Rethinking institutional reform, part 2: Leading on unstable ground

Tech projects fail without moral leadership. Leaders must accept messiness and foster adaptability in complex systems.

First published in the Mandarin

Leading on unstable ground

Why do so many transformation efforts fail, even when well-planned? Well, because organisations are complex socio-technical systems, and most leadership frameworks teach leaders to acknowledge but ignore the messy reality of organisational life.

Organisational complexity has long been a focus of philosophers and theorists, from Charles Barnard’s emphasis on decision-making as an important activity in organisations to Herbert Simon’s concept of bounded rationality, James March’s behavioural theories of the firm and Karl E. Weick’s work on sensemaking in organisations.

Organisational complexity arises because the organisational system is more than just the sum of its functional parts. Dennis Wrong best captured the constructivist sense of organisational complexity in his observation that: ‘Groups, institutions, and societies are nothing but concentrations of recurrent interactions among individuals’. 

Resistance to change and organisational inertia arises from individuals reacting to shifts in the recurrent patterns of behaviour, which are the foundation of social order and the source of the organisational system’s emergent properties.

This article, the second in the series, examines the question: How can leaders navigate complexity and unpredictability?

The unfinished business of change

In consulting jargon, organisational transformation is often depicted as a straightforward journey represented by chevrons that outline a clear process: diagnosis, design, implementation, and success.

However, anyone who has led genuine change knows this tidy narrative is a myth. The real experience of transformation is much messier. It involves ambiguity, resistance, setbacks, and moments of clarity that only become clear in hindsight. Most of all, it is characterised by relentless adaptation.

The accompanying measures of change success, often captured under the heading of ‘evaluation,’ consider this messiness as failure. Too many yellow and red dots on the activity spreadsheet means that progress has not been made in accordance with the ‘plan’.

But messiness does not signify failure. It shows the nature of the organisational system itself. Organisations are not machines to be retooled—they are dynamic, evolving systems shaped by human relationships, habits, and meanings. In such systems, change cannot be forced; it must be navigated.

To lead a transformation is to lead on unstable ground. It demands a different kind of understanding and knowledge. It requires not only technical skill but also philosophical insight into the nature of complexity, emergence, and institutional learning.

The myth of control

In 1959, Joseph Irwin Miller, then CEO of Cummins Engines, described the challenge of leadership as a struggle against the organisation itself. “His real antagonist,” Miller wrote, “is neither the customer, nor his bankers, nor the union. His real antagonist is the organisation.”

More than sixty years later, Miller’s lament still resonates. Despite decades of change models and management science, leaders remain haunted by the sense that their organisations resist them. Programs are diluted, intentions are misread, and the molasses of daily operations slows every ambitious initiative.

Why does this experience persist? One reason is that many leadership models still rely on a mechanistic worldview. There is an unspoken assumption that organisations can be designed and managed like machines. This perspective underestimates the complexity of human systems and overstates the influence of planning.

In 1938, Chester Barnard proposed the ‘acceptance theory of authority,’ which contends that authority isn’t inherent to a position but relies on the workforce’s acceptance and recognition of it.

Exercising effective authority in organisations depends on cooperation between executives and employees. An organisation operates most efficiently when authority is used to align with both individual and collective interests. Essentially, leadership is a social contract between leaders and their followers.

Barnard’s core argument about authority highlights that unfair or poorly designed policies, such as reform or transformation initiatives, reduce respect for leadership. When leaders do not realise that authority relies on the approval of the workforce, resistance to their policies increases.

Leaders are not in control; they are entrusted with a certain level of authority. Authority is a gift, not a guarantee. It carries the burden of stewardship.

In complex systems, where outcomes are unpredictable and power is always shared or contested, effective leadership starts with humility to understand that control is an illusion. What leaders do have is the responsibility to use their authority wisely to create the conditions for others to act with purpose.

The loss of the stable state

In 1971, Donald Schön described the modern condition with a single phrase: the loss of the stable state. Institutions, he argued, which were once rooted in tradition and routine, are now continually shifting. He believed that the ability to learn is now the new foundation of institutional life. Schön is the original advocate for the ‘learning organisation’.

But learning itself is hard to engineer. Organisations, Schön noted, are dynamically conservative; that is, they fight to stay the same, even when they know they must change. The result is inertia disguised as progress: more layers, more procedures, more change programs that reinforce old patterns under new names.

Organisational transformation, in this light, becomes less a matter of design and more a matter of unlearning.

Leaders must help organisations break through their conservatism—not by forcing compliance, but by creating conditions for sensemaking, experimentation, and reflection.

Complexity and emergence

Organisations are not reducible to charts or processes. They are what sociologist Dennis Wrong called “concentrations of recurrent interactions among individuals.” These interactions give rise to emergent properties: culture, meaning, resistance, and innovation. You cannot control emergence, but you can shape the conditions that make emergence constructive or destructive.

This is why transformation so often confounds logic. Change efforts fail not because the plan is flawed, but because the system behaves in unexpected ways. The real challenge of leadership is not execution; it is a commitment to anticipation, interpretation, and iteration. A commitment to learning from experience.

Here, the metaphor of geology is apt. Leaders are like seismologists. They need to interpret tremors, assess whether the tension beneath the surface indicates release or eruption, and prepare accordingly. Like earthquakes, organisational change is probabilistic, not deterministic. The best leaders don’t predict; they sense, adapt, and mobilise.

The danger of complexity creep

Sometimes, complexity isn't just emergent; it is manufactured. The Haddon-Cave report on the RAF Nimrod disaster revealed that years of ongoing reform had led to a “vortex of growing complexity and confusion.” Multiple layers of procedures, targets, and changes had obscured essential safety principles. What started as an improvement strategy turned into a risk itself.

This is the dark side of transformation. In the name of agility or innovation, organisations often generate change faster than they can absorb it. The result is not clarity but entropy. Leaders, in pursuit of progress, may unwittingly accelerate decline by adding more complexity.

Simplicity here is not naive; it is radical. Haddon-Cave emphasised that simple rules and structures are vital for safety. However, simplicity must be earned through a thorough understanding of what truly matters, rather than being imposed. In complex systems, mastering the skill of subtraction is often more challenging than adding elements.

From change management to sensemaking

If the dominant metaphors of traditional change management are surgical—diagnose, cut, repair—then the metaphors of sensemaking are ecological: observe, interpret, respond, learn.

Karl Weick, a pioneer of organisational sensemaking, warned that “To deal with ambiguity, interdependent people search for meaning, settle for plausibility, and move on.” Leaders who expect clarity before acting will wait forever. Sensemaking studies show that action often precedes understanding, leading us to understand belatedly. For leaders, the concept of sensemaking suggests that plausibility, rather than precise accuracy, serves as the guiding standard for learning. Consequently, it is more crucial to keep moving forward than to pause, as the flow of experience continues uninterrupted.

In a constructivist approach, leaders do not impose change from outside; they engage in it from within. They are not engineers but gardeners, nurturing conditions where new patterns can develop, while safeguarding the delicate signs of insight and alignment.

Leadership on shifting ground

Leading transformation isn't about mastering complexity, but about living wisely within it. It involves relinquishing illusions of control and adopting the roles of sensemaker, facilitator, and steward.

It also means accepting that change will always be an ongoing process. As Schön explained, there is no solid theoretical foundation for transforming systems. Leading reform is “a groping and inductive process for which there is no adequate theoretical basis”. 

When change is constant and the future is uncertain and unpredictable, leaders must find stability not in plans but in principles: humility, curiosity, and a commitment to learning with others. This captures the essence of leadership during turbulent times, and it may be the only type of leadership that survives.