ORGANIZATIONAL SYSTEMS DON’T COME WITH A MANUAL

There is a peculiar moment in the life of any organization: that instant when everything seems to work perfectly on the surface, but something subterranean begins to crack. It’s not the numbers—those remain healthy. It’s not the strategy—that was designed by expensive consultancies. It’s not the people—they are all competent, engaged, productive. And yet, something dies. Slowly. Silently. As if the very soul of the company were being sucked down by an invisible drain that no one can locate.
We call this “cultural misalignment.” Or “lack of purpose.” Or “organizational fatigue.” We invent names for the unnamable because naming gives us the illusion of control. But the truth is more uncomfortable: we fail to understand that organizations are not machines that process inputs and spit out results. They are living organisms that breathe through the relationships that constitute them. And when those relationships sicken, it’s no use replacing parts. You have to transform the force field that sustains everything.
Think of that company that hired the best CEO on the market—an impeccable resume, success stories, enviable stage presence. In the first six months, he implemented everything he should have: restructuring, new KPIs, process reviews, a high-performance culture. And the company sank. Not due to his incompetence, but because he treated a living organism as if it were a disassembled puzzle waiting to be reorganized. He failed to perceive that this system already had its own logic, a collective intelligence that transcended any individual, including him.
The mistake was not technical. It was existential. He believed that changing the parts was enough to transform the whole. He didn’t comprehend that the whole has emergent properties that do not exist in the isolated parts. It’s like trying to understand a symphony by studying each note separately. You can master each fragment and still completely miss the music.
Now imagine the opposite: that small family business that, according to any minimally serious financial analysis, should have gone bankrupt years ago. Amateurish management, non-existent processes, decisions made on the fly. And it thrives. It grows. It generates profit, loyalty, innovation. Not because it does everything right, but because there exists a relational web so dense, so alive, so organically connected that it compensates for all technical deficiencies. People don’t work by following manuals—they dance together in a choreography that no one taught, but everyone knows.
These two cases are not exceptions. They are revelations of something that almost no one wants to face: what determines whether an organization lives or dies is not the isolated quality of its parts, but the quality of the relational field that connects those parts. And this field does not obey linear logic. It doesn’t function by simple cause and effect. It is circular, recursive, paradoxical. It is a living system.
THE “I” THAT WAS NEVER JUST “I”
Every person in a leadership position lives under a foundational illusion: the belief that their decisions are exclusively their own. That their success or failure depends mainly on their individual competence. That if they are good enough, smart enough, strategic enough, they will be able to shape the reality around them.
A lie. A sophisticated, seductive lie, but a lie.
That director who is proud of having “turned things around” in a troubled division doesn’t realize that his ability to turn anything around only exists because the system around him allowed it. He entered at a moment of acute crisis, when the crisis itself had already destabilized the forces that kept everything stagnant. It wasn’t him who changed the system—it was the transforming system that created the space for him to exist in that form. Had he arrived six months earlier or six months later, he would have been swallowed or ignored.
This doesn’t diminish his merit. It merely repositions the understanding. He is not a solitary hero transforming the world—he is a point of intensity within a force field that was already in motion. His genius was not technical. It was to tune into the subterranean currents that were already seeking passage.
Now think of that brilliant manager who was promoted and failed miserably. Not because she lost competence overnight, but because she changed fields. What made her extraordinary at the previous level was her ability to navigate a specific type of relationship—with peers, with direct superiors, within a scale of complexity she mastered. When she moved up, the field changed. The forces were different. The currents, different. And she kept dancing the old choreography on a completely new stage.
No one told her this. They told her she needed to “develop strategic vision” or “learn to delegate.” As if they were technical skills to be acquired. They are not. They are modes of existing in relation. And you don’t learn that in courses. You learn it by perceiving, feeling, breathing along with the system until it reveals its invisible grammar.
The “I” of any leader is always a provisional fiction sustained by the “we” that surrounds them. When that “we” changes—be it through a promotion, a merger, a crisis, a market shift—the “I” that was once solid disintegrates. And then comes the desperation: seeking outside (new courses, new mentors, new frameworks) what can only be rebuilt inside—in the living relationship with the field that now sustains it in another way.
THE “YOU” THAT CARRIES MULTITUDES
Here is one of the most brutal mistakes of contemporary management: treating each person as an isolated unit, a “resource” with mappable competencies, a “talent” to be developed individually. As if it were possible to extract someone from the relational fabric that constitutes them and still expect them to remain the same.
You’ve seen this happen: that exceptional professional at one company is hired by another and turns mediocre. Not because they lied on their resume or because the moon was in Aquarius. But because what made them exceptional wasn’t just within them—it was in the web of relationships they were part of. They were extraordinary in that system, with those people, within that relational logic. Remove them from there, and what you have is merely a set of technical skills without the alchemy that turned them into excellence.
