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The hardest leadership problems are rarely solved by another strategy deck.
They are solved by changing how people behave, decide, learn, and lead when the old playbook stops working.
In this episode of Is Anything Real?, I’m joined by Max Martina of Cambridge Leadership Associates & The Nofsinger Group for a reality-first conversation about adaptive leadership, executive energy, productive tension, and the human work hiding underneath complex organizational change.
Max challenges one of leadership’s most persistent myths: that the right expert, system, or strategy will make uncertainty settle down.
Sometimes the problem is technical. You need expertise, execution, and a clear answer.
But adaptive challenges are different.
The answer does not already exist. The people involved must learn, change behavior, absorb loss, and build the solution together.
That distinction changes everything.
In this episode, we unpack:
- Why leadership is a practice, not a title or identity
- How technical fixes fail when the real challenge is behavioral
- Why growing organizations eventually outgrow the behaviors that made them successful
- What it means to create a holding environment where people can learn and fail forward
- Why innovation is often born from restriction
- How executives can operate inside the “zone of productive disequilibrium” without burning out their teams
- Why work-life balance is mostly fiction—and integration requires discernment
- How leaders run out of usable energy before they run out of time
- Why executive self-care is a performance requirement, not a soft perk
- The 10-minute Adaptive Challenge Audit leaders can run this week
- Why difficult problems need better behavior, boundaries, and bravery—not prettier slides
One of the biggest takeaways:
Adaptive leadership is not having the answer. It is holding the room while the answer gets built.
Connect with Max Martina
Cambridge Leadership Associates: https://cambridge-leadership.com/
The Nofsinger Group: https://nofsingergroup.com/
Connect with Adam W. Barney
Adam is a Transition Leadership Coach, creator of EnergyOS, and author of Make Your Own Glass Half Full.
👉 Book your 20-minute Exploration Call: https://calendly.com/adamwbarney/explorationplugin-20min
Creators and Guests
What is Is Anything Real??
Is Anything Real? is the Reality-First Leadership podcast for builder-leaders who want outcomes, not optics. Each week, Adam W. Barney sits down with founders and operators to unpack positioning, marketing, community, energy management, and influence - plus the numbers behind what actually worked.
You’ll hear: a quick Reality Check, a practical Proof Stack (inputs → actions → outcomes), and one EnergyOS habit you can run this week. Specifics over slogans; humane systems over hustle cosplay.
New episodes every Wednesday at 12:00 PM ET.
👉 Book your 20-min Exploration Call: https://calendly.com/adamwbarney/explorationplugin-20min
[00:05.7]
Here's a myth that quietly wrecks leaders. If I just get the right strategy, everything will settle down. But the truth is we're not living through a strategy problem. We're living through an adaptive challenge problem where the answers aren't in the deck, they're in the people.
[00:22.4]
Today's guest is rooted in adaptive leadership, and he's here for the human side of leading through complexity, energy integration, boundaries, and the realities C-suite leaders don't say out loud, but absolutely live. Welcome back to "Is Anything Real?", the reality-first leadership show where we test advice, publish the receipts, and ship what works under constraint.
[00:45.4]
I'm Adam W. Barney, transition leadership coach, author, and host of this show. Today's guest is Max Martina, Seattle-based, Boston Harvard ties, and part of a two-tier practice, First, Cambridge Leadership Associates, working with big, complex organizations.
[01:03.9]
And then also the Nofsinger Group, confidential advising with senior C-suite leaders. Max, welcome. Adam. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. You got it. All right, before we go deep, quick Boston callback.
[01:19.6]
I'm in Dorchester, land of New Kids on the Block and Bobby Brown, and you've got Seattle grunge energy. So tell me, what's the most Boston leadership trait and the most Seattle leadership trait you've actually seen in the wild?
[01:34.7]
Oh, wow. Okay. Good, good, good, good gotcha question. No, I like it. You know, Seattle, as a West Coast city is very much in keeping with West Coast energy. And I think it gets an appropriate reputation for being not only the mecca for grunge, but also, you know, the one of the VC sister cities beyond Silicon Valley that's really relaxed and casual.
