The Inner Orientation of Adaptive Action

Organisations do not perceive, interpret or act independently of the people within them.

Structures, information, governance, capabilities, and processes shape behaviour, but they don’t dictate how individuals respond to uncertainty, discomfort, or threats. Ultimately, people choose what to observe, what to overlook, how they interpret a situation, whose viewpoints they consider important, which assumptions they might challenge, and which consequences they deem worth examining.

These decisions are shaped by mindset.

A mindset is more than just a positive attitude, a personal choice, or a set of desirable behaviors. It functions as an organising perspective that shapes:

• how, when, and where attention is directed,
• what is noticed, overlooked or accepted as real,
• how perceived reality is interpreted and given meaning,
• how identity, emotion and prior assumptions influence judgement,
• how people position themselves in relation to others and the wider system,
• and how readily their assumptions and existing understanding can be questioned and revised.

Mindsets, therefore, sit between awareness and action.

They influence whether individuals engage with reality openly or interpret it through familiar ideas; whether they pursue understanding or protect their identity; and whether they view others as collaborators within a shared system or as tools, barriers, and opponents.

Adaptive Capacity depends on the ability to recognise these orientations, reflect on them and shift when circumstances require.

A mindset is an organising pattern of attention, interpretation, emotion, assumption and behavioural inclination through which a person or group engages with reality.

Why Mindsets Matter

Two people may receive the same information and reach very different conclusions.

Different individuals perceive challenge in various ways. Some see it as valuable evidence, while others view it as a threat to authority. Uncertainty might be seen as an opportunity to explore, or as a reason to seek quick resolution. Some consider its impact on the larger social and ecological systems, whereas others concentrate on short-term organisational or personal gains.

The difference is not necessarily a matter of intelligence or technical competence. It may arise from the orientation through which the situation is encountered.

Mindsets influence:

• what enters awareness,
• what is dismissed before examination,
• which explanations appear plausible,
• how much ambiguity can be tolerated,
• whether disagreement prompts inquiry or defensiveness,
• how broadly consequences are considered,
• and whether learning changes subsequent action.

This makes mindset an organisational concern rather than merely an individual psychological characteristic.

Repeated patterns of attention, interpretation and behaviour can become embedded in:

• leadership practice,
• professional disciplines,
• governance arrangements,
• incentive systems,
• language,
• performance measures,
• decision processes,
• and organisational routines.

Over time, these patterns can form a collective orientation that shapes what the organisation is capable of seeing and doing.

Mindsets Are Not Fixed Categories

Mindsets should not be used to divide people into permanent types.

A person might be very curious in one situation but defensive in another. A leader could consider ecological factors when talking about strategy but behave egocentrically when their status or authority is challenged. Similarly, a team may be open to trying new methods while they feel safe, but when the stakes are high, they tend to revert to controlling behaviour.

Mindset is therefore:

• contextual,
• dynamic,
• socially influenced,
• and capable of change.

This does not mean established patterns are unimportant. Habits of interpretation can become deeply entrenched, particularly when reinforced by identity, expertise, hierarchy or reward.

The practical question is not:

“What kind of person is this?”

It is:

“What orientation is shaping our attention and action in this situation, and is it appropriate to the reality we face?”

The Research Landscape

No single theory adequately explains mindset.

The concept draws together several related bodies of research on attention, cognition, motivation, emotion, identity, learning, social interaction and systems awareness. Each illuminates a different part of the territory.

Attention: What Enters the Field

Attention is foundational because people cannot interpret, question or act upon what they do not notice.

Mindset influences where attention is directed and how narrowly or broadly it is held. It affects whether people focus on:

• immediate tasks or wider patterns,
• isolated objects or relationships,
• confirming evidence or anomalies,
• familiar categories or emerging possibilities,
• personal objectives or system consequences.

Csikszentmihalyi (Csikszentmihalyi, Csikszentmihalyi, Abuhamdeh, & Nakamura, 2014) treated attention as the investment of finite psychic energy. What receives attention enters consciousness and becomes available for thought and action. What does not receive attention effectively disappears from the person’s experienced world.

