Local climate adaptation is constrained and steered along specific paths by various mechanisms, which together form a lock-in. The study focuses on Swedish local civil servants’ strategies to deal with climate adaption lock-ins and to what extent the strategies disrupt the lock-ins. Interviews were conducted with civil servants in six municipalities, complemented by interviews at regional and national public agencies. The study investigates the presence of physical infrastructural, institutional, mental/cognitive, and discursive lock-in mechanisms and finds that they together limit and steer local civil servants’ work on climate adaptation. The study shows that the lock-in mechanisms are dealt with by civil servants through two types of strategies. Influencing strategies target others to change their thinking, behavior, or decisions, while subversive strategies involve ignoring, violating, or undermining formal and informal institutions. Civil servants used influencing strategies to mitigate several types of lock-in mechanisms. The strategies had a higher impact when targeted at mental/cognitive mechanisms, as influencing others to change their mindsets and practices widened opportunity spaces. This increased the possibilities to disrupt also other types of lock-in mechanisms. Civil servants also employed subversive strategies in the form of disregarding the legislation, departmentalization, mindsets, and practices. The subversive strategies were successful in, for example, enabling decisions, but did not weaken the lock-in mechanisms. The study shows that to disrupt climate adaptation lock-ins, civil servants need to use influencing strategies to sequentially target lock-in mechanisms.