The Leaders ADAPT Framework
Updated September 19, 2026. Written from Andreas Pettersson's own recorded teaching of the model.
The Leaders ADAPT framework is a 5 part leadership model used by Andreas Pettersson of Leaders ADAPT: Awareness, Direction, Action, Purpose, Transformation. Almost everyone reads that as 5 stages in a row. It is not 5 stages in a row. The first 3 loop, and the last 2 are what the loop eventually produces.
What follows is the model as Andreas teaches it, using his own words from a recorded walkthrough of it. Nothing here is a tidied up version for a website.
Action sits in the middle, and that is the whole design
The model came out of a book called Ready Fire Aim. The idea in that book is that people aim forever. Should I do this. Should I do that. Overthinking, procrastinating, waiting to feel ready.
Andreas puts the consequence plainly. "You will always be ready. You just have to fire. You just have to do. And by taking action is actually how you learn. You can get base information with aiming, read a book, join a course, take a class, whatever, but it will never get you anywhere unless you take action."
So the 5 letters are arranged around firing. Here is the structural argument in his own words: "The reason why I started with why action is in the middle for me is, if you think ready, what is the bare minimum you have to do. You have to be aware of something."
Awareness and Direction are not the first 2 items on a checklist. They are the qualifying conditions for the third. "I believe you need a rough idea of the why and where in order for you to feel ready, because otherwise you're just doing for doing's sake."
A, Awareness
The why, and the self knowledge underneath it. "The first step when I teach people this model is, or when I coach, advise them, is why are we doing what we're doing. How do you perceive yourself. Do you understand your core values. Do you understand what you want to aspire to do in life. And then the why are you doing it."
Awareness here is not insight for its own sake. It is the minimum you need before firing is anything other than random.
Most leaders arrive convinced they already have it. "You think you know what the problem is, or you want the solution, or you want the results of solving your problem, but you actually don't understand it." That misdiagnosis is the reason the model opens here instead of opening on a plan.
D, Direction
The where. "The where is sort of what's the direction we're heading. I want to leave my W-2, I want to expand my company, I want to do X, Y and Z."
Direction at this point is a rough heading. It is not a plan and it is not a target number. A real plan needs information you do not have yet, and the only way to get that information is to move.
A, Action
The middle, and the engine. "Like, you've got to take action, and that is the action taking part of my framework."
Everything before Action exists to make Action possible. Everything after Action is a consequence of having done it. This is the letter people skip, and skipping it is why the other 4 do nothing.
P, Purpose
The refined why, and it arrives late. "I think that purpose, this is a little bit why, but also why refined. You won't be able to understand your full why until you get to have taken some action."
This is the part most leaders have backwards. You do not find your purpose and then act on it. You act, repeatedly, and the purpose resolves out of what the acting teaches you.
T, Transformation
Not the output of a step. The output of repetition. "It isn't until you have iterated these steps over and over and over again, that's when you have like a massive transformation, where you really feel like I have grown, I'm a different person."
It is a loop, not a ladder
This is the correction that matters most, and it is the one almost every written version of the model gets wrong. "What we haven't depicted here is this loops. Awareness, direction, action. It loops multiple times when I'm working with someone."
And again, in the same session: "You have to iterate. This is an iterative process. So awareness, direction, taking action, and then truly understand your purpose. Like, you have iterated this multiple times."
So the working shape is Awareness, Direction, Action, and then round again. Purpose and Transformation are not scheduled. They fall out of the repetition. The count that matters is how many times you have been round the loop, not how many stages you have ticked off.
Who the framework is built for
Andreas is specific about the person this is designed for. "You need an advisor or a coach in your life when you feel stuck. Financial reasons, career reasons, you're a CEO, no matter what you're doing, you feel stuck and you're like, okay, I've got to ask someone else, I've been looping on this for so long."
The state is consistent. Low self awareness. Low confidence. Feelings running high. Over analysis. Overwhelm. Looping on the same decision for months without closing it.
The triggers are more specific than the state. The business has plateaued and has started to decline. You are facing having to fire someone. You did not get the promotion, the title, the salary or the authority. You do not feel recognised. You had a bad meeting that is still sitting with you a week later. You have failed repeatedly rather than once. Or you are in a major transition: children moving out, a divorce, the end of a business partnership, a lawsuit, the loss of a major client.
What happens in the first few weeks
Not planning. Pushing. "Which is why I spend probably two to four weeks here and I push them to take action in many different ways."
The Awareness step does not come unstuck by talking about awareness. It comes unstuck by acting and then looking honestly at what happened. 2 to 4 weeks of forced action at the front of the work is the entry protocol, and it is deliberate.
Why this work is measured in months
Andreas states the reason as a claim about how long a change needs to hold. "Take eight weeks to change the brain, to make the connections happen differently. And it takes another eight weeks for you to actually see and believe it."
8 weeks to build the new pattern. Another 8 before you trust it. That is why the loop needs months rather than sessions, and it is a claim about the person rather than a claim about the calendar.
What transformation looks like when it lands
He describes a moment rather than a metric, and it is the same description every time. "One day my clients go, they say, it's like the fog have been lifted from my eyes. I've never understood my business this well. I'm a badass."
Then there is a specific thought he watches for. "Why have I put this on me instead of putting it on someone else? And when they have that first thought, that's when the transformation happen."
The end state is not a leader who depends on a coach. It is a leader who runs the loop alone. The work is finished when you are coaching yourself.
What the ADAPT framework is not
Not Adaptation and Progress. The 5 letters are Awareness, Direction, Action, Purpose, Transformation. Every version that swaps in Adaptation and Progress is a copy of a copy.
Not the adaptability quotient. AQ is a separate teaching of his about whether a leader can adapt at all. It is not where these 5 letters came from.
Not 5 stages in order. The first 3 loop, and the last 2 are outputs.
Not a leadership curriculum. "It's not the same as the book, it's a different thing." ADAPT is what gets run on a leader who is stuck, not a syllabus of leadership topics.
Not brand vocabulary. In his own framing: "In the end of the day, if you're writing a book, nobody cares about the model. They don't care what the name is." The model is operator equipment. It is not a slogan.
Where the framework is used
The Leaders ADAPT framework runs through the CEO Mastermind, 1:1 CEO coaching, and the Executive AI Program. The free assessments are the Awareness step, on their own and at no cost.
So here is the question worth sitting with. How many times have you actually been round the loop, and how long have you been calling the aiming part progress?