This is not romanticism. It is relational physics.
When you look at a collaborator and think “I need to develop this person,” you are starting from a false premise. You don’t develop people in isolation. You transform relational fields. And the person, inserted into this transformed field, transforms because the field transforms them at the same time it is transformed by them.
Think of that team that had a “toxic element.” Everyone agreed: he was the problem. Arrogant, resistant, destabilizing. The obvious solution: remove him. And they did. And you know what happened? Three months later, another “toxic element” emerged. Same behaviors, same destructive energy, different person.
Why? Because that role existed before the person who occupied it. The system needed that function—someone who would say what no one wanted to hear, who would challenge easy consensus, who would prevent complacency. Since the system lacked healthy channels to process conflict, it created a scapegoat. Remove the goat, and the system immediately elects another.
The question almost no one asks is: what kind of relational field produces this need? What kind of “we” needs a sacrificial “you” to keep functioning without transforming?
Now imagine the opposite: that average person who was placed on an impossible project with a team of strangers and emerged as a natural leader. Not because they discovered hidden talents within themselves, but because that specific field, with those specific people, in that specific challenge, created the conditions for them to exist in another way. The field summoned them. And they answered.
If you try to replicate this by placing them in another “similar” project, they will likely fail. Because relational fields are not replicable. They are unique, unrepeatable, alive. And the only way to work with them is by developing sensitivity to perceive their subterranean currents.
THE “WE” THAT NO ONE CONTROLS
Here is the secret terror of every leader: the discovery that the “we” they theoretically command has a life of its own. It thinks on its own. Decides on its own. Organizes itself. And often operates in a direction completely opposite to what was planned, decided, and communicated.
You call a meeting to align on the new strategy. You present impeccable slides. Solid arguments. Irrefutable data. Everyone agrees. Everyone commits. And nothing happens. Not due to conscious sabotage, but because the “we” of that organization has already made another decision at a level no presentation can reach. A silent, subterranean, invisible decision—but absolutely real.
This is not resistance to change. It is collective intelligence operating on a different frequency from the individual. The “we” perceived something that the leader’s “I” could not see: that brilliant strategy on paper violated some deep logic of the system. And the system, like every living organism, has a self-preservation impulse.
Think of that company that tried to implement radical meritocracy. 360-degree evaluations, public rankings, differentiated rewards. Everything technically perfect. And it generated an epidemic of burnout, veiled sabotage, and talent exodus. Why? Because that specific “we” sustained itself on tacit cooperation, invisible loyalties, non-mercantile exchanges. Meritocracy wasn’t just a process change—it was an attack on the ontology of that system.
The leader who implemented this was not ill-intentioned. They were unconscious. They couldn’t see the force field that sustained that culture. They tried to change behaviors without transforming the relational conditions that produced those behaviors. It’s like trying to change the direction of a river by pushing the water with your hands.
Now think of the opposite: that catastrophic merger that should have destroyed two incompatible cultures. And instead, it generated a third culture—stronger, more creative, more resilient than both originals. Not because someone planned it, but because the emergent “we” found its own logic that transcended the previous logics.
No one controlled this process. Some leaders were wise enough not to try to control. They created spaces. Facilitated encounters. Allowed conflicts. Sustained creative tension without forcing premature resolutions. And the system did what living systems do when given space: it self-organized at a higher level of complexity.
WHEN EQUILIBRIUM KILLS
There exists a dangerous organizational fantasy: the idea that healthy companies are companies in equilibrium. That the goal of leadership is to achieve and maintain stability. That crises are anomalies to be avoided.
A lie.
Living systems do not seek static equilibrium—they seek dynamic equilibrium. And the difference is brutal.
That company that has been “functioning perfectly” for years—same processes, same products, same clients, same culture—is not healthy. It is dying slowly. Because in the absence of disturbance, there is no transformation. And in the absence of transformation, there is entropy. The system consumes itself.
You’ve seen this: that century-old, respected, profitable organization that suddenly implodes. Not because a competitor defeated it, but because it crystallized. It became so good at maintaining equilibrium that it lost the capacity to transform. And when transformation finally came—imposed by the market, technology, reality—it no longer had the plasticity to adapt.
The equilibrium that kills is the one that eliminates conflict, tension, dissonance. That punishes those who question. That celebrates harmony above truth. That mistakes the absence of crisis for the presence of health.
Think of that team that never disagrees. Where all meetings end in easy consensus. Where no one confronts anyone. Does it seem healthy? It is toxic. There is no transformation without friction. And a team that doesn’t allow friction is accumulating a time bomb of unprocessed conflicts that will one day explode in a much more destructive way.
Now compare it with that team that fights constantly. Heated discussions, explicit disagreements, visible tensions. Does it seem dysfunctional? It may be the opposite: a relational field alive enough to process conflict in real time. Where people trust each other enough to disagree without breaking. Where truth matters more than appearance.
