pals. The fresh autumn breeze soothes your throat and cools your face. You quietly take in the sights of freshly fallen leaves painting the riverbanks in stunning shades of orange, red, and yellow.

Then suddenly you float around a bend and spot a fork in the river. The right branch of the fork leads to another tranquil stretch of stream. But that's not where you're headed. You are drifting toward the left fork. Your pupils balloon as you watch the river's powerful current thrust you ever closer to a swirling, foaming, Class 5 rapids.

What do you do?

The instinctive reaction is to start making what are called “power strokes” on the left side of the boat, which is basically just river-rafting jargon for paddling like your life (or at least your dryness) depends on it. Thanks to your frenzied power stroking on the left side of the boat, your wobbly vessel mercifully begins to angle toward the right.

But it is a painfully long and wide arc of a turn. Those power strokes are a catch-22. The harder and more forcefully you paddle to make the turn in time, the faster you hurl your boat downstream closer and closer to the dangerous fork ahead. At this point, you are doing as much praying as you are paddling, and then.…

Whoa. That was close. You made it just before things got ugly.

But the trip is far from over. And now you know that this river has some gnarly sets of rapids, and the one you just avoided will not be the last. Your anxious thoughts kick into overdrive. You wonder how confident you'll feel when you see the next rocky cluster a few hundred meters downstream. You start suspiciously eyeing your boatmates, wondering how committed they really are to seeing this thing through until the end. You think to yourself how exhausted are we all going to feel after power stroking our way through every twist and turn? How long before someone falls overboard? How long before the boat capsizes? How tense is the rest of this trip going to be with everyone white-knuckling the oars while we drift helplessly along under the long shadow of impending doom?

Your exciting adventure has just become a case study in group dynamics under stress, uncertainty, and exhaustion.

But now imagine a different technique. When you see the split—rapids on the left, smooth sailing on the right—the people in the front dig their paddles in, and pull the water behind them as hard as they can. But this time, the person sitting in the back doesn't power stroke with them. The back person drops their oar into the water on the opposite side of the boat, and begins to pry the oar away from the boat. With those motions working together—power stroking up front and prying away from the boat in the back, the canoe suddenly pivots as if it's anchored to an invisible hinge on the river bottom. The canoe's nose turns right while the tail slides left. It doesn't make a long arc or a wide curve like it does with only the power strokes. It simply swivels to the right without propelling you any further downstream.

The pivot turn accomplishes the same change in direction as all-out power stroking. But it does so far more swiftly and efficiently. It doesn't waste excess energy and it leaves your crew with plenty of time to spare before you reach the rocky rapids ahead. Perhaps the greatest advantage of pivot turns is that everyone in the boat now feels confident in their ability to quickly maneuver their way past the next set of rapids or rocky shoreline or random piece of debris in the waters ahead.

The same journey that was once a fight for survival has become the engaging adventure you hoped it would be.

Leading a team is like that.

But you don't work in a canoe, do you? Yeah, me neither. I guess if you work in healthcare or financial services, you probably know something about what it feels like to paddle your way down a shifty river in a semi-steady watercraft with unexpected twists and turns and obstacles around every bend, don't you?

Come to think of it, educators and administrators in school systems like the one in Premont, Texas probably know a thing or two about that feeling as well. Of course if you work in retail or manufacturing, you're probably no stranger to turbulent sales cycles and unplanned detours either. Round and round e-commerce goes, where the next evolution will go, nobody knows.

And speaking of all things e-related, I guess folks in the tech sector could use their supercharged imaginations to imagine what it's like for our boaters, too—knowing that you are always just one disruptive innovation away from overnight immortality or instant obsolescence.

Or what about industry captains in energy taking wild guesses about the future of fossil fuels, climate change, solar power, wind farms, and geopolitics?

How about the movers and shakers of the media and entertainment world who are trying to stay on top of downloading technology and monopoly-prone distributors?

On second thought, maybe land-lubbin' leaders like you and me can learn as much from the physics of canoeing as we can from the details of driving. After spending the last decade and a half rubbing elbows with teams and leaders in all these industries, I have yet to meet a single one who looks to the future and says, “Ya know what? I think we're good. We're just gonna chillax for the next five years or so.”

On one hand, sometimes we have no choice but to power stroke our way forward. When faced with the need to change rapidly and frequently, sometimes we do just have to dig in and work harder. Although I firmly believe we can simplify our approach, that doesn't mean it won't take hard work and occasionally long hours and require you to meet more demands. Power stroking is often necessary.

But what Ernest Singleton and the Decision Pulse studies teach us is that the power stroke shouldn't be our only weapon of choice. The combination of power strokes and pivots can amplify our efforts. What we're learning is that the quickest and most efficient way to drive change—over and over again, as often as the outside world demands it—is by powering ahead in some areas while pulling back in other areas. By powering ahead on academics, while pulling back on sports. By powering ahead on co-selling, and pulling back on piracy enforcement. By powering ahead on stabilizing the infrastructure, while temporarily pulling back on the Loyalty Program.

Every time your team needs to shift gears, switch lanes, or steer clear of troubled waters (pick your favorite metaphor) in response to a change in your environment, five things should happen. First, you have to Anticipate the change ahead, and Decide which direction you're going. Then you have to Align your team to make the change with you and give them Permission to pursue that direction—and Test it regularly to see if reality still supports your decision. For the acronym-lover buried deep inside us all, you can put those five components' initials together to spell ADAPT (Figure 9.1).

And guess what that means? From now on when your friends, family, colleagues, acolytes, sherpas, and caddies ask you what the cool book you're reading is all about, you need only reply, “Glen P. ADAPTs: Great leaders execute new plans by Anticipating, Deciding, Aligning, Permitting, and Testing.” How do you like them apples, Quick Brown Fox That Jumps Over The Lazy Dog?¹

As you may have noticed already, for your future referencing pleasure, the final chapters of this book are organized into five sections—one for each of the five components in the ADAPT framework. You're welcome.