[01:59.7]
And so, you know, we joke that when we show up to the office here, in Seattle, if you have a clean T-shirt on and your fly is zipped, then you're really dressed up. Whereas in Boston, you know, that doesn't quite fly. Boston's a little. It's not New York, but it's a little bit more old school. So I think, I think executives have a bit.
[02:16.8]
Ironically, even though Seattle is the home of grunge, Boston executives have a bit more of a gritty edge. That's an anecdotal experience. And then probably Seattle execs are a little bit more whimsical, maybe. I love it. I love it.
[02:32.7]
All right, you know, you know, here's where we're kind of going today. I think that the myth here is that complex change is solved by technical fixes. The truth being that most real problems are actually adaptive challenges. And the proof is what Max is going to bring here with the patterns he's seen at the C-suite level.
[02:52.0]
You know, Max, can you give us the myth in one sentence? What's the biggest lie leaders tell themselves when the world gets chaotic? Well, there's probably a few, Adam, but great question. One is that they're a leader. And I know that that sounds maybe controversial.
[03:08.0]
Perhaps it's semantics, but I've even stopped using that word in my own vocabulary. He's a leader. She's a leader. They're a leader. Because if you really think about so many of the commonly misunderstood expectations of what leadership really is, first and foremost, we understand it as a practice, as a set of behaviors.
[03:27.1]
Right? So if you're in a position of authority with the expectations of hundreds or thousands of employees staring up at you, you are only leading, insofar, as you are practicing leadership. And so you say, well, that sounds kind of basic, but the reality is that not many of us can practice leadership 100% of our professional lives, many of us are executing against really critical technical initiatives.
[03:51.9]
Right. And so a lot of the problems that we experience are actually technical. A lot of them. You know, if you get a flat tire on the roadside, you know, you don't need a consultant to help you with that. You just need the baseline knowledge of how to fix a tire.
[04:07.3]
Those are great. I mean, those are important problems. Heart surgery would be one of those complex technical problems. But as you point out, a lot of the problems are either a mix of technical and adaptive, or solely adaptive. And those problems are another tier of complexity and ambiguity, and they, unfortunately, defy quick fixes.
[04:28.0]
I think when executives go in thinking that I'm going to lead us through to the promised lands in this complex issue or narrative that we're forming here around the problem that we're facing, my gosh, it's a missed opportunity because the nuance and requirement to delve across stakeholders and silos is very high.
[04:51.7]
So missed opportunity there. Yeah. And those adaptive problems, they often take a lot of time to solve. Right. Yeah. Well, and I think, Max, you know, the myth there is basically, if I just think harder, uncertainty will stop being rude to me.
[05:08.2]
Yeah. Or if I plug in the right expertise, then we've got the problem solved. I mean, but how many times have you seen organizations do, you know, a system retrofit, you know, a new ERP system, and they think, oh, no problem, it's just a technical problem.
[05:24.0]
And yet what they realize, quite quickly, is that human behavior has to change throughout the organization. So you're actually not just changing systems, you're changing the way humans behave in response to the system. So that's the adaptive piece that we think about. Right? Where does human behavior need to change within the system and beyond the system.
[05:43.4]
Yeah, and that's not usually a one-off issue or fix. That's actually, Max, a great way to describe it and define it like a human, not like a textbook. But what would you say a super common adaptive challenge that's been disguised as a technical project.
[05:59.9]
What's an example of what that might look like here? Yeah, well, we, I mean, I mentioned ERP, CRM systems. Any kind of perceived technical internal change within a system or process is a common thing. And in fact, in those cases, a lot of organizations will deploy change management techniques which are helpful and productive and can create project management timelines and effective movement.
[06:25.7]
But you know, you think about beyond the system, even scaling enterprises, scaling an organization is a complex technical issue. In most cases, it's not just simply about growing revenue. Right, right? It's about the adaptation that's required at the individual skill level as well as the organizational lens and even across silos.
[06:47.9]
So we'll see this all the time, as companies grow, that at some stage in their life, usually at multiple stages, five, six different moments in the company's history, the old behaviors no longer support where the organization is headed. And this is why statistically, if you look at the lifespan and longevity of CEOs that are startup founders, most of them don't make it past $50, $60 million in revenue.
