Adaptability

How do some people flourish while others falter when the world changes around them? In Adaptability: The Art of Winning in an Age of Uncertainty, Max McKeown takes this question head-on, arguing that our greatest human strength is not power, intelligence, or even resilience—it’s adaptability. McKeown contends that in a world of volatility, disruption, and relentless change, survival depends not on rigid plans but on the ability to recognize when the game has shifted and to reinvent yourself to play it better.

At its core, McKeown’s argument is that all failure is a failure to adapt and that all success—whether in business, politics, or personal life—comes from effective adaptation. Through memorable case studies ranging from Ford’s preemptive turnaround to Nelson Mandela’s political genius, the book explains how individuals and organizations can develop what McKeown calls “super-adaptability”—the habit of continual renewal beyond mere survival.

Three Steps to Survival and Success

McKeown structures his whole framework around three essential steps of adaptive mastery. First, you must recognize the need to adapt—to sense shifting realities before crisis strikes. Second, you must understand the kind of adaptation required—to distinguish between superficial fixes and deep systemic change. And third, you must act to make the necessary adaptation, transforming knowledge into motion. Every chapter in the book explores these steps in different contexts, from global warfare to Silicon Valley innovation, from ants and algorithms to Broadway fiascos.

Adaptability Across Scales

The beauty of McKeown’s book lies in its scope. Adaptation operates on every level of life: genetic, technological, and behavioral. He moves seamlessly between examples as diverse as Toyota’s long-term foresight in developing the Prius, the town of Filettino rebelling against the Italian state by declaring independence, and the “Nazi Zombies” video game invented by rogue developers. For McKeown, these stories illustrate that adaptation is both an individual art and a group performance. The best companies and societies share a culture that encourages playful experimentation, generosity of ideas, and rebellion against conformity.

He contrasts adaptive systems with maladaptive ones—organizations and governments that cling to stability, hierarchy, or nostalgia. When we mistake consistency for competence, he warns, we become like the Easter Islanders who cut down every tree or executives at HP who keep buying companies rather than rejuvenating their own. The message is clear: stability is a dangerous illusion, and complacency is the death of potential.

From Surviving to Thriving to Transcending

McKeown presents adaptation as a continuum with four levels: collapse, survival, thriving, and transcendence. Collapse is failure—organizations or societies that cannot respond at all. Survival means coping but staying stuck in mediocrity. Thriving happens when you outperform within existing rules. But transcendence—the ultimate adaptive victory—occurs when you redefine the game itself, creating new rules that benefit more players. Think of Mandela dismantling apartheid, Nike inventing new materials through street-level observation, or Apple turning a series of product flops into a design revolution.

Why This Matters Now

In an age of global upheaval, McKeown’s work resonates far beyond management theory. His writing belongs beside thinkers like Charles Darwin and Clayton Christensen (author of The Innovator’s Dilemma), yet it feels more urgent and human. He argues that adaptability is the ultimate survival advantage and the foundation of progress—whether you’re running a company or just navigating your own personal reinvention. You can’t control uncertainty, but you can control how you respond to it. Learning to adapt doesn’t just help you win; it helps humanity evolve.

Ultimately, McKeown calls adaptability “the art of winning.” It is not blind flexibility nor reckless change—it’s the intelligent balance between curiosity and courage, imagination and discipline. By understanding the science and stories of those who’ve adapted well, you can train yourself and your organization to anticipate, absorb, and transcend uncertainty. As the book concludes, adaptation is never over—it is, and always will be, the beginning.

McKeown opens his exploration of adaptability with a simple yet provocative rule: Play your own game. If the rules ensure your defeat, change them. This principle is vividly illustrated through the contrast between the rigid strategy of the US military during the Iraq War and the fluid insurgent tactics that ultimately outmaneuvered them. The lesson is straightforward—if you can’t win by your opponent’s rules, stop playing by them.

Adapting When Rules Fail

The United States entered Iraq in 2003 with a “shock and awe” strategy, assuming overwhelming military force would guarantee rapid victory. What happened instead was an insurgency—dispersed, decentralized, and adaptive. Once the official Iraqi army dissolved, former soldiers and civilians formed guerrilla networks that turned the military defeat into a long-term stalemate. McKeown likens this to the myth of Hydra: every head cut off grows two back. Every act of control provoked more resistance.

The key mistake was not learning fast enough. Historical evidence—from Vietnam to Afghanistan—had already shown the futility of rigid military doctrine against asymmetric opposition. Yet planners repeated the same assumptions, refusing to pivot. McKeown argues that adaptation delays—caused by bureaucracy, denial, and fear of losing face—are fatal. Estimated Time to Adapt is the gap between change and action, and successful groups minimize that gap relentlessly.

