Arkaro Insights

From Technical Fixes to Adaptive Solutions: How Arkaro’s Approach Transforms Technical Problem-Solving Cultures (AI voices Arkaro content)

• Mark Blackwell • Episode 47

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Welcome to the Arkaro Insights podcast. This episode is based on original content developed by Arkaro. At Arkaro, we're committed to innovation in everything we do—including how we share our insights. We've utilised advanced AI technology to transform our written expertise into this conversational format, making our content more accessible and convenient for our busy B2B audience. What you'll hear is a two-person discussion generated through AI voice technology, designed to deliver our insights in a more engaging way than traditional reading. As we continue to evolve this approach, we genuinely value your feedback. Thank you for listening to Arkaro Insights, where professional expertise meets innovative delivery.

Full article: From Technical Fixes to Adaptive Solutions: How Arkaro's Approach Transforms Technical Problem-Solving Cultures

The greatest obstacle to transformation often hides in plain sight. For technically brilliant B2B organizations—especially in agriculture, food, and chemicals—it's not technical capability that stalls strategic initiatives, but the failure to recognize when you're facing an adaptive challenge rather than a technical problem.

Drawing on insights from Mark Blackwell at Arkaro, we explore this critical distinction that determines success or failure in organizational change. Technical problems exist in what systems thinker Dave Snowden calls the "complicated domain"—where cause and effect relationships can be discovered through expert analysis. These challenges respond to the sense-analyze-respond approach that engineering cultures excel at. Adaptive challenges, however, live in the "complex domain" where solutions can't be predetermined but must emerge through experimentation and learning—requiring a probe-sense-respond mindset.

The consequences of misapplying technical approaches to adaptive challenges appear everywhere: strategy implementations falter despite solid analysis (with only 28% of executives able to list three strategic priorities), Integrated Business Planning systems struggle despite perfect process design, innovation initiatives stall despite structured methodologies, and customer-centricity programs fail to change organizational behavior despite comprehensive market research. The root cause? Technical leaders trying to solve adaptive challenges requiring cultural shifts and behavior changes using the same toolkit that made them successful with technical problems.

Arkaro's four-step methodology offers a path forward: Understanding (moving beyond problem definition to challenge recognition), Co-creating (shifting from expert solutions to collective learning), Enabling (building adaptive capabilities alongside technical skills), and Sustaining (embedding these capabilities for future challenges). Through their "do-it-with-you" approach, Arkaro works alongside organizations to build internal capability while solving immediate challenges—creating a bridge between technical excellence and adaptive leadership.

Take an honest look at your organization today. Where might your established technical expertise actually be hindering your ability to adapt to complex, ambi

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Arkaro Insights Podcast. Our mission here is simple we want to help B2B executives like you deliver well better results, using the latest ideas in change and innovation specifically for your organization. That's right, and today we're doing a deep dive. We're really going to unpack a distinction that honestly, can make or break your strategic initiatives.

Speaker 2:

It sounds fundamental and it is.

Speaker 1:

It's the difference between technical problems and what we call adaptive challenges. We're drawing heavily on insights from Mark Blackwell at Arkaro, especially his work on transforming technical problem-solving cultures.

Speaker 2:

Yes, that piece from technical fixes to adaptive solutions really lays it out.

Speaker 1:

And this is so crucial, particularly for industries, you know, like agriculture, food, chemicals, places built on amazing engineering but now facing just unprecedented complexity organizationally.

Speaker 2:

It's fascinating, isn't it? Because these organizations are brilliant at solving the technical stuff, really world class.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

But then they hit these other challenges, the ones needing cultural shifts, and suddenly they get stuck, completely stalled. Sometimes Understanding that difference is well, it's everything.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so let's set the stage then you often see this, even with really, really smart leaders. It's a common pitfall.

Speaker 2:

It is. They tend to apply the same problem-solving methods to every single challenge they face. Right and Ronald Heifetz over at Harvard, he nailed it. He knew the single biggest failure in leadership is treating adaptive challenges as if they were technical problems.

