Treating adaptive challenges as a technical problem results in failure. Most people have faced the reality of applying technical solutions to challenges that require adaptive solution

Technical challenges have a known solution. This is not the case with adaptive challenges. Authority figures will most of the time treat adaptive challenges the same way as technical challenges. A challenge may be partly adaptive and partly technical. Treating this challenge as fully technical will solve only the technical component. How will one know that the problem has not been solved fully?

Scenario

The death penalty has been used by many countries as a way of punishment. This is still practiced in different countries in the world. Crimes that are punishable by death depend on the jurisdiction, but mostly include offences such as murder, rape, terrorism, drug trafficking and genocide. The death penalty ensures that criminals do not have a chance of doing bad things over and over again; in other words, criminals are silenced forever. This penalty aims at deterring further criminal activities.

Capital crimes are still being committed across the globe. In 2019, at least 2,200 death sentences were recorded. Is death penalty not effective enough? Are criminals not afraid of death penalty? Society agrees that crime is bad and we need to join hands in stopping it. But does the society agree to the death penalty as solution to crime?

People in position of authority have relied on death penalty as a means of deterring criminal activities. It may have worked; no one is so ready to die, not anyway when the consequences are well known. However, this punishment does not take into consideration complex social and economic components that drive crime and criminal activities; perhaps for criminals they don’t often think of the consequences of their actions. In Canada the capital offenses were reported to have dropped by 44% after the government stopped executing criminals. What may have triggered this drop? Death penalty deprives people the opportunity to reform; society believes if criminals are taken through rehab, they are likely to change and be useful members in the society.

In the above scenario, the death penalty aimed at solving the problem of capital crimes. However, same crimes are still being committed. These crimes affect society who are still looking forward to the people in positions of authority to help them against the menace. The decision by governments to execute criminals does not solve the problem. As a person who exercises adaptive leadership, you will need to identify the language of complaints which will increasingly be used to describe the current situation in diagnosing an adaptive challenge. In this case complaints may include cases of error in judicial system, the victims having no alternatives i.e. self-defense and some will remain adamant that death penalty is the cruelest punishment.

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Written by

Mercy Odongo