Now it gets serious!

25 years of systemic work in organizations. Playtime is over, now it’s getting serious.

Last half year we worked in many different countries with many teams and organizations. Looking back and looking forward on the requests that were made to us, one common denominator stands out: ‘How to create resilience and adaptability in an unpredictable and often disruptive world?’

The requests to us are in a way more desperate now than the more general wishes how systemic work can contribute to a more productive and healthy company.

‘There is less money, so we have to change’

‘What we were good at, is not working anymore, so we need a reset’

‘We don’t want to be directed by what’s going on in the world, so we need to focus on development’

‘Our adaptability is important, so we need a cultural upgrade’

To be blunt: from a systemic point of view, these are the ‘wrong’ strategies as an answer to a world where political stability, peace, inclusiveness, tolerance and democracy are changing rapidly or are even over. This evolutionary force, with all its components that show up with different faces, is there anyway, whether we like it or not.

What do people do then?

As a reaction to this evolutionary and unpredictable force rattling at our doors, it’s a very human and natural answer to continue or even strengthen our view that the world is malleable. In other words: we make smarter goals, create better strategies, more sales-oriented marketing and we work on more willpower.

We tend to focus on the plannable future to keep the inconvenience movements from the outside world away. Internally, we do this by denying, looking away, saying ‘it will be alright, after all’, creating hope and other bubbles to deal with our fears, anger and resentment about what ‘they are doing’.

What does a system need?

In our work in teams and organizations, we distinguish between several ‘levels’ when it comes to the question ‘what does this system need?’

• Change – very simplified: from A to B – is producing more of the same. It’s driven by the plannable future.

• A reset – where there’s still a lot of potential, but the patterns are not productive anymore – helps internally but doesn’t take the outside world enough into account. This might be triggered by the evolutionary force but not driven by the evolutionary force.

• Development comes with vulnerability and feels good, but after having reached full maturity, the next stage will be decay. Cultural upgrade or development is helpful to strengthen internal connections but not creating more adaptability. Development also finds it drive in the plannable future.

What’s a better answer? Transition!

Transition is driven by the unpredictable evolutionary force where we can’t be sure to what extent they are beneficial or creating crisis. You can feel that you must. It feels like a jacket that’s getting too tight. At the same time transition is not only an answer but also a proactive preparation for uncertain times. Transition both builds resilience, adaptability ánd a stable core and identity.

Transition is the process where you are taken into a different phase of existence. A phase that is an answer to the changing world around us. Transition doesn’t change your identity or your essence, but deepens it and creates a flexible, resilient core.

Transition will most likely change your patterns, habits, values and beliefs. The first step in transition is letting go of something that served you so well until now. Letting go of being in control, letting go of always having the solution, letting go of filling the gaps, letting go the fear of losing customers, letting go of…

What you don’t know at that moment is that this letting go will create the space, the vacuum for yourself and your colleagues for something new. Even if you don’t know what this new will be.

Like a garden, where you can plant trees and flowers, and cut what you don’t want in it. But what if you’d let go of the plan and give space to what wants to emerge, under the influence of the soil, the weather and unexpected seedlings?

What are the first things that you, your team, or your organization can let go of, leave behind now?

What does this mean for systemic workers?

Systemic work has all the tools and possibilities to lead a team or company through a process of transition. This also requires liminal leadership, not only from the leaders in an organization, but also from systemic workers. Liminal leadership applies to leading organizations during periods of significant transition, transformation, or uncertainty. The term ‘liminal’ comes from the Latin word limen, meaning threshold. It refers to being in an intermediate or in-between state, where the organization is no longer what it was but has not yet fully arrived at what it is becoming.

In organizational contexts, liminal leadership emphasizes guiding people through the uncertainty and ambiguity inherent in transitions.

What more does that mean for systemic workers?

‘If you like it or not, it seems you are in a transition process’ is often an inconvenience message. So, there is a risk that anger, fear and other arrows will be pointed at the messenger – spoken from experience 🙂 Can you stand that?

It also means that we are prepared to see that systemic work is a political act, as Albrecht Mahr said already years ago. Why political? Because systemic work is an answer to ánd in accordance with the evolutionary force.

And it means that we really want to understand the movements in the world, without being sucked into polarities and judgements. That we act from an inner place of ‘it’s getting serious’ without losing an eye on the potential of the systems we are working with.

What bold commitment are you willing to make today to lead yourself and others through the uncertainty of true transition?

~ Dees & Jan Jacob