The issue is not to eliminate conflict. It is to become capable of metabolizing it. Of using tension as transformation energy, not as a sign of failure.
Healthy systems oscillate. Periods of stability followed by periods of crisis. Moments of expansion followed by moments of contraction. And it is precisely in this dance between opposites that life is sustained.
The leader who understands this does not try to eliminate crises. They try to create conditions for the system to traverse crises without disintegrating. They do not seek permanent harmony. They seek capacity for continuous transformation.
MULTIPLE PATHS, MULTIPLE CAUSES
One of the most seductive illusions of modern management is the belief in replicable formulas. The idea that if a strategy worked in one company, it must work in another. That if a leader was successful in one context, they will be in any other. That there is one right path to achieve extraordinary results.
There isn’t.
Three companies in the same sector, with similar products, can reach the absolute top of the market through radically different—and equally valid—paths. One through brutal technological innovation. Another through extreme customer intimacy. The third through impeccable operational efficiency. There is no “the” path. There is the path that that specific system managed to create with the relational resources it had available.
And here is the paradox: the same result can have completely different causes. That company that skyrocketed in the market may have skyrocketed because it hired a visionary CEO. Or because it lost the visionary CEO and the system was forced to self-organize. Or because a competitor went bankrupt. Or because an intern had an unexpected idea. Or due to a chaotic combination of all these forces that no one planned.
There is no linearity. There is a complex causal web where everything affects everything.
Think of that startup that failed. Everyone has an explanation: lack of capital, product poorly adjusted to the market, wrong timing, inexperienced team. And they are all right. And they are all wrong. Because it wasn’t one cause, it was multiple forces converging. And trying to isolate “the” cause is to completely miss the systemic nature of failure.
Now think of that other startup that exploded—even with an inferior product, questionable timing, scarce capital. How? Because it found a point of resonance in the system that no one had perceived. Not because it was better. Because it was compatible with the forces already in motion.
This changes everything. If multiple paths lead to the same place and multiple causes produce the same result, then the obsession with copying success models is fundamentally mistaken. What you need is not to imitate. It is to develop sensitivity to perceive what forces are alive in your system and how you can tune into them.
THE DANCE BETWEEN WHAT DIES AND WHAT IS BORN
Every living system exists on the frontier between two forces: the one that maintains it and the one that transforms it. The one that preserves and the one that destroys. If it only preserves, it crystallizes. If it only destroys, it disintegrates. Life is in the dance.
That family business that managed to professionalize without losing its soul didn’t do so by choosing between tradition and innovation. It did so by integrating both in a paradoxical movement. It maintained ancient rituals while creating new processes. It preserved founding values while challenging obsolete practices. It died and was reborn at the same time.
This is not easy. It requires the system to develop paradoxical processing capacity. To sustain contradictions without forcing simplistic resolutions. To accept that opposing truths can coexist without one nullifying the other.
Think of that leader who needs to be simultaneously firm and flexible. Transparent and strategic. Present and delegating. The tendency is to choose one pole and fixate on it. But living leadership operates in the tension between opposites, not in choosing a side.
The system that does not transform dies of rigidity. The one that transforms too quickly dies of incoherence. The art lies in perceiving the rhythm—when to accelerate, when to decelerate, when to sustain tension without resolving it.
THE QUESTION NO ONE ASKS
After all this, the question that should haunt us is not “how to make my company grow” or “how to develop my leadership” or “how to build a high-performance culture.” These are questions from someone who still believes systems can be controlled from the outside.
The real question is: what kind of relational field am I sustaining with my presence?
Because you don’t lead isolated people. You modulate force fields. Every decision you make, every conversation you have, every silence you choose—all of this alters the invisible architecture of the relationships around you. And this architecture determines what is possible and what is impossible within that system.
You can have the best strategy in the world, but if the relational field you cultivate is toxic, mediocre, or unconscious, the system will sabotage any transformative movement. Not out of ill will, but because it lacks the structure to sustain it.
And here is the most disturbing part: you don’t control this field alone. You are one of the forces within it. You affect and are affected. You transform and are transformed. There is no external position. There is no absolute control.
What exists is growing awareness of the forces that move through you. And as this awareness expands, you become capable of choosing—not everything, but some things. Not always, but sometimes. And these conscious choices, however small, alter the field irreversibly.
We are as freer as we are more conscious of the forces that move through us. And organizations are as more alive as their leaders understand they are not building structures—they are cultivating relational ecologies.
The difference is brutal. Structures are built with control. Ecologies are cultivated with conscious presence, deep listening, and the courage to sustain paradoxes.
And this may be the most liberating and most frightening discovery of your professional life: you were never in control. But now that you know it, you can begin to dance with the forces instead of fighting against them.
And in that dance lies all the difference between organizations that function and organizations that breathe.
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