They argued that developing people and social systems therefore requires managing attention and the capacity to concentrate.

This has significant organisational implications. Work systems do not merely allocate tasks and money; they allocate attention. Meetings, measures, targets, escalation processes, digital systems and reporting arrangements continually signal to people what is supposed to matter.

Csikszentmihalyi observed that major social institutions function as formalized attention structures, guiding who should focus on specific matters. He also pointed out that controlling resources can lead to control over others’ attention.

A mindset is therefore not simply a belief held inside an individual. It participates in an attentional structure that may be personal, relational or institutional.

Organisational implication

The central question is not only whether an organisation possesses information.

It is whether people retain sufficient freedom, capacity and permission to notice what matters.

Modes of Attention: McGilchrist

McGilchrist’s work challenges the simplistic popular distinction between a “logical left brain” and a “creative right brain” (McGilchrist, 2010).

Both cerebral hemispheres participate in language, reason, emotion and virtually every major human function. The more important distinction concerns the different manner of attention through which each hemisphere engages with the world.

McGilchrist proposes that one mode of attention is relatively narrow, focused, explicit and oriented towards grasping, categorising and manipulating particular objects. The other is broader, sustained, contextual and receptive to relationships, novelty and the living whole.

These modes should not be treated as mutually exclusive types of thinking. Human action requires both, operating as a continuing movement:

Broad, contextual attention initially perceives the situation as a holistic entity: considering relationships, patterns, novelty, ambiguity, and emerging meaning. Then, focused attention pinpoints specific elements for identification, analysis, classification, and action. After this focused effort, the findings should be re-integrated into the broader context, allowing for a reassessment of their significance, interconnections, and implications.

McGilchrist links the right hemisphere with perceiving the whole before breaking it into parts, whereas the left focuses more on individual objects and abstract categories. While narrow attention allows for precision and manipulation, it can also break continuity and context, so it should be complemented by the wider, more relational perspective of the right hemisphere.

Focused attention allows people to:

• isolate a problem,
• manipulate a known variable,
• apply a rule,
• classify information,
• and execute a defined task.

Broad contextual attention allows people to:

• sense change,
• recognise relationships,
• remain open to novelty,
• understand meaning in context,
• and perceive consequences beyond the immediate object of action.

The adaptive danger arises when the narrow mode becomes dominant and treats its partial representation as the whole of reality.

McGilchrist’s interpretation remains contested. Spezio argues that some of McGilchrist’s broader claims lack adequate operational definition and neuroscientific evidence, particularly where modes of attention are extended into sweeping explanations of culture and civilisation (Spezio, 2019).

That criticism must be taken seriously. The value of McGilchrist’s work for this Subject Area does not depend on claiming that organisations possess literal left- or right-brain personalities. Its value lies in identifying two complementary attentional demands:

The need to focus upon parts without losing awareness of the whole.

Organisational implication

Analysis, measurement, abstraction, and control are essential. However, they become risky when they replace the context, relationships, lived experiences, and consequences.

Ego-System and Eco-System Awareness

Scharmer describes a movement from ego-system awareness toward eco-system awareness (O. Scharmer, 2022).

Ego-system awareness interprets situations primarily from the perspective of the individual, role, function, organisation or interest group. It asks:

“What does this mean for me or for us?”

Ecosystem awareness broadens the scope to include the wellbeing of the whole system and those affected by its operation. It asks:

“What is happening across the wider field, and what future are we collectively creating?”

Scharmer argues that contemporary systems transformation requires an evolution from egocentric to ecocentric ways of operating. This depends on shared processes of sensing, learning and co-creation across boundaries.

His Theory U framing also emphasises the relationship between action and the “inner place” from which a person operates. Similar actions can produce different outcomes because the quality of attention, intention and relationship varies (C. O. Scharmer & Kaufer, 2025).

