Adaptive Adoption — Intellectual Lineage \& Canonical Texts

# Adaptive Adoption — Intellectual Lineage \& Canonical Texts

This document maps the thinkers, texts, and traditions that Adaptive Adoption draws from — and where it departs from each. The framework is a synthesis; no single tradition covers the full problem of AI adoption. Each contributes something essential and each has a critical gap.

## Pillar 1: Master the Craft

*Build capability through doing, not curriculum*

**Parent Traditions**: Learning Organizations / Communities of Practice, Progressive Pedagogy

| Thinker / Text | Contribution | Where AA Departs |

|----------------|-------------|-----------------|

| Peter Senge — *The Fifth Discipline* (1990) | Systems thinking, generative learning, mental models | Senge assumed organizations had time to learn over years. AI doesn't give you years. |

| Etienne Wenger — *Communities of Practice* (1998) | Learning as social participation, situated learning | Wenger's communities are organic and slow-forming. AI adoption needs deliberately accelerated peer learning. |

| John Dewey — *Experience and Education* (1938) | Learning by doing, experiential education | Foundational but pre-digital. The "doing" in AI is building, not reflecting. |

| Donald Schön — *The Reflective Practitioner* (1983) | Knowing-in-action, reflection-in-action | |

**What's missing**: The speed problem. These thinkers assumed learning could unfold at an organic pace. AI adoption requires compressed craft-building where the curriculum can't be designed in advance because the tools change quarterly.

## Pillar 2: Embrace Complexity

*Design for nonlinear systems, not waterfall plans*

**Parent Traditions**: Complexity Science / Complex Adaptive Systems, Systems Thinking

| Thinker / Text | Contribution | Where AA Departs |

|----------------|-------------|-----------------|

| Dave Snowden — *Cynefin Framework* | Domain model: simple, complicated, complex, chaotic | Cynefin is diagnostic but not prescriptive for sustained change programs. AA operationalizes what to *do* in the complex domain. |

| Ralph Stacey — *Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics* | Complexity and management, zone of complexity | |

| Donella Meadows — *Thinking in Systems* (2008) | Leverage points, system dynamics | |

| Stuart Kauffman — *At Home in the Universe* (1995) | Self-organization, fitness landscapes | Pure science — needs translation to organizational practice. |

**What's missing**: Operationalization. Most complexity-informed management writing stops at "embrace uncertainty" without telling you what to do on Monday morning. AA provides the Monday-morning actions.

## Pillar 3: Consciously Manage Trust

*Address both undertrust and overtrust*

**Parent Traditions**: Organizational Trust Literature, Psychological Safety Research

| Thinker / Text | Contribution | Where AA Departs |

|----------------|-------------|-----------------|

| Amy Edmondson — *The Fearless Organization* (2018) | Psychological safety as enabler of learning and innovation | Edmondson focuses on interpersonal trust. AI trust adds a human-machine dimension she doesn't address. |

| Mayer, Davis \& Schoorman — ABI Model (1995) | Ability, Benevolence, Integrity as dimensions of trust | Framework is interpersonal. AA extends to human-AI trust and institutional trust in AI initiatives. |

| Rachel Botsman — *Who Can You Trust?* (2017) | Distributed trust, trust in technology | Closer to AA's concerns but not operationalized for organizational change. |

| Onora O'Neill — BBC Reith Lectures on Trust (2002) | Trust as active judgment, not blind faith | The philosophical foundation for "conscious" trust management. |

Gibbons quote: "trust as resistance anti-venom" (first in keynote with nice snake picture)

**What's missing**: No existing trust framework addresses the *dual failure mode* of AI: undertrust (refusal to adopt) and overtrust (blind acceptance of outputs). AA treats both as risks requiring different interventions. No change management framework addresses trust at all.