Speaker 1:

OK, what does that mean practically day to day?

Speaker 2:

Well, it means you're trying to fix an issue that really requires people to change their beliefs, maybe their core values or just how they behave day to day, but you're trying to fix it with a technical solution, something designed for a straightforward problem, something an expert can just solve.

Speaker 1:

Like trying to fix a really broken team dynamic with, I don't know, a new project management tool.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, the tool might be great, but it doesn't address the underlying relationship issues the lack of trust, the human element. That's the adaptive part.

Speaker 1:

So to really get our heads around this, the source material points to Dave Snowden's Sinofin framework. How does that help us make this distinction clearer?

Speaker 2:

Ah Sinofin. It's incredibly useful. Think of it as a sense-making framework. It helps categorize the kind of problem you're facing. So technical problems. They live in what Snowden calls the complicated domain.

Speaker 1:

Complicated okay.

Speaker 2:

Right here cause and effect. They might not be obvious immediately, but they are discoverable. You need analysis, maybe expert knowledge, but you can figure it out. The results are predictable.

Speaker 1:

So the approach is it's sense analyze, respond.

Speaker 2:

You gather data, you analyze it, you apply the right expert solution.

Speaker 1:

And we see this technical brilliance all the time in those industries we mentioned Ag, food, chem that's where they built their reputation.

Speaker 2:

Oh, absolutely Think about optimizing a complex manufacturing line for higher yield. That's complicated but solvable with engineering expertise.

Speaker 1:

Or strict safety protocols.

Speaker 2:

Precisely Following those protocols, rigorously diagnosing a quality issue using root cause analysis.

Speaker 1:

Standard equipment repair.

Speaker 2:

Yep All classic examples. You bring in the expert, they follow known procedures, they analyze the data and boom. You get a predictable good outcome and that success. It builds huge confidence in the organization. Teams feel they can tackle anything technically complex.

Speaker 1:

Okay, but then we shift gears. We move to the complex domain. That's where these adaptive challenges live. How's that different?

Speaker 2:

Very different In the complex domain. Cause and effect are well, they're only really clear in hindsight. Looking back you might see how things connected, but you can't predict it beforehand.

Speaker 1:

So analysis doesn't give you the answer up front.

Speaker 2:

No, solutions aren't found through analysis. They actually emerge through experimentation, through trying things out.

Speaker 1:

So the approach has to change too.

Speaker 2:

Completely. It shifts to probe, sense, respond. You have to try something small, safe, to fail experiments see what happens, learn from it and then decide the next step.

Speaker 1:

Probe sense respond, got it.

Speaker 2:

These challenges are often ambiguous, volatile, unpredictable. They nearly always require people to learn something new, to change their mindsets or adapt their behaviors.

Speaker 1:

Okay, let's really unpack this for the B2B executive listening, yeah, where does this distinction, this complicated versus complex thing, where does it actually show up in their daily work? Because it feels like more than just theory.

Speaker 2:

Oh, it has huge practical implications. We see it constantly. Organizations, even really successful ones, they default to their technical strengths. They try to apply those tried and true technical solutions to problems that are fundamentally adaptive.

Speaker 1:

And that's when things go sideways.

Speaker 2:

That's exactly when initiatives stall or they under deliver or sometimes just completely fail, despite all the effort and resources.

Speaker 1:

Do you give some concrete examples Like how does this play out with something like strategy implementation? Every company grapples with that.

Speaker 2:

Strategy implementation is a perfect example. Look creating the strategy itself, doing the market analysis, the competitive positioning, building financial models. That part is largely technical or at least complicated. You need experts, data analysis.

Speaker 1:

Right, you can hire consultants. Use frameworks.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, but translating that beautiful strategy document into actual day-to-day decision making across different departments, getting genuine buy-in and ownership from everyone. Iterating that strategy based on real-world feedback from the market or the front lines.

Speaker 1:

That sounds different.

Speaker 2:

That's deeply adaptive. It requires cultural shifts, changing how people work together, maybe even changing power dynamics. And the data Mark cites is sobering Only about 28% of executives can even list three of their company's strategic priorities.