Eco-system awareness doesn’t imply abandoning individuality, expertise, accountability, or decisive action. Instead, it involves placing these elements within a broader network of relationships and consequences.

Ego-system orientation tends to emphasise.

• ownership,
• control,
• personal or organisational advantage,
• positional identity,
• competition,
• short-term performance,
• and protection of established interests.

Eco-system orientation tends to emphasise.

• interdependence,
• stewardship,
• multiple perspectives,
• affected stakeholders,
• long-term consequences,
• collective learning,
• and the health of the wider social and ecological system.

Neither orientation is absolute. People and organisations continually shift between them.

The critical issue is whether the ego-system perspective is mistaken for the whole.

Mental Models and Systems Thinking

Senge describes mental models as deeply held assumptions, generalisations and images that shape how people understand and act in the world (Senge, 1997, 2014).

Mental models are necessary. Without them, experience would be an incoherent mass of information. They allow people to identify patterns, anticipate consequences, and act without having to reconstruct their understanding from the beginning each time.

However, mental models also filter experience.

They can become dangerous when:

• assumptions remain invisible,
• expertise becomes fused with identity,
• familiar categories suppress anomalies,
• or established explanations are shielded from challenge.

Systems Thinking provides an important corrective because it encourages people to examine relationships, feedback, delays, accumulation and unintended consequences rather than explaining outcomes through isolated events.

Cabrera and Cabrera’s DSRP framework makes this process more explicit through four interdependent patterns of thinking: making Distinctions, organising parts and wholes into Systems, identifying Relationships, and examining Perspectives. (Cabrera & Cabrera, 2022; Cabrera & Cabrera, 2023). These patterns remind us that any representation of a system reflects choices about boundaries, composition, connections and viewpoint. The model is therefore not reality; it is a structured but necessarily partial way of understanding it.

A systems mindset recognises that the observer is part of the system being observed. People’s decisions, categories, measures and interventions help produce the conditions they later interpret as external reality.

The relevant reflective question is:

“How might our way of understanding this system be contributing to what we are experiencing?”

Defensive Reasoning and Double-Loop Learning

Argyris distinguished between learning that corrects actions within an existing frame and learning that questions the frame itself (Argyris, 1977).

Single-loop learning asks:

“How can we perform this action more effectively?”

Double-loop learning asks:

“Are the assumptions, goals and governing values behind this action still valid?”

Double-loop learning is difficult because questioning assumptions can also threaten:

• identity,
• status,
• competence,
• professional authority,
• and established power.

Defensive routines emerge when people seek to avoid embarrassment or threat while concealing that avoidance from themselves and others. Organisations may appear to investigate failure while quietly protecting the assumptions that produced it.

A mindset for adaptive learning, therefore, requires more than intellectual capacity. It requires sufficient psychological and relational safety for people to expose incomplete understanding without facing humiliation or exclusion.

Organisational implication

An organisation cannot learn beyond the limits of what its members are permitted to question.

Scout and Soldier Orientations

Galef contrasts the soldier mindset with the scout mindset (Galef, 2021).

The soldier seeks to defend a position and defeat opposing claims, while the scout seeks to understand the terrain accurately.

The distinction concerns motivated reasoning rather than intelligence. People may use considerable analytical ability either to discover what is true or to defend what they already want to believe.

The Scout Mindset asks:

• What is actually happening?
• What evidence would change my view?
• Where might my map be wrong?
• What would I expect to observe if the alternative explanation were true?

The scout does not lack commitment or values. The defining characteristic is a willingness to update the map when the terrain contradicts it.

This makes Scout Mindset particularly important for Organisational Awareness and Governance. Reality cannot remain visible when leaders require information to confirm their preferred narrative.

Fixed and Growth Mindsets

Dweck’s work distinguishes between orientations that treat ability as relatively fixed and those that regard capability as capable of development (Dweck, 2006).

A fixed orientation can make a challenge threatening because difficulty may be interpreted as evidence of inadequacy. A growth orientation can make a challenge informative because effort, feedback and error become part of development.