## Pillar 4: Put People First™

*Augment before automate; ethical stance + strategic sequence*

**Parent Traditions**: Organization Development (OD), Human-Centered Design, Humanistic Management

| Thinker / Text | Contribution | Where AA Departs |

|----------------|-------------|-----------------|

| Edgar Schein — *Humble Inquiry* (2013) / Process Consultation | OD founding principles, helping relationships | Schein's OD is slow and facilitation-heavy. AI timelines don't allow for it. |

| Douglas McGregor — *The Human Side of Enterprise* (1960) | Theory X vs. Theory Y — assumptions about workers | The original case that how you treat people determines outcomes. |

| Paul Gibbons & James Healy - *Adopting AI: The People-first Approach * (2025) | Humanism and AI | People-first as a moral and tactical imperative (affects the why how and whether of AI) |

| Jeffrey Pfeffer — *The Human Equation* (1998) | Evidence that people-first strategies outperform financially | Pfeffer provides the business case. AA operationalizes it as a *sequence*: augment first, automate second. |

| Erik Brynjolfsson \& Andrew McAfee — *The Second Machine Age* (2014) | Augmentation vs. automation as strategic choice | Macro-economic framing. AA brings this into the change methodology. |

**What's missing**: OD and humanistic management provide the values but not the strategic *sequencing* for technology adoption. "People first" as a principle is empty without the specific inversion: start with augmentation, build trust and skills, then pursue efficiency. *"You get to the efficiency gains faster by not starting with them."*

## Pillar 5: Design and Prototype

*Sprints and experimentation replace fixed future states*

**Parent Traditions**: Design Thinking, Agile / Lean, Experimentation Culture

| Thinker / Text | Contribution | Where AA Departs |

|----------------|-------------|-----------------|

| Tim Brown — *Change by Design* (2009) | Design thinking for organizational innovation | Design thinking as typically practiced is a workshop methodology. AA embeds it as the operating system for change. |

| Eric Ries — *The Lean Startup* (2011) | Build-measure-learn, MVP, validated learning | Startup-focused. AA adapts this for enterprise contexts where politics, compliance, and scale add friction. |

| Paul Gibbons & Yves van Durme - *Future of Change Management* (2024) | Uses and Abuses of Design Thinking | Design thinking does not replace CM because scaling requires politics and culture change

| Stefan Thomke — *Experimentation Works* (2020) | Business experimentation at scale | Strong on the case for experimentation, less on the human/change dimensions. |

| IDEO / d.school | Human-centered design methodology | |

**What's missing**: Design thinking is silent on trust, power dynamics, and the emotional reality of people who fear losing their jobs to the thing you're prototyping. AA integrates the human dimension that design thinking assumes away.

## Pillar 6: Prioritize Behavior

*Intention-action gap, behavioral science over attitudes/values*

**Parent Traditions**: Behavioral Science / Behavioral Economics, Habit Science, Implementation Science

| Thinker / Text | Contribution | Where AA Departs |

|----------------|-------------|-----------------|

| Daniel Kahneman — *Thinking, Fast and Slow* (2011) | Dual-process theory, cognitive biases | Foundational behavioral science but not applied to organizational change methodology. |

| Richard Thaler \& Cass Sunstein — *Nudge* (2008) | Choice architecture, libertarian paternalism | AA explicitly rejects "dark patterns" — behavioral science as coercion. Nudge can slide into manipulation. |

| James Clear Atomic Habits

| BJ Fogg — *Tiny Habits* (2019) | Habit formation, implementation triggers, ability-motivation-prompt | Directly applicable. AA uses habit stacking and implementation triggers for behavior change. |

| Jeffrey Pfeffer \& Robert Sutton — *The Knowing-Doing Gap* (2000) | Why knowledge doesn't translate to action | The direct predecessor to AA's critique of ADKAR: awareness + desire + knowledge ≠ action. |

| Wendy Wood — *Good Habits, Bad Habits* (2019) | Habit science, environmental design for behavior | |

**What's missing**: Behavioral science provides the mechanisms but has never been systematically applied to technology adoption methodology. And the dominant change model (ADKAR) ignores everything behavioral science has learned since 2000. AA bridges this gap.