Speaker 1:

Wow, 28%.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and less than 60% feel their decisions align with strategy. That gap isn't usually because the strategy itself is bad. It's the adaptive execution that's falling short.

Speaker 1:

That's a massive disconnect. What about something like integrated business planning? Ivp Companies pour millions into those systems.

Speaker 2:

IBP is another classic Installing the software, setting up the process steps, training people on the mechanics of the system. That's technical work. You can plan it, budget it, execute it.

Speaker 1:

Seems straightforward enough.

Speaker 2:

But getting different departments sales, marketing, operations, finance to actually collaborate effectively within that IBP process, to share sensitive data openly, to make tough cross-functional trade-off decisions together for the good of the whole business.

Speaker 1:

Ah, that's the hard part.

Speaker 2:

That's the adaptive challenge. It's about breaking down historical silos, changing long-standing behaviors, building trust. The software is just an enabler. The real transformation is in how people work together.

Speaker 1:

Okay. And innovation Everyone wants an innovation culture. Technical versus adaptive there.

Speaker 2:

Definitely Setting up, say, a stage gate process for new product development or implementing an idea management platform. Those are technical steps. You can design and implement them.

Speaker 1:

But that doesn't automatically create innovation.

Speaker 2:

Not at all. Fostering a true culture of innovation that's adaptive. It means building psychological safety so people feel safe, taking risks, sharing half-formed ideas, even failing, sometimes without fear of blame.

Speaker 1:

That safety thing sounds key.

Speaker 2:

It is. It's about enabling honest feedback, getting cross-functional teams to genuinely share insights rather than protecting their turf, maybe even changing incentives to reward collaboration. You can't just install that culture with a memo or a new process map.

Speaker 1:

And one more customer centricity. Feels like everyone's talking about it.

Speaker 2:

Right. And again there's a technical piece Doing the market research, the needs-based segmentation analysis. That requires analytical skill expertise. It's complicated maybe, but technical, but actually using those insights consistently across the entire organization, getting marketing, sales, r&d operations, customer service all aligned and making decisions based on those customer priorities. Continuously learning and iterating based on customer interactions.

Speaker 1:

That sounds like changing how the whole company thinks and acts.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. It often requires coaching teams to see customers not just as revenue sources but as partners. It demands deep cross-functional collaboration built around shared customer understanding. That's adaptive work through and through.

Speaker 1:

You know, this is where it gets really fascinating. For me, it almost sounds like the very things that made these leaders and organizations successful. Their technical mastery, their analytical skills can actually become handcuffs when facing these adaptive challenges.

Speaker 2:

That's precisely the issue. It's what Arkaro calls the technical leader's dilemma Leaders who rose through the ranks because they were the expert, the one with the right answers, the one who could solve the tough technical problems. They naturally tend to approach these messy, ambiguous adaptive challenges using the same toolkit. They rely on their authority, they expect compliance, they look for linear, predictable solutions and they get uncomfortable with uncertainty.

Speaker 1:

And why does that approach, which works so well for technical problems, just fall flat or even make things worse with adaptive ones?

Speaker 2:

Because adaptive challenges don't respond to authority or expert decree. In the same way, trying to impose a solution from the top often creates resistance, not buy-in. It shuts down the very learning and experimentation that's needed.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

People don't just need to be told what to do For adaptive change. They need to be involved in figuring out how to do it. They need to learn, adjust and own the change themselves. Authoritative, expert-driven approaches can actually stifle that crucial process.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So if applying those technical fixes is the pitfall, what's the way forward? How does Arcara help organizations navigate this? How do you bridge that gap?

Speaker 2:

Well, arcara's approach is fundamentally different. It's built around a do-it-with-you philosophy. It's not about us coming in as experts with the solution. It's about working alongside the organization, shoulder to shoulder, to build their own internal capability to tackle these complex adaptive challenges. It's based on a four step methodology. Okay, walk us through those steps.

Speaker 1:

Where does it start?

