The Limits of Systems Thinking

Internal Organization Development, Organization Design, and Change Management professionals are usually called in when things feel off, metrics stall, communication breaks down, and trust fades. Our default move? Reach for a model. Draw the system. Map the flows. Realign the inputs with the outcomes.

That helps until it doesn’t.

Because the team isn’t broken in a way the model can see. The conflict isn’t between boxes on a chart. It’s between people. The patterns are live. The tension is in the conversation, or the lack of one.

Systems thinking gives us a safe way to stay outside the work. But as Stacey (2001) reminds us, We’re already inside it.

From Systems Thinking to Complex Responsive Processes

We’ve been taught to think of organizations as machines: structure the system, align the feedback loops, and optimize the flow. But that framing breaks down when the problem isn’t structural; it’s social.

What Stacey (2001, 2007) and later Mowles (2015) offered is something messier and more accurate: complex responsive processes. Organizations are patterns of interaction, always shifting, always incomplete. What’s real is what’s happening in the room, the conversation, and the response.

Concept	Systems Thinking	Complex Responsive Processes
View of organization	A system with parts and flows	An evolving web of human interaction
Change	Designed, implemented, evaluated	Emergent, negotiated, improvised
Control	Achieved through structure and alignment	Not possible. Only participation is real
Leader’s role	Architect and planner	Participant in conversation
Focus	Feedback loops, alignment, performance	Interaction, power, meaning-making

• The table above was made with the support of AI

What Practitioners Can Actually Do

1. Step into the interaction

Ask different questions. Not What’s broken in the system? but:

• Who is talking to whom?
• About what?
• How often?
• What’s being avoided?

This is where the friction and the insight live. What you hear will not fit neatly into the slide deck. Good. Stay with it.

Use observation logs or interaction maps if you need to make sense of complexity without defaulting to reduction. Documenting actual exchanges over time can reveal social patterns, how power moves, how silence is enforced, or how decisions are truly made.

2. Notice patterns of talk

Most interventions focus on structure. Try focusing on speech. Listen to what’s repeated. Watch who interrupts. Who gets quiet when pressure builds? Who signals agreement but never follows through?

Facilitating one honest conversation can shift more than redesigning a process that no one uses (Shaw, 2002).

Use pattern language that names communication behavior, not personality or intent. Avoid the trap of labeling people as blockers or resistors. Often, what looks like resistance is self-protection from vague expectations or unresolved status games.

3. Don’t design clarity. Co-create it

People are not confused because the system is unclear. They’re confused because the expectations and consequences are fuzzy. They’re behaving sensibly based on what they see and hear.

Instead of broadcasting a new structure:

• Ask what good work looks like, locally.
• Let people describe what success means in their day-to-day.
• Stay long enough to hear the differences.

And, importantly, match the complexity of the work to the capability of the role.

Many “change problems” are actually design mismatches: the work demands a level of discretion and future focus that the role doesn’t support (Hughes, 2016).

Clarify what decisions are expected at each level.

Confusion and disengagement follow if someone is held accountable for outcomes across a 1-year horizon but only has the authority to act day-to-day. Fit matters.

4. Stay present

Change doesn’t live in a milestone tracker. It lives in how you show up, in the meeting, the 1:1, the follow-up email. Every interaction is an intervention. The real work is not abstract. It’s right here, and it’s always unfolding (Mowles, 2015).

Leadership isn’t just what gets said; it’s what gets responded to, and it’s the micro-adjustments in behavior that ripple through the team.

Use developmental feedback in the moment. Help people make sense of what just happened, not as judgment, but as shared reflection. This responsiveness builds real-time learning and increases local ownership.

Why This Matters (Especially to Internal People)

You know the rhythms, you’ve seen the rollouts, and you’ve watched good people disengage because a change initiative named everything except what was actually going on.

Complex responsive process gives you permission to do what you were probably doing already: naming what’s real, asking better questions, and holding space for the conversation that needs to happen (Stacey, 2001).

When roles are designed with the right time span, when accountabilities match the complexity of the environment, and when people are trusted to interpret and act, performance improves.

Not because the system was fixed but because the people were finally working in roles that made sense.

This approach helps shift from performative change to practical adaptation. You’re not trying to get everyone on the same page; you’re helping people write the page together while it’s still being lived.

It also means fewer checklists and more shared noticing.

Fewer slide decks and more sense-making.

Final Thought: When the Model Stops Working

When the frameworks stall and the culture survey flatlines, go back to the conversation.

Because that’s where the organization has always been.

Not in the systems map. Not in the competency matrix.

But in the live, intelligent, hesitant, improvising, relational work of people trying to get something done together.

That’s where change lives.

References

Hughes, M. (2016). Managing change: A critical perspective (2nd ed.). Kogan Page.

Mowles, C. (2015). Managing in uncertainty: Complexity and the paradoxes of everyday organizational life. Routledge.

Shaw, P. (2002). Changing conversations in organizations: A complexity approach to change. Routledge.

Stacey, R. D. (2001). Complex responsive processes in organizations: Learning and knowledge creation. Routledge.

Stacey, R. D. (2007). Strategic management and organisational dynamics (5th ed.). Pearson Education.