Relationships are the key.
One of my learning habits right now is to take a thought I’ve been mulling over, and using AI, take my notes and research and turn it into a post for me to read, based on several months of my own thinking and research shaping the conversation.
My basic premise is: Organizations are inherently complex systems. Many tools we use to run organizations are based on the industrial age and are quite mechanistic and linear. Today’s world and organizations are not. When you break down a complex system into its parts, the thing that connects them is relationships. Relationships are what tie systems, organizations, and individuals together. Paying attention to the relationships serves the whole system, and cannot be improved or resolved using the tools and thinking of the industrial era. The health of relationships inside an organization can be measured by how decisions are made, psychological safety, and the frequency and quality of connections.
I’m always interested in hearing how others are using AI in their work. So would love to hear the ways you use it! And if you are wondering about how my relationship with AI is going - it got a bit dicey there for a while, but that’s a post for another day.
Here’s what AI came up with:
Why Complexity and Organizations Are Synonymous—and Why Relationships Hold the Key to Thriving
Today’s organizations face challenges that defy linear logic. From global supply chain disruptions to shifting workforce dynamics and emergent technologies, it is increasingly clear that organizations are not merely machines to be optimized—they are living systems embedded in a web of relationships. The very nature of organizing people to achieve shared outcomes is an inherently complex endeavor. In this post, we explore why complexity and organizations are synonymous, and why nurturing relationships is not just a soft skill—but a strategic imperative for resilience, innovation, and long-term success.
Complexity: The Natural Habitat of Organizations
What is complexity? Complexity science, rooted in systems theory, studies how parts of a system interact in nonlinear, dynamic, and often unpredictable ways. Unlike complicated systems (like a car engine), complex systems (like an ecosystem or a human team) cannot be reduced to their individual parts without losing something essential about how they operate.
Organizations—especially in the 21st century—fit every definition of a complex system:
Interdependence: Every department, function, and team relies on others. No single part can succeed in isolation.
Emergence: Outcomes are often the result of many small interactions and cannot always be predicted or planned.
Adaptation: Organizations must respond to changing environments, evolving customer needs, and competitive pressures.
Multiple feedback loops: Actions taken in one part of an organization can have delayed or amplified effects elsewhere.
This complexity is not a flaw—it’s intrinsic to the nature of organizing humans around shared purpose. As Dave Snowden, creator of the Cynefin Framework, puts it: “In a complex system, the whole is never the sum of the parts, and the system has a life of its own.”
The Machine Metaphor No Longer Serves Us
Much of modern management was born out of the Industrial Revolution. Thinkers like Frederick Taylor and Max Weber contributed models that treated organizations like machines—hierarchical, standardized, and optimized for efficiency. While this served well in relatively stable contexts, today’s environment is far more dynamic and interdependent.
In fact, continuing to apply machine-like logic to human systems often creates fragility. For example:
Rigid hierarchies can hinder information flow and innovation.
Top-down change efforts often fail because they ignore informal networks and human motivation.
Overemphasis on control and measurement can erode trust and autonomy—two vital elements for navigating uncertainty.
We now need metaphors and mental models that reflect the reality of complexity: ecosystems, networks, living organisms. In such environments, the focus shifts from control to connection.
Relationships: The Organizing Fabric
If complexity is the nature of the organizational game, relationships are the rules that govern how it's played. Relationships—defined by trust, communication, and shared meaning—are the connective tissue that holds a complex system together. They determine:
How information flows
How decisions are made and interpreted
How conflict is navigated
How aligned or fragmented people feel
Ron Heifetz, a pioneer in adaptive leadership, argues that leadership is not about providing the right answers but about creating the conditions for people to co-create and learn together. This is only possible in environments rich in relational intelligence.
Margaret Wheatley, a thought leader in systems thinking, writes, "Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else." In organizations, this translates to a fundamental truth: your strategy, culture, and performance all depend on the quality of your relationships.
The Data: Relational Health = Organizational Health
Research increasingly backs this up. For example:
Google’s Project Aristotle found that the single most important factor in team effectiveness wasn’t who was on the team, but how the team worked together—specifically psychological safety, a relational quality.
The MIT Human Dynamics Lab identified that the best predictors of team performance were not individual talent or IQ but the energy and quality of conversations between team members.
In systemic team coaching, pioneered by Peter Hawkins, teams are understood not just as collections of individuals but as nodes in wider systems of stakeholders. Success hinges on their relational capacity within and beyond the team.
Relational capital—often seen as intangible—is now one of the clearest predictors of resilience, agility, and innovation.
From Leadership to Relational Stewardship
So what does this mean for leaders? In a complex world, the most effective leaders are not heroic decision-makers at the top, but stewards of relationships and architects of environments that foster connection and trust. This requires:
Listening over directing: Creating space for diverse voices and perspectives to be heard.
Facilitating reflection: Helping teams make sense of their dynamics, assumptions, and blind spots.
Supporting sense-making: Encouraging shared understanding in the face of ambiguity.
Modeling vulnerability and care: Demonstrating that relationships are not just a means to an end, but a source of collective strength.
As Otto Scharmer writes in Theory U, "The quality of the results produced by any system depends on the quality of awareness from which the people in the system operate."
Practicing Complexity-Conscious Organizing
To operationalize this thinking, organizations can adopt practices that elevate relational intelligence:
Systemic team coaching: Not just coaching individuals, but helping intact teams examine how they relate to each other and their stakeholders.
Dialogue-based processes: Moving from discussion (advocacy and debate) to dialogue (shared inquiry and discovery).
Network mapping: Understanding informal networks and where influence, energy, and communication truly lie.
Relational diagnostics: Measuring team and organizational health not just in terms of outputs, but trust, safety, coherence, and connection.
Final Thought: It’s All About the In-Between
Complexity teaches us that we can't reduce organizations to structures and processes. What makes an organization thrive lies in the spaces in between—in the relationships that allow people to learn, adapt, and create together.
To see an organization as a network of relationships is to honor its humanity. And to nurture those relationships is to steward a living system capable of evolving with the world around it.
As we move deeper into this age of uncertainty, one thing becomes clearer: Our ability to relate is our greatest organizational superpower.
Sources and Further Reading:
Snowden, D. & Boone, M. (2007). “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making.” Harvard Business Review.
Wheatley, M. (2006). Leadership and the New Science.
Edmondson, A. (2019). The Fearless Organization.
Heifetz, R. (1994). Leadership Without Easy Answers.
Scharmer, O. (2009). Theory U.
Hawkins, P. (2017). Leadership Team Coaching in Practice.