Changing the Game, Not Just Playing It

To adapt like a Hydra is to multiply your options and become unpredictable. In business contexts, this might mean finding non-obvious approaches to entrenched problems. Netflix, Red Bull, and Apple all demonstrate this principle—they did not simply join the race; they changed its course. Playing your own game means noticing when your environment punishes conformity and rewards originality. It means mastering the rules before breaking them.

“If you are getting whipped playing by the existing rules,” McKeown writes, “get used to losing—or change the game.”

In your own life, this is both liberating and demanding advice. It encourages self-examination: where have you been following scripts that no longer serve you? Where can you innovate instead of imitate? Whether you’re facing a career transition or a personal reinvention, McKeown’s first rule reminds you that adaptability begins the moment you give yourself permission to create your own game.

One of McKeown’s boldest claims is that there’s no such thing as inevitable decline—only a failure to adapt. Through case studies of Ford, Toyota, and the US Postal Service, he demonstrates that entrenched institutions often fail not from external shocks, but from refusing to evolve.

Ford: Preemptive Adaptation

In 2008, when GM and Chrysler begged for bailouts, Ford quietly declined. Why? Because three years earlier, CEO Alan Mulally had recognized the storm coming. He borrowed $23 billion—before the financial crash—to retool factories and focus on fuel-efficient vehicles. This foresight turned crisis into opportunity. Ford transformed its business model, investing in hybrid technology and partnering with Toyota—a classic example of adapting before necessity forced change.

Toyota: Competing with Possible

Toyota’s Earth Charter (1992) epitomized preemptive creativity. Aiming to build cars with the lowest pollution possible, not just lower emissions, Toyota conceived the Prius years before environmental concerns became mainstream. By combining ambition with incremental learning, Toyota showed that true adaptation often involves moving ahead of demand, not reacting to it. When rivals mocked hybrid technology, Toyota created a billion-dollar market.

Stuck Systems and Cultural Paralysis

In contrast, the US Postal Service’s inability to adapt illustrates McKeown’s cautionary theme. Bound by century-old laws and rigid hierarchies, it became a monument to inertia. Regulations, unions, and outdated culture turned its monopoly into a prison. Adaptation requires flexibility; institutions built for stability almost always collapse under change. The tragedy, McKeown argues, is that the people inside usually know what’s wrong but lack authority or imagination to fix it.

Across all these examples, McKeown’s lesson is simple but profound: recognize change early, adapt deliberately, and never assume success will protect you. Whether in business or life, failure isn’t an event—it’s a refusal to evolve.

Adaptive progress often starts with rebellion. McKeown’s Rule 3—Embrace unacceptable wisdom—reminds you that the ideas most worth pursuing are often the ones your peers dismiss. Across stories from a rebellious Italian mayor to Levi’s waterless jeans and Portugal’s drug reform, he shows that progress begins with dissent.

Rebelling Against the Obvious

When bureaucrats ordered small villages to merge, Filettino’s mayor led his town to declare independence rather than comply. In doing so, he reframed constraint into creativity. Similarly, Levi Strauss’s Carl Chiara refused to accept “industry wisdom” that jeans finishing required massive water use. By demanding water-free processes, Levi’s cut water consumption by 96 percent and launched Water<Less™—a triumph of stubborn idealism over inertia.

Science, Authority, and Defiance

McKeown revisits Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments to remind us that rebellion takes courage. Most participants shocked a stranger to lethal levels just because someone in a white coat told them to. Only a minority resisted. Those few hold the key to change: societies evolve thanks to people who say no when everyone else accepts the unacceptable.

In Portugal, politicians who rejected punitive drug laws faced global ridicule. Yet their health-based approach reduced addiction, crime, and HIV infection drastically. McKeown calls this “unacceptable wisdom”—truth that challenges comfortable illusions but proves itself through results.

The Minority That Moves the Majority

Drawing on the work of social psychologist Serge Moscovici, McKeown emphasizes how small groups of committed dissenters can shift societal norms. Minority views face ridicule, but persistence creates credibility. As Vitalino Canas, Portugal’s reform architect, said of his fight to decriminalize drugs: “You must repeat yourself—again and again—until reality agrees.” For McKeown, adaptability requires precisely that stubborn repetition of better ideas until the world catches up.

Failure is not the point—learning is. In Rule 7, McKeown flips Silicon Valley’s mantra “fail fast” on its head. Failing fast without learning is just reckless. The better goal is to learn fast—to translate experiments into lasting progress.

The Mini and the Myth of Reinvention

The iconic Mini car offers a parable in adaptation cycles. The original Mini was born from crisis—fuel shortages in 1950s Britain. It reinvented the small car. Yet its makers failed to evolve; the design stagnated for decades. BMW’s later reinvention of the brand, combining nostalgia with innovation, succeeded because it learned from the past while daring to modernize. Learning fast, not clinging to legacy, transformed failure into success.

