Fluid systems as wells of creative resilience

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“If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way..” – Martin Luther King

Agile change projects are a great example of doing small things in a big way. But such projects are often kept under the radar and not given the label agile until they have produced something that enables experimentation. Only once they are complete are they taken to the top. This really reminds me of working as a transformational leader in an organisation. Sustainable change takes time, and we must look at what exists in our systems, in the team systems and the organisational systems, and at what dynamics and interactions we need in order to retain flexibility and collaboration.

Today’s system

What is our current reality? I don’t mean the current KPIs or the current org chart, but the current state of our system. It's never easy to know where to start when thinking about change but recognising and being aware of existing fears is key to moving forward. We can’t change anything until we have understood what the existing environment looks and feels like, and how we feel and think about it. Therefore, we often don’t see the water we swim in and we simply get used to the structure of the system.

Our brains crave safety and certainty, and this is scientifically proven. However, as we are becoming more and more aware, we are educated for the ordered, predictable world (as set out in Dave Snowden’s Cynefin language and model), for more linear and complicated tasks and mindsets. Yet the world we live in is very complex and will become increasingly so as we continue to exponentially evolve technology whilst taking no heed of the natural complex ecosystems of the fragile planet we call home. Indeed, we could learn a lot from our planet about managing complexity, about the structure of systems and roles in the systems, and how we can adapt to them. This is particularly relevant when looking at building new organisational models ‘that work for us’. What do we already have? What works well? What doesn’t work well? How can we lead these ecosystems so that they can flourish? These newer yet more relevant elements are key both to building flatter and more fluid organisational systems as well as to understanding what the impact of these models could and would be.

Impact is one of the most (over)used words in business, a buzz word if you like, and therefore has as many meanings as people who say it. Often there is an assumption of a correlation between the volume of figures in KPIs and impact. But impact generally measures things where ROI measurement isn‘t obvious. One of the questions I get asked most frequently is: how do you measure the impact of the ‘softer’ side of transformation? This of course means the hard side! What is the ROI of creating inclusive ecosystems? How can we measure coaching impact, etc. to convince our budget holders?

Impact measurement is how your system evidences and demonstrates the results of your work. It is not therefore solely about tracking your activities and costs, but also about monitoring, experimenting with and articulating outcomes and changes in the different parts of the system, in terms of both business and people. There is no limit to growth, and it is a choice to have a profound impact or not, and how to measure that impact - regardless of the size of the company.

How do we strategically look at the impact of a transformation initiative? How do we operationally deploy, analyse and measure this impact? One of the most interesting parts of human potential in transformation in systems is actually making it measurable and actionable ‘on-the-ground’, alongside seeing the impact you imagined when you first created the strategic roadmap. This forms the landscape of the collective future ambition.

?Vision for the future system

The more deeply I got involved in changing a system, the bigger my vision and ambition for the future of that system became. How many times did I hear that it wouldn’t work, that it wasn’t feasible, that ‘it would never work here’. These are all valid opinions, but they didn’t prove to be the way things turned out. These words are important though, because you can always believe the naysayers and stop thinking differently but why would you when there is so much to discover, experiment with and change?

I have always been convinced that I can change things in the systems I live and work in. It doesn’t have to be a massive change, but it has to be done in a big bold way and make sense for the people who will join you on your quest. Being a change catalyst for me was one of the most inspiring things ever. And I did it in any job or position. Often you can create communities of momentum, see the transformation moving and then it hits a ceiling because of politics, a lack of decision-making in terms of holistic strategic transformation, or an absence of collective ambition.

It is always really about deploying and owning the value and impact of your transformation initiative individually, but also collectively. When I say collectively, there is clearly an onus on the top leadership to not just understand what the transformation is going to mean for them, but to role model the different behaviours it is going to mean culturally. Leaders must make sure that people are kept up to date and are inspired and empowered to act in a more decentralised, networked environment.

Catalysts and change makers thrive in communities, and intentionally connecting these people with the collective ambition is key. Here we see the link to the four foundational blocks of an inclusive system: empathy; psychological safety (for people to share their wildest ideas, and understand the fears, hopes and emotions of their peers); co-responsibility; and a collective vision (the system as a whole). Without this healthy and safe environment your future vision will not thrive.

