Organizational change takes shape in everyday encounters. A leader introduces a new policy. Employees decide whether it is safe to ask questions. A team offers feedback and waits to see whether anyone responds. These moments influence whether a change becomes part of how an organization works or remains a commitment on paper.
At our October 14 Anima Café, I explored what it means to navigate complex systems change. Drawing on my background in political organizing and Anima Leadership’s work with organizations, I wanted to examine how change happens inside organizations, whose knowledge informs it, and what leaders need to sustain it.
Seeing the system behind the immediate problem
I began my career working for a political party within our provincial legislature office, overwhelmed by public requests for help. Families were struggling to afford food, workers were seeking fair compensation, and newcomers faced barriers to basic services. Each situation demanded attention. Together, they felt impossible to address.
A conversation with a seasoned union organizer helped me connect these local experiences to undemocratic global trade agreements being negotiated between national governments and large corporations (more about this in my memoir Breaking the Ocean, 2018). Understanding those connections helped me to make sense of what was happening locally, to develop a systems view which helped bring perspective to the daily overwhelm.
The same connections between local and systemic need to be made in workplaces. Repeated complaints about promotion, for example, invite questions about how opportunities are communicated, who receives encouragement, and what counts as leadership potential. Addressing each complaint separately may leave the conditions producing those complaints untouched.
Systems thinking requires leaders to widen their view. What patterns keep recurring? How do policies interact with informal expectations? What pressures outside the organization influence its choices? Thinking from a systems perspective helps teams identify where intervention could make a more lasting difference, while continuing to respond to immediate needs.
Dominant vs. Non-Dominant Systems Change Approaches
Change from the Margins
Systemic change does not come from reproducing knowledge and solutions from the same consciousness that created problems in the first place. For any system to strengthen, it needs new input, voices and perspectives. In this time of rampant capitalism, life destructing initiatives and climate crises, the dominant approaches to change rely solely on facts, linearity, certain outcomes and the illusion of control. Historically marginalized perspectives, in contrast, include participatory processes, listening to the wisdom of the body, and allowing some outcomes to be discovered through the process. It’s not that using the dominant approach is a bad thing– it’s simply that our approach to change is grossly unbalanced, thus leading often to unbalanced outcomes. What would it look like, I wonder, to center the women, racialized communities, land-based wisdom in our approaches to institutional change?
Some starting points include:
(1) Go slower: be clear on the purpose behind the change proposed and assess system readiness
How many requests we received from organizations post George Floyd’s murder for immediate town halls and yet in many of those organizations people had little previous experience discussing race or identity and had not established the conditions for a constructive conversation. A large gathering could expose painful experiences without a clear process for responding to them. The desire to act quickly outpaced the organization’s ability to act responsibly- and many of those initiatives did not go well as we were called afterwards to come in and try and repair the relational damage done.
Slowing down at key points creates room to clarify purpose, assess readiness, and prepare people for the work ahead. Leaders need to understand what participants may be asked to share, how concerns will be handled, and what will happen afterwards.
Pace should respond to the situation. An immediate harm may require immediate action, alongside a longer process of organizational learning. The practical question is where more preparation or reflection will improve the next step, and where delay would leave people carrying avoidable harm.
(2) Co-create: ask for input on the purpose, the vision and the process to get there (be clear about parameters for input): give people options of how to contribute
Participation becomes more meaningful when people understand what they can influence. I am thinking about an organization responding to a policy change passed by government. The organization may have limited authority over the requirement itself, while retaining choices about how it is introduced and carried out.
What leaders can do is explain those boundaries and invite input on the choices that remain. Employees may identify barriers, communication needs, or implementation concerns that would otherwise be overlooked. Being clear on the parameters for input helps people decide how to contribute and what to expect from the process.
Access to participation also depends on power and identity. Speaking openly in front of a manager may feel comfortable for one employee but professionally risky for another. A single meeting cannot be assumed to provide an equally useful opportunity for everyone.
Alternate approaches to contribute include advisory groups, anonymous surveys, and town halls. An advisory group can include people across organizational levels, departments, and identity groups, including those who carry informal trust among colleagues. Offering several routes helps leaders hear beyond the most confident or familiar voices.
(3) Reciprocate relationship: feed back the themes raised, answer questions, let people know how their input has influenced the proposed change
When organizations ask people for feedback, they take on a responsibility to respond. In strategic planning, employees may be asked what they think and then hear nothing until the finished document appears. They are left to guess whether their contributions mattered, whether leaders understood them, or why certain priorities were chosen.
Reflecting back what has been heard creates another opportunity for learning. Leaders can share emerging themes, explain how those themes are shaping the proposed direction, and invite people to identify gaps or misunderstandings before decisions are finalized.
Some suggestions will be outside the organization’s authority or available resources. Others may conflict. Explaining those constraints and choices respects the effort people made to contribute. It also makes decision making easier to understand. Trust can grow when people see a clear relationship between what they shared and what happens next, even when their preferred option is not adopted.
(4) Inclusive process: doesn’t mean perfect agreement, but the sense that even if you don’t agree we still have your back (vs. scapegoating) – keep dissenters along
People approach change with different histories and expectations. Some will welcome a proposal immediately. Others will need more information or remain uncertain. A credible process needs room for those differences without treating every expression of doubt as a threat.
We need to keep people who remain apprehensive or critical within the conversation. Agreement cannot always be secured, and an organization may need to move forward while some questions remain unresolved. Respectful disagreement can still belong within a shared process.
This requires judgment about behaviour. Leaders need to distinguish uncertainty and criticism from conduct that harms others or undermines their ability to participate. Expectations for respectful behaviour and accountability remain essential.
A useful question is what the disagreement reveals. Does someone understand the purpose differently? Have earlier initiatives damaged trust? Is there an implementation problem that leaders have missed? These questions do not guarantee agreement. They give leaders a better basis for deciding how to respond and help prevent concerns from becoming silent withdrawal.
Creating possibilities within imperfect systems
The closing discussion brought forward a difficult reality: organizations and communities operate within wider systems they cannot fully control. Funding pressures, competing interests, and political dynamics can constrain the choices available. Change work often involves tradeoffs that deserve open discussion.
A practical implication is to make those tradeoffs visible. What compromises can we justify in pursuit of our purpose? Where would a decision undermine the values we are trying to advance? Discussing these questions helps people examine consequences that might otherwise remain hidden.
There is also room to begin with a manageable change. Even adding time to a staff meeting for reflection could open a new possibility in how a team works. A leader might begin by reporting back on feedback that has already been collected, or by inviting a perspective missing from an ongoing discussion.
The value of a small step lies in what people learn and can build upon. When teams experience a more thoughtful way of making decisions, they gain something concrete to revisit and extend. Each change process offers a chance to strengthen the organization’s capacity to listen, share responsibility, and respond to complexity together.
Join us for our new Facilitating Dialogue course.
Annahid Dashtgard
CEO and Co-Founder, Anima Leadership
Annahid has a Masters in Adult Education and has trained in various psychological modalities (Process work, Somatic Experiencing trauma training, mindfulness and Chinese medicine) to understand the root of systems change in human consciousness. Besides consulting, educating, coaching and writing on JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) issues for over two decades across both public and private sectors, she has carefully cultivated her love of reading, usually on the couch with a glass of wine in hand trying to tune out the voices of her little ones. Check out her wiki page or website for more.