Tropicana and Superficial Change

Contrast that with PepsiCo’s Tropicana rebrand—a $33 million disaster that confused customers with generic packaging. McKeown uses it to show how change alone isn’t adaptation. Without understanding users, you risk fixing what isn’t broken. Learning from this misstep required humility—returning to the old design within weeks.

Apple’s Relentless Iteration

Apple is McKeown’s archetype of learning fast. When its MobileMe service flopped, Steve Jobs publicly admitted failure, firing teams and launching iCloud. The company’s greatness lies in its refusal to settle: revisiting mistakes until perfection emerges. As McKeown puts it, “Failing fast is easy. Learning fast is rare.”

The lesson for you? Don’t glorify failure. Glorify reflection. Every experiment—big or small—should teach you something that makes your next move smarter. Learning fast is what makes adaptability enduring.

In Rule 5, McKeown dismantles one of the most comforting human myths—that things can stay stable forever. From Swiss banks to geopolitics, he shows that the pursuit of stability often breeds fragility. True strength lies in motion, not stillness.

UBS and the Cost of Denial

Swiss bank UBS proudly told the world their reputation was their most valuable asset. Yet behind the slogan lay risky trading, toxic assets, and cultural complacency. When a single trader lost $2.5 billion, the illusion shattered. Instead of adapting when warning signs appeared, executives clung to old structures until collapse forced change.

Game Theory and Cooperation

McKeown uses game theory—from Von Neumann to Anatol Rapoport’s famous “tit-for-tat” strategy—to illustrate adaptive cooperation. Stability built on mistrust, as in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, locks groups into zero-sum traps. But forgiveness—responding to today’s move, not yesterday’s grudges—can reset the game. Mandela’s reconciliation politics exemplified this principle: adapting relationships to create renewal rather than revenge.

Illusions of Control

Many organizations, like UBS or entrenched regimes, equate control with stability. McKeown argues this mindset blinds leaders to new realities. South Africa found stability only by dismantling apartheid. In contrast, Israel and UBS tried to preserve equilibrium and deepened crises. The paradox: stability achieved through change endures, while control without adaptation decays. To stay alive, keep moving.

In later chapters, McKeown shows how collective adaptability—what he calls swerving and swarming—creates unstoppable momentum. Whether in protests, corporations, or cities, transformation happens when masses of individuals move differently but together.

When Crowds Become Intelligence

The Occupy movement, born from a single online poster by Adbusters, illustrates swarming behavior. Without centralized leadership, ideas spread through hashtags, tents, and public debate. As McKeown explains, mass adaptability thrives when participation is open and flexible. Clarity of purpose—like “Democracy not Corporatocracy”—turns chaos into coordination.

Corporate Swerves

McDonald’s rediscovered adaptability through grassroots innovation. A Melbourne franchise owner who added coffee on her counter sparked a chain evolution: the McCafé. Headquarters later embraced this bottom-up experiment globally. Swerving from centralized control to local creativity revitalized the brand. As CEO Jim Skinner summarized, “Relentless focus on improvement” is the real secret of scalability.

Swarming for Change

McKeown stresses that adaptation is not linear. Progress emerges as it did in social movements and open-source innovation—through many small, decentralized experiments that converge into systemic change. Whether you lead a team or join a movement, encourage free play at the edges. Swerving past old hierarchies and swarming around better ideas transforms stagnation into evolution.

The book closes with McKeown’s most hopeful rule: It’s always the beginning. Adaptation, he says, is never done. Every win is a new starting point. This final idea celebrates perpetual renewal—what he calls the art of joyful improvement.

Renewal Through Rivalry

Consider the battle between Lego and Mega Bloks. When Lego’s patents expired, its rival exploited the opening, introducing themed sets from comics and films. Instead of suing forever, Lego learned from competition, borrowed ideas, and came back stronger. Each iteration improved both brands and expanded the entire building-toy market. Adaptation doesn’t end when you win—it starts again the next morning.

Tata and the Spirit of Jugaad

Indian conglomerate Tata embodies this living adaptability. From steel and airlines to the $2,500 Nano car, Tata’s success flows from jugaad—the Indian philosophy of resourceful improvisation. Even when the Nano stumbled, Tata kept evolving the design rather than retreating. As Ratan Tata said, “Bold steps take us further.” This continuous courage to iterate differentiates survivors from transcendents.

Adaptation Fatigue vs. Adaptive Joy

McKeown warns of “adaptation fatigue”—when people tire of change and settle for mediocrity. To stay adaptive, you must rediscover curiosity and play. The best innovators—like Red Bull Racing engineers or small-town inventors—love the rhythm of endless renewal. For them, every prototype, every idea, every restart is invigorating, not exhausting.

The rule’s message is deeply personal: wherever you are—starting over, succeeding wildly, or struggling—you’re not at the end. You’re at the beginning of the next adaptation. That’s the art of winning, forever.