Speaker 2:

It starts with understand, beyond problem definition to challenge recognition With adaptive challenges. Just defining the problem in the technical sense isn't enough. It can even be misleading. How so? Because the problem often looks different depending on where you sit in the organization. So we work with teams to deeply explore the context, the underlying culture, the competing values, the hidden assumptions that are really at play.

Speaker 1:

So less about finding the root cause and more about understanding the whole system.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. It's about helping people see that there might be multiple valid perspectives, that resistance might actually contain valuable information, not just be obstruction. The key shift is from asking what's the problem to asking what's really going on here and why do smart, reasonable people disagree about it?

Speaker 1:

That definitely changes the conversation right from the start. Okay, so once you have that deeper understanding, what's next?

Speaker 2:

Then we move to co-create From expert solutions to collective learning, with leadership development. Notice the difference. Instead of Arkaro designing the perfect solution for them, we facilitate a process where the solution is discovered and built by the people who have to live with it. This means deep stakeholder engagement, getting the right people in the room, fostering an experimental mindset.

Speaker 1:

Learning by doing essentially.

Speaker 2:

Very much so Getting comfortable with trying things, learning from failures, iterating and, crucially, this is done alongside leadership development. We focus on building distributed ownership, especially empowering middle managers. They're often the key strategy translators.

Speaker 1:

So you're building capability as you solve the problem.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. The shift is from. Here's the answer. Go implement it to okay. Here's how we'll figure this out together and in the process we'll build the skills you need to tackle the next adaptive challenge.

Speaker 1:

That makes sense. It's not just about this one issue, but building the muscle for the future, which leads, I guess, to step three.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. Step three is enable Building adaptive capabilities and leadership skills, not just technical skills. Technical training is about transferring existing knowledge. Adaptive enablement is about developing the capacity for ongoing learning.

Speaker 1:

What kinds of capabilities are we talking about?

Speaker 2:

Things like getting comfortable with ambiguity. Developing skills for designing and running safe-to-fail experiments. Strengthening cross-functional collaboration. Building reflective practices so teams learn from experience.

Speaker 1:

And leadership skills too.

Speaker 2:

Critically. We often find that fundamental leadership skills things like understanding personality differences, emotional intelligence, navigating conflict, constructively communicating effectively, especially across functions these are often the real missing pieces needed for transformation to succeed. They're the grease in the adaptive gears.

Speaker 1:

Okay, Understand, co-create, enable. And then how do you make sure all this hard work actually sticks? We've all seen initiatives that start strong but then just fade away.

Speaker 2:

That's step four. Sustain Embedding adaptive capabilities for future challenges. Real sustainability doesn't come from just enforcing compliance with a new process. It comes from building lasting organizational capability.

Speaker 1:

So it becomes part of the DNA.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's the goal. This involves embedding learning systems so the organization keeps adapting. It means reinforcing the new cultural norms through recognition, maybe adjusting incentives, building resilience to handle future shocks and adaptive needs, and ensuring knowledge is retained and shared so the lessons learned become part of the collective wisdom.

Speaker 1:

This sounds powerful in theory. Can you give us a concrete example? What does this look like for a real company facing these kinds of struggles?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. There was a global chemicals company. We worked with brilliant technical teams, truly world-class at optimizing their existing processes.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

But they're big cross-functional innovation initiatives. They kept stalling. Significant investment, smart people, but things just weren't moving, despite repeated efforts to refine the innovation process itself. A technical fix.

Speaker 1:

So they kept tweaking the process, but the underlying issue was adaptive.

Speaker 2:

Exactly so. Arkaro came in and, instead of just designing yet another process, we helped them understand why these smart, committed people were struggling to collaborate effectively across their functional silos.

Speaker 1:

What did you find?

Speaker 2:

We uncovered things like competing departmental metrics that discouraged collaboration, different tolerances for risk between R&D and operations, unspoken assumptions and fears classic adaptive issues hiding beneath the surface. So Arkaro approach was it was to combine necessary technical upgrades with parallel work on leadership development and cultural transformation. We coached senior leaders on how to model the collaborative behaviors they wanted to see. We worked with middle managers to give them the skills and confidence to navigate that cross-functional complexity and we helped create pockets of psychological safety where teams could experiment and learn together without fear.

