If living systems reproduce themselves, the development of resilience is a funny but serious endeavor nowadays. Very often the call for organisational resilience appears as solatium, the booby prize to not get lost in overwhelming change or to be able to handle new impulses which seem to disturb the vitality as organisation, team or individual.

This allows the thesis that this system is hindered to reproduce itself under new circumstances. The change muscle might not be trained, continuous organisational development might not be part of a leader's incremental responsibility.

Successfully led change requires awareness and openess to the very natural fact that each system is created to keep itself alive. John Kotter used the term "unfreeze" as a prerquisite for change - yet organisations are not ice blocks, nor toasters. Therefore, leading change starts with a very clear message and a shared understanding WHY your organisation has to change, followed by the allowance and enabling to sense a future from the field (Otto Scharmer, U-School - Presencing, Leading from an emerging future).

Leading change sustainably is about conscious participation and the creation of ownership - each expert, each leader knows consciously or unconsciously what needs to change and what might need to stay as it is in order to develop in their functional and professional field.

Change leaders connect the dots, ask the right questions and offer space for sensing and co-creating a future - they inspire contribution and provide direction. This energy does not require the ability to "come back to its original shape" (pure physical ethymology of resilience). Training for being able to act, yes, of course. Raising self-efficacy, yes, always. All pillars of organisational resilience are precious.

But leading change effectively is the process of letting go and letting come, it is a joint CREATION of a desired future in an organisation, a new sense that allows to adapt and transform what was vital and 'true' until now.

Leaders are role models, they co-create the culture of a company, of a function or a team by their pure actions. What you get, is what you see - not what is written down in sense-making principles or value charters pinned around the company's buildings.

Your attitude, values and behaviour as a LEADER have the potential and the power to influence not only the performance of indivudals, but also their attitude, their willingness to contribute, and finally also their identification with the business, the company and their own role in it.

Research shows that a quite stable percentage of employees always moves into resistance when it comes to change - dare to influence this phenomena and start to lead CHANGE as a joint and sense-making movement that requires the contribution of the whole eco-system involved, including all perspectives, also resistance.

Inspire change as a natural and necessary development of an organisation, a function or a team and of each individual - and build on their ability to guarantee its survival (explore: autopoiesis, in biology shaped by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, applied on social systems e.g. organisations, economy, politics and further developed by Niklas Luhmann).

Leaders inspire, guide and invite to co-create a desired future. And they lead by example. With joy and authenticity to their SELF, not their EGO - therefore they create trust

Change is a natural journey, not a plan to be executed. It is co-creating a new sense-making set up, procedures or roles. Leading change implies an iterative approach of steering, not executing.

This is more than a simple application of Plan-Do-Check-Act, known from project and quality management.

Leading change effectively requires an outside perspective and a professional guidance which builds on system thinking, in combination with practical international frameworks. One basic operating model is the systemic loop - a procedure for thinking, leading and collaborating.

You observe, build hypothesis, design interventions and act, then evaluate the outcome - your resumee whether your interventions had been successful, i.e. created the impact you wanted or eventually eliceted other helpful interactions you did think or sense before.

As organisations are living systems, NOT toasters (= metaphor for trivial technical systems which can be repaired and managed in a linear logic "if X, then Y"), they rather resemble a black box of potential interactions.

We only can - and NEED - to observe what happens, collect and study relevant data (= information).

Managing change suggests that you are able to plan, calculate and direct a living system just in the way you want it to proceed and develop. You set your targets, drive perfomance, instruct people what to do - measure progress. And yet, still more than 70% of all change initiatives fail. This is very much based on this technical, and quite one-sided approach of how to steer organisations and people.

Leading change initiatives turns the coin - especially the moment of joint and transparent building of hypothesis leads to an essential momentum in change processes.

The truth is in the eye of the beholder - or: truth is the invention of a liar (Heinz von Foerster, Cybernetics and System theory which influenced the approach of constuctivism and cognitive science).

The specific twist of this second order cybernetic is the idea that realisation, insights are not independent from the observer - the observer co-constructs the perceived reality.

Leading change therefore requires the meaningful communication with your teams and the partners of your relevant or future relevant eco-system. Collaboration along the idea of the systemic loops creates momentum because you obsverve the relevant other partner and create not only a shared understanding, but you co-create reality, the desired future from all relevant perspectives. The procedure is simple, to lead it is art.

You express, describe and listen to how you and relevant partners perceive the current situation and what might be helpful to do or not to do. This part of social interaction is crucial for chosing your next steps within the processes. It surfaces the construction on reality of the persons involved.

Then, still together with your relevant partners, you co-create hypothesis on relations, interactions, (co-) dependencies or patterns within the system. We favorise resource and solution oriented thesis on e.g. what might be going on, what might be helpful or why does a specific behaviour you may dislike make sense to other parties. In a change process, you vary the leading questions, the spotlights according to the current stage and what you want to co-create. Financial and technical facts and figures for me, also belong to relevant data.

The interesting point is, how do different people in different roles consider this data, what meaning to they assign to it and what consequences do they drwa from this consideration.

Based on the hypothesis you create, you design your interventions, options on how to proceed, what to initiate or let go. Here comes the ethical maxim of Heinz von Foerster which in my experience goes very well hand in hand with the Havard approach of working with options, not one fixed plan:

"Always act in a way that increases the number of your options."

Then you act according to your options, observe (double loop) and then evaluate the outcome - again, together. This is not possible with a questionnaire, it requires human interaction.

Repeat and enjoy. communication (= lat. sharing, doing it together).

Sometimes the necessity for an organisation, function or team to change evolves from crisis.

In Chinese language crises = chance. It occurs when a system or an indivudal is living up to one-sided extremes over a certain period of time and a new balance is required in order to survive.

Sometimes change is or seems disruptive and requires a full transformation (catastrophe in ancient Greek = complete turnaround) - again, a living system always sustains itself including the interaction with and the relevant distinction from its environment.

Unless something or somebody hinders this capability.

For companies, functions or teams, three perspectives are always relevant, and when entering the CHANGE zone, and they are mandatory - (1) Interaction with partners within and outside their current eco-system, (2) Exploration of opportunities, (3) Being aware of their specific context including e.g. competitors, politics, technological development.

Observe, build hypthesis, design interventions and act, then evaluate the outcome, your resumee whether your interventions had been success-ful i.e. created the impact you needed or the one you did not expect.

This cycle, this reflection in action is a steady process, and crucial for survival and for continuous self-renewal. It is NOT a "we did it last year" job - leadership engages in creating, not awaiting a future or turn a plan into realitiy. It encourages observation and continuously asks "Are we doing the right thing" including the eco-system.

Yes, organisations need the role of a manager - in change, though, this side of the coin won't lead to sustainable success. Managers operate on efficiency, guided by the question "Are we doing things right."

Cultivating relevant relations and shaping purpose driven interaction is relevant everyday, not only in explicit change initiatives. Noel Tichy (working with Jacques Welsh on the transformation of GE) created the acronym GPRI - co-create and agree on Goals, define and assign (new) Roles, (re-)design relevant Processes and cultivate purpoes driven Interaction.

Now you add: Context and Culture, there you go. We call it GRPI+C2 and work with it e.g. for the aligment of teams, meetings or diagnosis. Globally, locally, across functions, organisations and cultures.