[07:12.6]
Well, I mean most companies don't, but the ones that do, those startup founders tend to not have the capacity to adapt and develop the new skill set to evolve into the new way of being. Yeah, very common. Where do you see leaders there tend to get stuck?
[07:29.3]
You know, is it ego? Is it fear? Is it incentives? Is it exhaustion? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, if you think about where you might get stuck when you brush your teeth at night, you think, well, I'm not stuck, but if something happens to your dominant hand, right.
[07:47.4]
If you break your wrist, you're going to be forced to use your non-dominant hand. So why am I bringing that up? Well, it's a simple metaphor because I think if we look at, we have to have a lot of compassion and empathy for these executives who are doing complex work. And most of us don't really appreciate that.
[08:04.4]
But if we can do that, then what we realize is that, at some point, the organization metaphorically forces us to brush our teeth with our non-dominant hand. And so when executives get stuck, they either don't see that, or now I need to switch behavior and do something different.
[08:20.7]
Or they see it, and they say, I don't need to do that because what I've done has always worked in the past. Right. So, it's both an error of metacognition or reflexive consciousness, and I think equally an inability for individuals to actually hone and cultivate the new skill set or behavioral requirement to move forward.
[08:42.2]
And so that twofold issue is what... That really prevents all of us from learning. Right? And yeah. True story. Most executives. And I see, I see it, Max, that adaptive leadership isn't about having the answer. It's about holding the room while the answer gets built.
[09:00.9]
I love that. That's a beautiful way to say that. So what you've called out there is the holding environment. How important it is for executives to design a space where people can learn. And so much about adaptive leadership is really, can individuals, and teams, and orgs create the contextual awareness, the container, the holding environment, to allow for creation, to allow for innovation, to allow for spaces where people can learn.
[09:30.7]
I mean, if you think about high-performance teams throughout history, right? High performance, as Lencioni calls it, really stemmed from trust. But trust, if you look beyond trust, comes from competence. Right? So competence leads to trust, which leads to high performance.
[09:47.2]
Well, what creates competence? What creates competence is failure and learning. And so here we are in organizations wanting high-performance teams. And what we're saying is to get the competence, you need to create the trust, you have to fail to learn. So these things are diametrically opposed. Right?
[10:03.7]
It's an irony because high-performing teams and organizations do allow individuals and teams to fail forward. Well, and that's where we aligned on something hard, that I absolutely love.
[10:19.5]
And it's that idea that innovation is born from restriction. Yes! People don't reinvent until they have to. And I love how you're getting into what's real there and why constraints create progress, actually.
[10:36.1]
Very much so. it comes down to constraints force prioritization, or reprioritization. They force iteration, those learning loops. They expose legacy assumptions. Whereas comfort fuels drifting, and pressure actually fuels the need to make a decision.
[10:54.3]
Yeah, well said. What's a constraint leaders should intentionally impose to help get unstuck, though? Well, that's a great question. So, I think there's a nuanced answer to that, because it would be nice to say, here's the top three lists. But the reality is, is that every executive, every situation is very different.
[11:12.6]
You know, even competing marketing companies or competing sales, or SaaS companies, they will have very unique environments, very unique customer bases. Even within product tech stacks, there'll be different areas of emphasis.
[11:29.5]
So I think what you've hit on there, it's hard to provide a real answer. But what I will say is that we think a lot about this idea of what we would call the zone of productive disequilibrium. Which sounds like big, fancy words, right? But it's the space where all real growth happens.
[11:48.2]
And you can think about that individually, like, if you go to the gym, right? Am I getting fitter? To do that requires putting yourself in a space where it is uncomfortable, where you have to sweat, where physiologically, you actually have to work, to tear muscle fibers or build new capacity.
[12:04.5]
So, it's that place, and at a team and organizational level, where you're actually under some level of disequilibrium constraining, and that can feel like stress and tension. The problem with that spaceis that every individual is different. Right? So some people can tolerate extraordinary amounts of stress and be extremely productive.
[12:24.2]
Some people cannot. And so when we manage and lead teams, part of that requirement is to assess and understand the container, but also the capacity of the teams that we're working with. And so, you know, I often think about leadership as a lever.