The distinction has practical value, but it should not be reduced to motivational slogans.

Not every constraint can be overcome by effort. People differ in opportunity, health, power, resources and circumstances. Organisations can also misuse “growth mindset” rhetoric to individualise structural problems or to blame people for failing within poorly designed systems.

A responsible growth orientation recognises both:

• the potential for learning and development,
• and the real conditions that enable or constrain them.

Design Thinking Mindsets

Dosi, Rosati and Vignoli identified a set of mindset constructs associated with Design Thinking, (Dosi, Rosati, & Vignoli, 2018) including:

• tolerance of ambiguity,
• human-centredness,
• empathy,
• holistic thinking,
• reframing,
• openness to perspectives,
• experimentation,
• learning from mistakes,
• critical questioning,
• abductive thinking,
• optimism,
• and a desire to make a difference.

These constructs are useful because they translate the broad language of mindsets into observable orientations associated with inquiry and innovation.

Within Adaptive Capacity, however, they need to be extended beyond innovation workshops and product design.

Experimentation becomes a means of learning from reality. Human-centredness expands to include stakeholder and ecological awareness. A bias towards action must be balanced by consequences and reflection. Optimism must not become denial. Tolerance of ambiguity must not excuse indefinite indecision.

A mindset becomes adaptive only through its relationship with context and consequence.

Mindsets as Complementary Orientations

The aim is not to identify one universally correct mindset.

Different situations require different orientations. Effective adaptation depends on the ability to move between them without becoming trapped at either pole.

Focus and Context

Focused attention enables precision and execution.

Contextual attention preserves relationships, meaning, and consequences.

Possibility and Practicality

Possibility Thinking opens alternatives.

Practicality Thinking tests viability, constraints and consequences.

Confidence and Humility

Confidence enables action.

Humility preserves openness to correction.

Agency and Participation

Agency recognises the capacity to intervene.

Participation recognises that the actor is embedded within the system being changed.

Stability and Adaptation

Stability preserves continuity and dependable performance.

Adaptation allows understanding and action to change when conditions no longer fit.

Ego and Eco

Ego orientation preserves identity, agency and legitimate interest.

Eco orientation places those interests within the wellbeing of the wider system.

Problems arise when one side excludes the other.

Possibility without practicality turns into mere fantasy, while practicality without possibility results in inertia. Confidence lacking humility risks becoming empty certainty. Humility without agency can lead to passivity. Focus lacking context causes fragmentation, and context without focus might never inspire action.

Adaptive judgement lies in recognising what the situation requires.

From Individual to Collective Mindset

Organisations lack a single unified mind; however, recurring interactions lead to the development of collective patterns.

A collective mindset develops when particular ways of attending, interpreting and responding become:

• socially expected,
• institutionally rewarded,
• embedded in language,
• reproduced by leadership,
• and protected by organisational routines.

For example, an organisation may repeatedly reinforce the assumption that:

• Speed is prioritised over reflection.
• Bad news should be delivered gently.
• Expertise must seem definitive.
• Financial impacts are considered more tangible than social outcomes.
• Disagreement is viewed as a sign of disloyalty.
• Anything unmeasured is deemed unimportant; if it is not a KPI, forget it.

These assumptions may never be formally declared. They become visible through what happens to people who challenge them.

Collective mindset therefore resides not only in what people say they believe but in:

• what receives attention,
• what gains resources,
• who is heard,
• what can be safely questioned,
• which consequences count,
• and what happens after failure.

The Role of Identity, Emotion and Power

Mindset cannot be understood as purely rational cognition.

People interpret information through the lens of identity and emotion. Evidence that threatens belonging, moral self-image, expertise or authority may be rejected before it is consciously evaluated.

Power also influences which mindset becomes the organisationally dominant one.

Those with authority may determine:

• which questions are legitimate,
• what information reaches decision forums,
• whose experience counts as evidence,
• how performance is framed,
• and whether alternative interpretations carry personal risk.

