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Lead though

innovation

Cambridge Leadership Associates

Where Adaptive Leadership began.
And where it continues.

See How We Work

Created by the architects of Adaptive Leadership at Harvard, we work alongside executives to unlock capacity, accelerate change, and move organizations forward with clarity and confidence.

Build capability for real-world complexity.

Disruption

Rapid shifts expose leadership blind spots. We help executives pinpoint the adaptive challenges driving disruption and guide their teams through change with clarity and intention.

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Innovation

Innovation is not a department. It is a leadership capability. CLA helps leaders build the clarity, alignment, and adaptive capacity required to innovate in real operating conditions, not in offsites.

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Growth

CLA helps senior leaders build the adaptive capacity required to grow through uncertainty and change. Not with more slides or frameworks, but with the leadership behaviors and operating disciplines that make growth repeatable.

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Ready to see what’s possible?

Talk to Our Team →

CLA didn’t just help us manage change —
they helped us lead it.

Alexandra Johnson

CFO

Approach

We work on the people
side of strategy.

The hard part of change isn’t the plan. It’s the people.

We focus on the behaviors, mindsets, and relationships that determin whether a strategy stalls or takes off. Most leadership challenges aren’t technical. They’re adaptive and human.

We don’t just teach frameworks. We help your leaders act differently in the moments that matter.

The result: executives who can lead through uncertainty, teams that collaborate across silos, and organizations that grow without burning out.

What this looks like

Whether you’re facing rapid growth, culture drift, unclear priorities, or “wicked problems” with no obvious answers, we help you surface what’s really in the way, and build the capacity to move forward together.

Workshops & Keynotes

High-impact sessions that bring clarity to complex change and give teams practical ways to lead through disruption.

Executive Coaching

One-on-one support to strengthen decision-making, resilience, and influence when the stakes are high and the path is not obvious.

Leadership Training

Build shared language and repeatable practices for leading adaptive challenges across leaders, teams, and the broader system.

Assessments

Structured tools that surface what is really driving performance, culture, and change capacity, with clear implications for action.

Consulting

Hands-on partnership to diagnose what is stuck, align stakeholders, and design interventions that create traction and lasting change.

Ready for change that sticks?

Let’s explore how CLA can help your teams strengthen their adaptive capacity and make progress on the challenges that matter.

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Our Story

Cambridge Leadership Associates was founded by the originators of Adaptive Leadership, a framework developed at Harvard to help leaders navigate complexity and change. From the start, our work has centred on the human side of leadership; the behaviors, relationships, and difficult choices that determine whether progress is possible.

Our roots are academic, but our practice has always been grounded: real leaders, real challenges, real action.

Adaptive Leadership

Most challenges organizations face today aren’t technical; they’re adaptive. They require people to rethink assumptions, work across silos, and take on new ways of operating.

Our approach helps leaders do exactly that: confront what’s really going on, experiment with new behaviors, and build the capacity their organizations need to move forward.