[12:40.9]
And it's really a lever about applying heat, or a knob, like in a kitchen. Right? And so part of the leader's job. I say leader. The executive job, the executive who's practicing leadership, it's their job to modulate the heat. And so they need a really sensitive, sort of, a good radar to sense the level of the heat, and also to sense the level of capacity and production that's being generated from the heat.
[13:05.2]
Right? Turn the stove too high, and you're going to burn, burn your eggs. Too low, and it'll take forever to cook. So how do we modulate the heat? And so I think that is maybe an overarching theme and some of those modulations, going along here, but some of those modulations are simple things like timetables, expectations, modulating quality, and quality requirements, team constraints, budget constraints.
[13:31.9]
These can be real or sometimes imagined. But they're all relevant. They're all relevant to creating effective output in organizations. That's a fascinating way to sort of thread that needle in executive leadership where maybe constraint can get confused with suffering.
[13:50.6]
But how, from your perspective, and what you do there in both of the roles that you hold, do you see it's possible for a leader to avoid burning the candle 360 degrees, and maintaining that culture, while still moving fast?
[14:06.3]
Yeah. Gosh, this is... So, back to the productive zone of disequilibrium. I think in for-profit enterprises, oftentimes organizations run too hot, and they burn people out, they burn themselves out. I think the opposite is true in the public sector.
[14:23.9]
When we work with government or entities, the heat is too low, and so real work doesn't get done, it doesn't get pushed forward. So, yeah, I think there's a real risk, across the board, of burnout. I think there's a real risk of overburdening the systems, people, and processes that you have in front of you to actually get real work done.
[14:43.2]
And, so the experimental process of what is required, from a leadership lens, means that to lead effectively, we're not consulting a manual where we're experimenting, assessing, intervening, and attempting new things every single day.
[15:00.5]
And if we have that mindset, Adam, I mean, I'm sure you've experienced this, but if we have that mindset, then not only are we trying new approaches to effective leadership, but we're actually learning from what we've tried. And so we actually gather enormous amounts of data about the system that we're operating in and in that context can make better decisions.
[15:21.5]
The executives that are really attentive and have a very honed radar around the dynamic, external, and intrinsic pressures of the system. I say system to company, in this case. The ones that do, gosh, they're wildly effective, they're much more effective.
[15:38.5]
And, they have a tendency to also be able to observe their own limitations, and frustrations, and challenges, which is a part of staying alive to lead. Yeah. That's a big piece of it. And I mean, I want to quickly touch on something that executives and leaders tend to not put on their strategy slides, but it's energy.
[15:56.4]
And by that, personal energy. Right? Because one of the key things that levels every single human on this planet is that we all only get 24 hours in the day to get done what we need to get done. And in that, you mentioned something I loved, the old "don't mix files" advice.
[16:12.6]
You know, having a work drawer, a family drawer, a hobby drawer. And that's absolutely adorable, in a sort of Pleasantville way of thinking. But it's impossible now. Yeah, I totally agree. What do you see is real there? Is it balance, or is it integration?
[16:29.1]
Yeah, it's the latter word. I mean the file drawer metaphor that was shared with me, by my mentor, is really, I think, a mechanistic 1950s, 1960s model, you know, from the Mad Men world where we have our professional lives and it's siphoned off from the family life, which is siphoned off from our rest and relaxation, or repose.
[16:49.5]
But as you said, that model doesn't work in a hyper-connected future, and present, where technology is always on. The only way to move forward in this new dynamic, particularly with AI emerging as a powerful shaper of futures, is to integrate.
[17:07.8]
And so what does integration mean? Well, integration comes from the word integrate. And integrate has, at its root, integrity. Right? So integrity by definition, if we think more along the lines of metallurgy, I think is a much more valuable idea.
[17:23.7]
If you have steel that has integrity, right, It holds an edge. It can bend but not warp. Right? It doesn't shatter. And so in the same way, I thinkmexecutives today need to have that kind of integrity that allows them to integrate. Not honesty and ethics, although that's relevant.
[17:41.4]
It's the kind of fortitude and resilience that enables them to. There are times you have to take calls during maybe a personal retreat or some quiet time, that you're dealing with. But there's also some time in work where you're going to have to manage, you know, some home life issues that surface.