This implies that simply urging people to “be open-minded” is inadequate where the organisational system punishes openness.

Mindset development requires corresponding attention to:

• psychological safety,
• governance,
• incentive structures,
• decision rights,
• access to information,
• and the distribution of voice.

Mindsets and Organisational Awareness

Organisational awareness relies on the ability to stay aligned with reality across boundaries. Mindsets determine whether this connection stays clear or gets distorted.

An awareness-supporting mindset:

• notices weak signals,
• seeks diverse perspectives,
• distinguishes evidence from identity,
• tolerates uncertainty long enough to inquire,
• connects local events to wider patterns,
• considers affected stakeholders,
• and remains willing to revise understanding.

An awareness-constraining mindset:

• filters information to protect a preferred narrative,
• treats dissent as disloyalty,
• reduces complexity to familiar categories,
• prioritises urgency over understanding,
• and confines attention to what can be easily measured or controlled.

Organisational Awareness and Mindsets are therefore closely linked but distinct.

Organisational Awareness concerns the organisation’s capacity to stay connected to reality.

Mindsets concern the orientations through which reality is attended to, interpreted and acted upon.

Mindsets and Governance

Governance establishes the principles, decision rights and conditions within which organisational action occurs.

Mindsets determine how those principles are interpreted and enacted.

A principle may call for openness, stewardship, or considering consequences, but its real impact hinges on how decision-makers interpret it:

• as a useful guide,
• a compliance hurdle,
• a public relations move,
• or a prompt for judgement.

 

Governance needs to do more than just set rules; it must foster and safeguard the attitudes required for responsible decision-making.

The overriding governance mindset is the Scout Mindset:

Aim to understand reality as accurately as possible instead of defending a favoured viewpoint. Maintain curiosity, humility, and be prepared to adjust your focus or change course when new evidence, evolving circumstances, or outcomes indicate it.

This does not replace ethical purpose, principles or accountability. It keeps governance connected to the reality those mechanisms are intended to serve.

Developing Adaptive Mindsets

Mindsets cannot be installed through posters, slogans or one-off training.

They develop through repeated experience within a social field.

The organisation cultivates adaptive mindsets when it:

• exposes assumptions to examination,
• makes diverse perspectives available,
• protects respectful challenge,
• creates time for reflection,
• connects decisions with their consequences,
• rewards learning rather than image management,
• and expects leaders to revise their views publicly when evidence changes.

Useful practices include:

Dialogue

Listening to understand rather than preparing to defeat another position.

Gemba

Encountering the place where reality is experienced rather than relying entirely upon abstract reports.

Hansei

Reflecting honestly upon what happened, what was misunderstood and what must change.

Scenario exploration

Considering plausible alternatives before events force a single interpretation.

Red teaming

Testing proposals through disciplined challenge without turning inquiry into personal combat.

Perspective taking

Exploring how a situation appears to affect stakeholders and from different positions within the system.

Consequence review

Examining actual and potential effects across people, prosperity, planet and time.

Double-loop inquiry

Questioning the assumptions and governing values behind existing action.

Red Flags

Certainty Theatre

Confidence is substituted for understanding.

Mindset Labelling

People are classified as possessing the “wrong mindset” rather than examining the situation and system producing their response.

Forced Positivity

Optimism is used to suppress concern, grief, uncertainty or inconvenient evidence.

Ecocentric Theatre

Language about ecosystems and stakeholders conceals decisions driven by narrow self-interest.

Analytical Capture

Only evidence that can be quantified, categorised or modelled is treated as real.

Holistic Vagueness

Appeals to interconnection serve as an excuse for avoiding definition, analysis, or accountable action.

Reflection Without Revision

People discuss learning but preserve the assumptions and behaviour that produced the outcome.

Growth-Mindset Blame

Individuals are held responsible for adapting to structural conditions that the organisation refuses to address.

