In the business world we hear a lot about the virtues of “adaptability.”  At the company where I work adaptability is listed as one of the “Personal Effectiveness Competencies” upon which an employee’s performance may be evaluated.  According to our Employee Relations department definition the adaptable employee is someone who, “Accepts and is supportive of change, easily deals with a variety of situations, fills in as necessary to provide coverage and assure continuity of workflow and adjusts plans in response to change.”

While these might seem like reasonable expectations to the average person, unfortunately those of us fluent in the obscure language known as “Corporate Speak” are perhaps the only ones attuned to the subtleties of this complex dialect to interpret what is really being said here.  In the “Revised Standard Translation” of Corporate Speak this really amounts to the adaptable employee being someone who:  won’t go on a shooting rampage when the company keeps jacking him around by moving his desk, assigning him to new supervisors and wasting his time doing preliminary research for projects that will never be funded.  “Filling in as necessary” really means that the person will routinely work 12 to 14 hour days because the company is trying to save money by not replacing all of the retiring Baby Boomers; while “adjusts plans in response to change” really means that he will cancel his vacation if something blows up and his ‘Leadership Development Opportunity’ boss is completely clueless on how to handle it.

For all the noise that Corporate America makes about valuing people who are adaptable and “open to change” the real truth is that it is only certain types of changes that the world of big business truly desires its employees to be amenable to.

In a 2005 research project that Personnel Decisions Research Institutes, Inc. conducted for the United States Army on the best training methods for adaptable leaders a far different picture of adaptability emerged.  The researchers outlined three types of adaptability which they felt were critical in developing effective leaders:  mental adaptability, interpersonal adaptability and physical adaptability.

For mental adaptability, the project emphasized that the “ability to adjust one’s thinking in new situations” and “solving problems creatively” were the hallmarks of this brand of leadership capability.  Perhaps there is some hope for newer, more progressive start-up organizations in the business world but my experience at a rather staid and traditional property and casualty insurer has been that while employees are regularly encouraged to “think outside the box” most truly creative ideas never survive a protracted vetting process that one of my colleagues swears is specifically designed to “suck the joy” out of all that we do.

From the military perspective the researchers described interpersonal adaptability as adjusting language and behavior to account for cultural and personal differences.  While concentrated diversity awareness programs have yielded some positive results in the corporate world, the work is far from complete.  In large, well established companies I would submit that there still exists an expectation that employees will “assimilate” and fit their own personalities and beliefs to fit the corporate culture to a much greater extent than management should adapt the culture to bring out the best in the team members themselves.

Finally, physical adaptability in the military world generally refers to the ability to work in less than ideal environmental situations, such as extreme heat or cold or in precarious battlefield situations where personal safety is almost certainly at risk.  In the business world the physical challenges are not nearly as severe and yet often management is slow to propose significant changes to the “cubicle dotted landscape” of the modern office.   I also suspect that executives of varying levels of authority would be loathe to give up the private offices that seem to increase in opulence in direct correlation to job level in spite of all the team oriented, “one for all and all for one” speech making that is an obligatory part of every large unit or department gathering.

“Embracing change” is a well used buzzword in the corporate community but if we stop to examine the meaning of the word “embrace” I’m not sure that what passes for “adaptability” or “embracing change” in most large companies really fits the bill.  Embrace is to “clasp in the arms; press to the bosom; hug” or “to receive eagerly or gladly; to take in with the mind.”  Most examples of “adaptability” and “embracing change” that I have witnessed over the last twenty-five years seems to be more along the lines of the “grin and bear it” variety.  The employees who are most willing to “go along to get along” and who are most adept at reciting the corporate “mantra of the month” while effectively masking their disdain earn the dubious distinction of being hailed as “change agents.”

The sad fact of the matter is that although we pretend to be proponents of change and innovation, the major concern for people at most levels is in not losing any ground.  In today’s uncertain economic times most of us view change suspiciously.  The often virulent rhetoric surrounding the proposed health insurance reform bill is just one example. 

Writer and management consultant Peter Drucker once said, “During periods of discontinuous, abrupt change, the essence of adaptation involves a keen sensitivity to what should be abandoned - not what should be changed or introduced. A willingness to depart from the familiar has distinct survival value.”   Genuine adaptability may mean that we have to let go of some things; perhaps even things that we are fond of and feel we’ve worked hard to achieve.