There are organisations that look well set up on paper. Clear structures, defined roles, processes that once worked. And yet something stalls. Decisions are delayed. Energy disappears into friction rather than results. People do not truly pull in the same direction, even when no one says so openly.
The Living Systems Framework is my attempt to give this phenomenon a name, and with it, a point of leverage.
The starting point is simple: organisations are not machines. They are living systems. They have histories, an inner logic and patterns that repeat even as people change. Their response to pressure is not linear but complex. What is regulated on one level reappears on another.
Classical organisational development often works at the surface: new structures, better rules for communication, clearer responsibilities. None of this is wrong. But it is rarely enough, because it does not touch the deeper question: what is alive in this system? What keeps it going? And how does it stand in its own way?
The Living Systems Framework begins earlier. It asks about the invisible orders that shape a system. About what happens between people, not only what they do. About tensions that remain unspoken yet continue to operate. About what holds a team together when pressure rises, and what pulls it apart.
In practice, I work across three levels:
First, the structural level: how are roles, decisions and resources distributed? Where do ambiguities generate tension throughout the system?
Second, the relational level: how do people communicate when things become difficult? Who has access to whom? Which coalitions and exclusions operate in the background?
Third, the somatic level: what does the system carry in the body? Where do tension, exhaustion or frozen energy sit? What might become possible if that energy could move again?
I do not separate these three levels artificially. They belong together. A team that is structurally sound but physically exhausted will not make good decisions. A team whose members trust one another but lack clear roles can lose itself in harmony rather than create impact. The framework helps me recognise quickly where the actual bottleneck lies.
What I do not mean is another model imposed on organisations. The Living Systems Framework is not a grid into which people are pressed. It is a way of looking, a way of reading a system so that what it needs in order to move again can become visible.
Move what’s in the way.