[17:58.1]
So this integration is really about discernment. It's really about, how do I understand how and when I need to intervene to create positive outcomes without destroying my own energy. Right? And so a lot of executives, you know, they, they, they, they ultimately move through this place of busy, busy, busy lives and then feel, to some extent, trapped or victimized by their context and container.
[18:23.8]
And that's unfortunately not discernment. That's being used by the system. Right? So to integrate, we have to... balance is, I think, a four-letter word, unfortunately. I don't like it. Because I don't think it's real. I don't think it's real either.
[18:40.1]
Yeah. Whatever we choose to focus on, by definition, we're impoverishing something else. So, what are we choosing? Right? And that's an active process, as I'm sure you've seen. There's also that cost of context switching.
[18:55.9]
Right? And that doesn't help leaders or executives manage their own nervous system, which should be a priority there. Well said. I think it's also tough for leaders to protect their team energy without being viewed as being soft.
[19:11.6]
But you know, that's important. But also I would ground this all in the fact that C-suite executives and founders don't run out of time first, they run out of usable energy. And I think that's a great starting point for, where what I like to call energy debt starts to show up in executive behavior and regaining that capacity is critical.
[19:33.8]
Well, you know, I have three kids, as we might have discussed earlier, and my youngest just turned 13, so, I have three teenagers in the house. And when they were little, there's this book about filling your love bucket, which sounds so silly, but as a metaphor, maybe parents out there have heard this book.
[19:50.1]
It's kind of the same thing for executives. Right? As the most valuable commodity or resource that you have access to, it is your own storehouse of energy. So that idea of, and we've sort of hinted at this, but the power of the idea of self-care, it is not a touchy-feely thing.
[20:08.5]
Right? It's not something that we just give lip service to. It is actually a requirement for senior executives operating at a high performance level. And it would be no different than a high-performance athlete, you know, showing up to the track meet, you know, half an hour late, not having stressed, not having slept.
[20:26.5]
Right? Going out, binge drinking the night before. You know, they wouldn't do that because they're guarding and protecting that reserve. Right? So, as executives, we want to be attentive to that too. The problem is in an executive landscape, you know, where we're always on. Everyone sees this all the time.
[20:42.6]
When you're a track superstar athlete, you know, you're running for, you know, 10 seconds if you're the 100-meter sprinter. Right. So it's a little different in terms of how we deploy that energy. But I love that comparison here because I think people think that the C-suite has fewer problems, but the truth is, it's just higher-stakes versions of the same human problems that we all face.
[21:07.4]
Yeah, I love that. I mean in organizational life, we think of one idea here, maybe a new idea, but that individuals and organizations go through stages and at the earliest stages of development. One of the things that we notice is that, particularly, if you think about when you started your first job or anyone out there listening who's new in their careers, the goal is execution and performance.
[21:30.2]
It's about deploying expertise and skill sets in a way where you can achieve. Right? The irony is, in later stages of organizational life, we're expected to actually tolerate and handle all of the stresses and cares of other people. So we think of the paradox of leadership as, maybe early stage.
[21:49.9]
You know, functionally, less stress because you're only in charge of what's in front of you. Right? And you get more kudos and rewards. You know, oftentimes the sales guys are the most highly compensated in organizations. And then if you're managing or leading, right, you have more stress, and you get fewer rewards in terms of psychological kudos.
[22:08.2]
So there's this paradox of leadership that happens in late-stage enterprises and with high-level executives tha very few people have empathy for. They do not understand the pains and pressures of the executive. And even if they think they do, they probably don't.
[22:26.8]
So it's hard, hard place to be. Right? As an executive. And people who aren't in that C-suite level probably think that proof is just the idea, but really proof is the behavior change that holds when pressure spikes. Love it. Yeah, well said.
[22:42.6]
I mean, I mean this work, for a lot of, if there's, if you have executive coaches out there, I think this might be familiar. But this idea that, you know, providing advice is not really the focus of what we do, from an advisory lens. The focus of what we do is helping someone actively brush their teeth with their non-dominant hand, which is fundamentally behavioral.
[23:03.5]
Right? So what we want to look for is behavioral change in the system and individual. And I'll have an executive, maybe we've been talking for a while, that shows up to my office and they'll say, you know, I did this a little differently. I tried this. I get really excited because I understand the foundations of behavior change being connected to awareness, and minute behavioral changes, and adjustments.