## Pillar 7: Manage Ethics Always

*Frontline applied ethics, not governance dashboards*

**Parent Traditions**: Applied / Business Ethics, Responsible AI / AI Ethics, Moral Psychology

| Thinker / Text | Contribution | Where AA Departs |

|----------------|-------------|-----------------|

| Paul Gibbons — *The Science of Organizational Change* / *Change Myths* | Critical thinking applied to organizational practice, ethical leadership | AA extends this into AI-specific applied ethics. |

| Jonathan Haidt — *The Righteous Mind* (2012) | Moral intuitions, moral foundations theory | Explains *why* people disagree about ethics. AA needs to operationalize ethical reasoning despite disagreement. |

| John Rawls — *A Theory of Justice* (1971) | Fairness as foundational ethical principle | The veil of ignorance as a tool for AI ethics: "if you didn't know your position, would you accept this system?" |

| Luciano Floridi — *Ethics of Artificial Intelligence* | AI-specific ethical frameworks | Academic rigor but not operationalized for frontline practitioners. |

| Timnit Gebru \& Joy Buolamwini | Algorithmic bias, AI fairness research | Empirical foundation for why AI ethics can't be a compliance checkbox. |

**What's missing**: Compliance frameworks didn't stop VW, Enron, Wells Fargo, or Boeing 737 MAX. Every catastrophic corporate ethics failure happened inside organizations with ethics codes and governance dashboards. Ethics must be a *practiced frontline capability* — ethical reasoning as a skill, psychological safety as ethics infrastructure, and ethics embedded in every sprint. No change framework includes this.

## Cross-Cutting Influences

| Thinker / Text | Relevance |

|----------------|-----------|

| Kurt Lewin — Field Theory, Action Research | Grandfather of OD and change. AA inherits the action research orientation but rejects the linear unfreeze-change-refreeze model. |

| John Kotter — *Leading Change* (1996) | The dominant change model AA challenges. 8 steps assume known destination and linear execution. |

| Edgar Schein — *Organizational Culture and Leadership* | Culture as deep assumptions. AA's Pillar 6 argues behavior must come before culture change. |

| Karl Weick — *Sensemaking in Organizations* (1995) | How people make sense of ambiguity. Essential for understanding adoption resistance. |

| Chris Argyris — *Overcoming Organizational Defenses* (1990) | Single/double-loop learning, defensive routines. |

| W. Edwards Deming | Systems thinking, continuous improvement. The quality movement's insight that systems, not people, drive outcomes. |

| Nassim Taleb — *Antifragile* (2012) | Systems that gain from disorder. Adaptive Adoption is designed to be antifragile. |

## The Synthesis Claim

Each tradition contributes something essential. Each has a critical gap. No one has previously woven them into a single operational methodology for technology adoption.

**Adaptive Adoption is not**:

- OD with AI vocabulary

- Design thinking applied to change

- Complexity theory repackaged

- Behavioral science for tech adoption

- An ethics framework

**Adaptive Adoption is**: the first methodology that integrates all five traditions into an operational framework designed for a world where the technology shifts monthly, skills cannot be predicted, and the biggest risk isn't the technology — it's the humans.

## Open Items

- [ ] Paul to review and add missing thinkers from personal canon

- [ ] Add specific citations (edition, chapter) for key claims

- [ ] Identify thinkers Paul has personal relationships with (endorsement potential)

- [ ] Map which texts are cited in existing books vs. new to Book 8

- [ ] Add empirical studies that support each pillar (beyond canonical texts)

- [ ] Consider: anyone working on similar synthesis who is a potential ally or threat?

## Version History

| Version | Date | Changes |

|---------|------|---------|

| 0.1 | 2026-02-19 | Initial draft |

| 0.2 | 2026-02-25 | Formatted for repo |