Speaker 1:

And the result? Did the innovation initiatives start moving?

Speaker 2:

They did and, importantly, they moved faster, not just because of slightly better processes, but because leaders and teams at multiple levels had developed the capability to collaborate more effectively to manage the natural tensions that arise in complex work. The technical framework finally had the adaptive muscle behind it to actually work.

Speaker 1:

That's a fantastic illustration and it really echoes that quote you shared from Jeremy LaRue at Diamulteria. Can you remind us of that?

Speaker 2:

Yes, he said. More than a consultant, mark was also a coach who left us with new capabilities. Mark was an attentive listener, he helped the top management to formulate the right questions, and he then worked with the teens to crunch numbers in order to bring meaningful answers.

Speaker 1:

Left us with new capabilities. That really captures it.

Speaker 2:

It really does, and it points to the idea of the cultural bridge that Arkaro strives to build. The goal isn't to throw out the technical, problem-solving culture. That's incredibly valuable.

Speaker 1:

Right, you need that.

Speaker 2:

You absolutely need it. The goal is to expand it, to build alongside it the capacity for adaptive work. Organizations need both technical excellence for the known, complicated challenges and adaptive capability for the unknown, complex ones. Real success comes from knowing which situation needs which approach and having the flexibility to use both, and you mentioned Arkaro team background seems uniquely suited for this.

Speaker 2:

We believe so, which situation needs, which approach, and having the flexibility to use both and you mentioned Arkaro team background seems uniquely suited for this. We believe so. Our team brings together deep experience in technical fields, engineering, operations, r&d, in these specific industries, with extensive experience in adaptive leadership, coaching and organizational change, so you speak both languages effectively.

Speaker 2:

We aim to. We understand and respect the power of technical rigor, but we also know firsthand the necessity of cultural evolution and adaptive leadership. That dual perspective lets us hopefully bridge that gap effectively and help create change that sticks, because it honors the existing strengths while building necessary new ones.

Speaker 1:

Which really brings us to a key question for you, our listener, to think about. So, boiling it all down, the core insight today seems to be this If your organization is great at the technical stuff, but you consistently find yourselves struggling with major change initiatives, with cultural transformation or just getting effective cross-functional collaboration going, then it's highly likely that adaptive leadership capabilities are the missing piece of the puzzle.

Speaker 2:

And that really connects back to our philosophy at Arkaro. We don't just coach, we get on the pitch with you, we roll up our sleeves and work through these challenges alongside you.

Speaker 1:

So, as you reflect on our conversation today, here's a provocative thought to mull over. Take an honest look inside your own organization. Where might your established technical expertise, your traditional ways of solving problems, actually be getting in the way of adapting to new, complex, ambiguous challenges?

Speaker 2:

That's a great question.

Speaker 1:

And how can you, or the leaders around you, start to nurture more of that probe sense, respond mindset? A bit more experimentation, a bit more experimentation, a bit more learning, by doing Food for thought, definitely Well, this deep dive has really explored how Arkaro helps B2B executives like you deliver better results, precisely by navigating this critical line between technical problems and adaptive challenges. Right, just as a reminder, arccurl specializes in key areas like strategy, innovation, process, product management, commercial excellence and business development, and also integrated business management.

Speaker 2:

And with deep expertise in agriculture, food and chemicals.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. If you want to learn more about Arkaro services and approach, you can visit their website arkaro. com. Or, of course, connect with them on LinkedIn, and if anything we've discussed today resonates and you'd like to explore it further in your context, you're invited to reach out for a free consultation. You can email Mark Blackwell directly at mark" Arkaro.

Speaker 2:

We'd be happy to chat.

Speaker 1:

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining us for this Arkaro Insights podcast Deep Dive.

Speaker 2:

Thank you.

Speaker 1:

If you found this conversation helpful, please do share it with colleagues who might also benefit. We appreciate you listening.

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