[23:28.8]
And when I hear that, I think, wow, we're onto something. This is massive for actually impacting wholesale change. Yeah. It doesn't need to be big. And I actually think about it. You know, as we were talking, Max, I was thinking about maybe one move, something that listeners could run this week. And I'm thinking something like The Adaptive Challenge Audit.
[23:46.0]
Right? It should take 10 minutes. Write down the hardest thing you're facing right now, then answer a few quick questions. You know, one is technical or is it adaptive? If it is adaptive, what behavior has to change? It could be yours or the team's.
[24:01.3]
Yeah, great. Maybe what loss is being avoided? Is it status, certainty, control, identity? And then maybe, one tiny experiment you can run in seven days, to learn your way forward. But the kicker being, what are you tolerating in that that's draining your energy?
[24:19.1]
You know, circle one tolerance. Remove it this week. What's one tolerance you see C-suite leaders normalize that's quietly killing them, though? Yeah, it depends on the executive. But, I think unfortunately, executives err on the side of not being declarative enough.
[24:42.8]
So, that manifests, in my words, maybe, as being too soft and not driving sufficient accountability. This is less true at public corporations with C-suite. But, it can be true. Most people, they over-index on the safe environment for their employees.
[25:01.8]
And so the problem with that is that you're actually not focused on the work. You're focused on employee satisfaction. And while that's important to doing the work, the relentless focus has to be on, what is the actual work? Right? And if we can orient people to that, oh my gosh, then we can actually get buy-in because we connect with a deeper sense of purpose at the organizational level.
[25:22.5]
Yeah, I think that's great. I love the idea of an audit. Yeah, you know, and so much of that is about, who are the stakeholders in this issue? And most of us don't think beyond our own purview. There are a lot of stakeholders in these complex issues that we often don't consider. That is extremely true.
[25:38.8]
Well, you know, Max, and in C-suite leadership and leadership just in general, after everything we just covered, is anything real? Yeah. The output of organizations doing extraordinary work is obviously real.
[25:59.0]
And I think when you work backwards from what we aspire to create as executives. And to use the words leader, which is a semantic issue that I have with that, but to use that, is anything real? Yeah, and when we push beyond the results of what we're expecting and seeing, then you actually see the heart, and the soul, and the purpose that enables this output to exist and flourish.
[26:27.4]
And so I think that's real because without that, the human creative mind and the enterprising results that we can create extraordinary things, it doesn't happen. So, got to come from somewhere. So, I think it's real. Yeah, I know it's real.
[26:44.3]
I mean, through that, you know, I think what's real is the hard problems don't need better decks. They need better behavior, boundaries, and bravery. Great bravery. I love that. Courage, right? Yeah, we think a lot about courage. We know that courage is about doing something that you're scared of doing.
[27:04.3]
Right? It's not about having no fear. So yeah, leadership exists in that space where we're at the liminal. Right? Where we're actually doing what we don't know, will lead to results. And that's risky. Very risky. It's super risky.
[27:19.8]
You know, Max, where can people find you and Cambridge Leadership Associates, and maybe not find the Nofsinger Group, and what kind of leaders should reach out? That's great, Adam, thanks. Cambridge Leadership Associates. Check out our website: cambridge-leadership.com.
[27:37.1]
We were founded in Boston out of Harvard. We now live and work in Seattle, most of us. We have an international crew. For those that are thinking about executive advising, our separate platform is nofsingergroup.com and I think the platform's a little bit different in the sense that we tend to work with larger organizations in training on the CLA side, and senior-level executives on the Nofsinger side.
[28:02.2]
So, depending on who you are and if it would be helpful, happy to have a conversation and thanks. Oh my gosh. And we'll, of course, link to that in the show notes below. But for our listeners, if this episode hit you, send it to one leader who keeps trying to solve an adaptive challenge with another spreadsheet.
[28:18.1]
You know, and if you're leading through transition what got you here, won't get you there. There's a 20-minute foundational call with me linked in the show notes below, as well. No pitch, just reality in the next move. But until next time, proof over performance and ship what works.
[28:34.8]
But, Max, thank you. Adam, what a pleasure. Love the questions. Love being with you. Thanks a lot.