Introduction

This tool from NACCHO’s Adaptive Leadership Team combines Adaptive Leadership theory with continuous quality improvement to help public health practitioners address complex, adaptive challenges. 

We encourage you to download both the Adaptive Action Guide and the Adaptive Action Companion Workbook and use the workbook alongside the guide to apply each chapter’s concepts to your own challenge.

Adaptive Action Guide

The Adaptive Action Guide includes these five chapters covering core Adaptive Leadership concepts to help you view challenges from new perspectives and mobilize those involved to take action. 

1. Chapter 1: Identify and Characterize an Adaptive Challenge. Identify the adaptive components of a challenge you are facing.
2. Chapter 2: Getting on the Balcony. Learn how to step back from the challenge to get a broader perspective and prepare you to see it from new angles.
3. Chapter 3: Understand People Involved in the Challenge. Analyze the people who are involved in the challenge and strategize how to mobilize them toward collective progress.
4. Chapter 4: Consider Past and Future Actions. Explore how leadership and authority have been exercised in the past and identify what leadership and authority actions are needed to navigate the challenge more effectively.
5. Chapter 5: Plan and Take Adaptive Action. Apply a continuous quality improvement approach to design, implement, and refine an intervention grounded in insights from the previous chapters.

Adaptive Action Companion Workbook

The Adaptive Action Companion Workbook provides the following worksheets to practice applying these concepts to your specific challenges:

1. Identify your Adaptive Challenge
2. Observe-Interpret-Intervene
3. Analysis of People Involved in the Challenge
4. Leadership and Authority Actions Inventory
5. Plan-Do-Study-Act

Visit NACCHO's Adaptive Leadership webpage for related resources.