Understanding the Adaptive Management Report
Your Adaptive Management Report tells you how you currently
make decisions in a business environment. It is the outcome of your responses
to the 45 questions you completed on the website. This guide will help you
understand the report and use it for two of the most common applications, team
performance and job hunting.
Report Overview
The Report has an introductory page followed by a style
graph and sheet. Then there are five sections that explore your score in each
of the five decision style areas. Together they create a map of your current
decision approach. On that basis you can understand your decisions better, work
more effectively with your team, and plan your future with more confidence.
The Chart
The style chart is a quick overview of how oriented you are
to each of the five different decision modes, the strategic, the tactical, the
equitable, the hierarchical, and the social. Your score on each one can range
from zero to 10, though both extremes are rare. Most of us are oriented to
using all of the modes in what we believe are the relevant situations. Which
mode we use most is our preference for working situations. Typically, people
have one or two modes which they use most commonly, with the others as
fall-back approaches to what we believe are less relevant modes of decision
making. But any person can range from very even in their preferences to
extremely singular in their preferences.
As you review the chart reflect
on where it indicates you prefer to make decisions. Anything that stands out
suggests a stronger orientation on your part. You might be relatively even
across all five, suggesting a very open approach to decision making. Or you
might find that one or two are very strong suggesting these are where you feel
most comfortable making decisions.
Remember that this chart says
nothing about your personality or how you make decisions outside the job. The
fact that you might not prefer to make strategic decisions on the job does not
mean you are not a strategically sensitive person. We all use every decision
mode; we only have preferences in specific situations. So might be a forward
thinking strategic leader at home, but prefer to work more tactically or
equitably at work.
The Style & Approach
There are currently thirty types of Style. They are based on your primary and secondary decision modes.
The styles are suggestions that usually are an accurate summary of your basic
approach to decision making. However, some types of style are relatively
similar and you might fit one of them a little better. Your style might also be
an approximation because your five modes are relatively close together in
strength. This is when the test has the hardest time giving you a clear style
type. Regardless, take the style name as a rough approximation. It is probably
relatively accurate, but it might not be.
In any case the approach is probably more useful as a guide
to your approach to decision making. The Approach
is how easily you move between relational modes. This is an important indicator
of how you approach problems and work with others in problem solving. In
general, flexibility is a good thing. Flexible decision makers can move quickly
from one mode to another as the nature of the challenge shifts or new evidence
suggests another mode or combination of modes might work better than your
strongest preferences. But too much flexibility might be a problem as well. It
might mean you have difficulty making decisions unless they are relatively
clear to begin with, or you might be easily persuaded by others to adopt
another mode even when your preference is the best one. It’s a case of
reflecting on your score and thinking about how it might have an impact on your
work situation.
5 Decision Modes
Following the style and approach are five sections which
look in more detail how you approach each type of decision mode. These sections
explore how you use each of the modes. There are significant details at this
level which suggest how you might experience your engagement with these modes
and how your preference leads you to strengths or issues in decision making.
They are listed in their
standard order, not your order of preference. Thus, even if you scored low in
strategic, it shows up first. If you scored high in social, it will still be
last.
Use Levels
Your use level is merely the
count of how often you used that specific mode to answer questions. It is not
the same as your strength, but does give you an idea regarding how often you
approach a problem and tend to see it through the lens of that specific mode. A
person of absolute flexibility would tend to have a use level of 20% for each
mode, though that is a simplistic understanding.
Balance
A more important score is your balance score. This is how
negative or positively skewed your use of this decision mode is. The ideal
balance is usually “0.00.” If the balance score is positive, then it suggests
you have a bias toward this mode; you tend to see decisions made this way as
more positive than negative. If it is negative, then it means you have a bias
against this mode. Now you have a tendency to see decisions made through this
mode as more likely to have a negative outcome than a positive outcome. If the
bias is high (over + or – 1.00) then it suggests you have a blind spot in your
decision making where you have difficulty seeing problems or solutions using
this mode of decision.
One point to note is that your bias might be quite realistic
based on your work situation. Certain kinds of decision making can be negative
or positive just by the nature of the situation. Always pay attention to how
your decisions need to be made before you decide your balance is now what you
want it to be.
Sensitivity
Sensitivity is perhaps the most important characteristic of
the individual modes. This is your indicator of emotional reactivity to the
specific decision making mode. Regardless of positive or negative bias, or
strong or weak preference, some types of decision making can lead to a
relatively strong emotional reaction. This is not a problem. The human brain
uses emotion as a key part of its decision making processes. But it can become
a problem. If you are more emotionally sensitive about some kinds of decision
making modes, they will cause you difficulty when you are under external
stresses such as a time crunch or team problem. Awareness is the solution. Pay
close attention to your sensitivity rating. If it is high, be alert to
situations that may trigger this emotional sensitivity leading to hindrances in
your decision making, or possibly to conflict with team members or others in
your workplace.
Working with your team
One of the strengths of the
Adaptive Management Report is the way it helps team members understand each
other and work together more effectively. By sharing scores it is typically
easy for team members to identify specific decision making patterns they have as
a group, and then to decide if that is an appropriate decision making approach.
There are typically two types of
team members, complementary team members and contrasting team members. A team
of four could easily consist of three complementary team members and one
contrasting team member. But it’s possible to have a team of four contrasting
team members with a high level of resulting conflict. Or it could have four
complementary members, resulting in significant blind spots.