Identity Defence

A challenge to an idea is interpreted as a challenge to the person, profession or group.

Attention Capture

Urgency, metrics, meetings and digital interruption consume the capacity needed to notice emerging reality.

Core Patterns

Attention Precedes Understanding

What does not enter awareness cannot inform judgement.

Mindset Shapes Attention

People do not attend neutrally. Assumptions, identity, emotion and purpose influence what becomes visible.

Every Perspective Is Partial

Expertise expands perception in some areas while potentially narrowing it in others.

The Part Must Return to the Whole

Focused analysis becomes adaptive only when its findings are reintegrated with context, relationship and consequence.

Identity Can Protect Error

The more closely a belief is tied to status or belonging, the harder it becomes to revise.

Learning Requires Movement

Reflection has not produced learning unless subsequent understanding or action changes.

Collective Mindsets Are Institutional

What an organisation repeatedly rewards, measures and protects becomes part of how it thinks.

Adaptive Capacity Requires Reorientation

Adaptation is not only changing action. It may require changing the place from which the situation is perceived.

Connection to Adaptive Capacity

Adaptive Capacity arises from the interplay between human capital and social capital in situations of uncertainty and consequence.

Mindsets affect both aspects: they determine if human knowledge stays open to correction and if social ties foster honest communication, shared understanding, and coordinated efforts.

Adaptive Capacity weakens when:

• expertise becomes rigid,
• identity prevents revision,
• attention becomes fragmented,
• relationships become defensive,
• or the organisation narrows reality to fit its existing model.

It strengthens when people can:

• focus and widen attention,
• inquire without surrendering agency,
• hold competing interpretations,
• revise assumptions,
• integrate diverse perspectives,
• and act with awareness of the wider system.

Mindset is therefore not a decorative cultural attribute.

It is part of the organisation’s capacity to remain in relationship with reality.

Practical Questions

When facing an important situation, ask:

Attention

• What are we attending to?
• What may have disappeared outside our current field?
• Who or what is controlling the allocation of attention?

Interpretation

• What assumptions are shaping our explanation?
• Which alternative explanations have we considered?
• What evidence would cause us to revise our view?

Identity and Emotion

• What are we trying to protect?
• Where might fear, status or belonging be influencing judgement?
• Can disagreement occur without humiliation or exclusion?

System

• Are we examining an isolated part or its wider relationships?
• Who else experiences the consequences?
• What might happen elsewhere or later because of this decision?

Learning

• What have we discovered?
• What must now change?
• Are we updating only the action, or also the assumptions behind it?

 

Closing Principle

Mindsets shape the orientation from which people meet reality. Adaptive organisations cultivate the ability to focus without becoming narrow, act without becoming blind, hold convictions without becoming defensive, and widen awareness from immediate self-interest toward stewardship of the whole.

References

Argyris, C. (1977). Double loop learning in organizations. Harvard Business Review, 55(5), 115–125.

Argyris, C., & Schön, D. A. (1978). Organizational learning: A theory of action perspective. Addison-Wesley.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). Flow and the foundations of positive psychology. Springer.

Dosi, C., Rosati, F., & Vignoli, M. (2018). Measuring design thinking mindset. In Proceedings of the DESIGN 2018 15th International Design Conference.

Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House.

Galef, J. (2021). The scout mindset: Why some people see things clearly and others don’t. Portfolio.

McGilchrist, I. (2010). Reciprocal organization of the cerebral hemispheres. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 12(4), 503–515.

Scharmer, C. O. (2009). Theory U: Learning from the future as it emerges. Berrett-Koehler.

Scharmer, C. O. (2022). Transforming our economies from ego to eco. Earth4All Deep-Dive Paper 11.

Scharmer, C. O., & Kaufer, K. (2013). Leading from the emerging future: From ego-system to eco-system economies. Berrett-Koehler.

Senge, P. M. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. Doubleday.

Spezio, M. L. (2019). McGilchrist and hemisphere lateralization: Modalities of attention and modes of being. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 9(4).