Geoff Marlow tells us in his recent article on creative tension that you need a powerful and engaging experiential awareness of future me and a powerful and engaging experiential awareness of my current me (read the article here ). And this is no different for systems! It starts with individuals but needs to transcend the concentric circles from ‘me’ to ‘we’ to ‘us’ – a powerful and engaging experiential awareness of the current state of the system and a powerful and engaging experiential awareness of the future system, where we will need co-responsibility and collective vision to remain agile, innovative and inclusive.

This structure, which sounds familiar to all the lean and six sigma experts among us as we delve into the current and future state maps, allows us to identify waste and pain points, create time and space for more value adding and creative work, and lays the foundations for increased agility as we constantly question ourselves on how we do what we do and how to address the blockers simultaneously whilst driving things forward. The necessity for this adaptability leads me to the idea of creative resilience and the need to understand how the system accesses creative resilience, both individually and collectively.

Creative resilience for collective vision

I remember going diving on a hot summer’s day in the Mediterranean Sea, excited about what I might see in the marine reserve and being in a system where I did not have control. The sea makes it very clear that you are at the mercy of the natural ecosystem in which you are a guest. We had a great time in calm waters discovering sting rays and blocks of langoustine flats where you could see a pair of antennae every couple of centimetres in the rock face. As we ascended to 5m for the decompression stop, however, a very different reality awaited us. We were being thrown from side to side and could see the huge waves on the surface as the sea whipped itself up into a different shape. We had to think differently and get creative about how we got back to the boat, how we shared our air, and how we managed the (internal and external) systems. Nature offers many examples of how structures adapt to evolve, and organisations must dispel the myth that hierarchy is needed for progress and the management of complex procedures. Frederic Schneider and I discuss this very topic in our recent podcast on flatter organisational structures (listen here ) .

This awareness of the system allows us to take a step back and access creativity. We don’t stick to the story we know and there isn’t only one way to do things. Reflection is a habit of resilient people and a collective habit of resilient systems – creative, intentional and open reflection. Studies back up the connection between resilience and journaling, formalising our intentional reflections. Many resilient people don’t even realise they are doing it as it comes so naturally to them.?They don’t need to pull out a journal every morning. But they are constantly assessing and curiously analysing past events without being consciously aware of it. This deliberate practice can become part of the system structure as more and more people create a safe place where curiosity, experimentation and different thinking allow us to create a larger remit for stepping back from our reactions and into a more creative space. This will then allow us to craft different dynamics and different structures to serve the collective vision.

It is about creating a developmental practice in the collective system (organisation), one habit at a time. James Clear tells us in his book, Atomic Habits, that “if you’re having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn’t you, the problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again, not because you don’t want to change but because you have the wrong system for change”.

Purposefully developing a practice based on your innate creativity and curiosity as well as collaborating in service of a mission bigger than you, strengthens and builds your resilience. You come from a place of connection, commitment and curiosity as opposed to resignation, threat and fear. Leading in these complex environments also requires creative resilience, which in turn develops more agile and adaptive leadership styles. Both are interconnected, just like the ecosystem of the sea and the way water adapts and makes its way under all circumstances, from small trickles to huge waves, accommodating the challenges it meets en route . Water isn’t struggling, but rather adapting and creating momentum to build something bigger, something different, and creating new possibilities in the given moment. It is about flow not force, acceptance not resignation, effort not struggle, and curiosity not knowing. This way of thinking opens up a whole new world of possibility for the leader, the team and the system.

We spend most of our time focused on figuring out solutions and fixing what’s wrong, both individually and collectively in organisations. This is not coming from a created future, and we cannot cultivate creative resilience from this place. Yet education and work culture format us this way and we need to step out of this framework to step up further and higher. The whole idea of starting from a place of empathy and psychological safety, where all voices are heard and emotional tensions are noticed and acknowledged, is enough to spark a different approach to managing our individual and collective experience at work, not only for leaders, but also for evolution into a more agile organisation. We must understand what's happening in the different structures, roles and emotional landscapes of the system. What does our current system look and feel like? How do we think, act and interact here? What would our co-created collective vision look like and what do we need to get there?

It is imperative to start by asking these questions in order to create that first spark for people to learn a new skill, embrace a new mindset, or engage in a new technology. In the words of Arnold Mindell, when he talks about the practice of deep democracy, “harmony is powerful but not nearly as powerful as awareness”. Starting with this powerful experiential awareness reveals a world of opportunity at all levels of the organisation for different models, different skills and, ultimately, different results.

Thank you for reading.

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You can also find more subjects like this in my podcast,?Let’s talk Transformation, ?available on?Apple Podcast ,?Spotify , and?Google Podcast .

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